Bio-Weapon

1.

Admiral Rica Sioux leaned forward in her command chair, with her right hand pressed against the comlink embedded in her ear. Her old lined face was one of concentration.

General Hawthorne’s plan was complex. Three days ago, he had sent a message, ordering them to break off their proton beam attack on the Sun Works Factory. Their destination was now Mars, to try to awe the rebels there and then get re-supplied. But in order to get the Bangladesh to Mars in one piece… The Supreme Commander played an interesting game with the Highborn.

What was that old saying? A picture was worth a thousand words. Admiral Sioux shut her right eye, the better to view the VR-monocle in her left, and then she twitched her left hand, the only one gloved to the computer.

A small model of the inner solar system leaped onto her virtual reality monocle. The Sun blazed at one end, Mercury orbiting around it, then Venus, the Earth and Mars.

All the solar system’s planets orbited in the same direction. If one looked down from the Sun’s North Pole, they moved counter-clockwise. Also, all the planets orbited on nearly the same plane, or ecliptic. The ecliptic was inclined 7 degrees from the plane of the Sun’s equator, although the plane of the Earth’s orbit defined the ecliptic of all the other planets. Even in 2350, humanity kept it Earth-centric outlook of the universe. Far-off Pluto had the greatest inclination, 17 degrees, and it had the most bizarre of all the orbits.

Compared to the Outer Planets the four Inner Planets hugged the Sun. If one changed the millions of kilometers to mere steps, the relationship became more easily understood. Admiral Rica Sioux recalled her grade school science class and the teacher who had actually made the subject enjoyable. From the Sun to Mercury would be one step. To Venus would be one more step or two steps from the Sun. To the Earth would be another step and Mars one more or four steps away from the Sun. But to go from Mars to Jupiter took nine more steps or a total of thirteen steps from the Sun. Saturn would be 25 steps from the Sun, Uranus 50 steps, Neptune 78 and Pluto 103 steps. The nearest star, Alpha Centarui, would take 200 miles worth of stepping using this model, while the distance between the Earth and the Moon would be the width of a person’s little finger.

The planets, naturally, didn’t all orbit around the Sun in unison, with each one perfectly lined up behind the other. Each circled Sol at different speeds and as a matter of course, some had farther to travel than others. Mercury took 88 days to complete one circuit around the Sun. Venus 225 days, Earth one year or 365.26 days, and Mars took 687 days to travel one complete circuit around the Sun.

Such were the major terrain features of the inner system, with each planet tugging with its gravity, although none pulled upon objects like the monstrous Sun. Each planet and even their moons and of course the Sun created gravity wells, deep holes in terms of escape velocities needed to climb out of, and they also created gravity centers that bent light and thus laser beams that sped past them and they also effected missiles in flight. It was always much easier to shoot objects like missiles or asteroids down gravity wells than up them. Minor terrain features like the magnetic belts, such as the Earth’s Van Allen Belt, and the solar wind also had to be taken into account by firing computers and ship’s AI.

The Bangladesh sped past Mercury as the planet continued it endless journey around Sol. Much farther ahead of Mercury in its own counter-clockwise orbit was the Earth, almost so the Earth was out of the line-of-sight of someone standing on Mercury. If they were out of the line-of-sight, then direct laser-link communications would be impossible, as the Sun would block such a beam. Given time, Mercury would lap the Earth, but by then it wouldn’t matter to the Bangladesh. Venus was farther behind Mercury but not by as much as the Earth was ahead. Mars, in its much slower circuit around the Sun, was presently between Venus and Mercury in terms of line-of-sight arcs.

Admiral Rica Sioux studied the four planets and their relative positions because of General Hawthorne’s complex fleet maneuvering.

The Bangladesh, as it passed Mercury, had changed heading so that given time she would reach Mars. Meanwhile, three SU missileships from two very different locations sped up to match the beamship. They would all join a little beyond Venus’s orbital path. Two battleships, two cruisers and a missileship also built up speed to join them, but they wouldn’t link up until near the Earth’s orbital path.

Once all together they would be the strongest SU Fleet Flotilla. Still, any of the Doom Stars could take them, expect perhaps for the badly damaged Genghis Khan.

The Highborn, damn them, hadn’t been idle while all this took place. The Doom Star in orbit around Venus had left the planetary system and now gave chase, building up speed at sixteen Gs acceleration. The Gustavus Adolphus Doom Star that normally circled Mercury also gave chase. The goal of two such super-ships would usually be to bracket an enemy ship, although with the Bangladesh’s head start and the two Doom Stars’ starting locations that wasn’t going to be possible.

Even so, General Hawthorne had countered the Venus maneuver. He sent two SU battleships and six cruisers at Venus. They came from seven different places in the voids of Inner Planets.

To Admiral Sioux and probably to the Highborn as well, it looked as if the General had finally given up his game. Either that or he was trying to keep the Highborn honest and force them to keep their Doom Stars around each of the planets. Venus only had the one. So if Venus’s Doom Star traveled very far and built up too much speed, it wouldn’t be able to turn around in time to stop the two SU battleships and six SU cruisers that headed to Venus. That force could probably take on the HB laser stations in orbit around Venus and whatever orbital fighters they had. But if the Doom Star returned to Venus, those ships would have to alter course and flee. So it wouldn’t do for them to get to Venus too soon.

Fleet maneuvering in space was an intricate business, one of speed and heading and fuel and armor and missiles and lasers and re-supplies. Each side heavily leaned upon its predictive software and AI’s. Even Highborn minds couldn’t cope with the bewildering amount of data and spatial decisions.

Admiral Sioux twitched off the VR-monocle. In her gut, she wanted to gather all the SU spacecraft and try to hit one lone Doom Star. Look at what the Bangladesh had done to the Sun Works Factory. The Highborn weren’t invincible.

Concerning that, there had been a strange call five days ago from a Director Gannel, asking her opinion about gathering the Fleet. She’d decided to play it safe and had wanted to know what the Supreme Commander thought.

“Never mind that, Admiral. We want your opinion.”

“Who are we?”

“I speak for the Directorate of all Inner Planets.”

Arrogant politician, she hated their political games. She had not been able to avoid such games on her way to the top, but hated them all the same.

“I would of course obey a more aggressive policy,” she’d finally said.

“I’m not asking you about your loyalty, Admiral. I want to know what you think about hitting the Highborn harder.”

“If the correct safeguards are taken, it could be very beneficial to Social Unity.”

There had been a pause, much longer than the transmission time. Then he’d said, “I’d thought better of you, Admiral.”

And that had been the end of that. It meant a power struggle was going on, she was certain of it. But of whom and over what she didn’t know. When General Hawthorne had beamed his message he’d said nothing about new policies, but he had ordered this gathering. What did it mean?

She frowned. Better to concentrate on matters at hand, on things she could actually affect.

“Tracking,” she said.

“Yes, Admiral,” said the officer in her module.

“How soon until the HB missiles reach beam range?”

What she meant was how soon until the enemy jinking and ECM drones wouldn’t adversely affect the proton beam so that it would miss 19 out of 20 times. Usually that began anywhere from 100,000 to 80,000 kilometers, depending of the intricacy of the enemy’s electronics.

The Tracking Officer studied her board, studied the HB mass of missiles that had converged toward them, closing day by day, hour by hour.

“Soon now, Admiral. Say, two hundred and fifty minutes.”

Admiral Sioux rose and walked carefully toward the tracking module. They fled from Mercury, building up speed at one and one-half gravities, which played havoc on her knees if she moved around too much. They had burned at eight Gs for several hours, with everyone in the acceleration couches, but now they slowed and jinked. Zigzag jerks and starts and slow-downs and sudden accelerations were a matter of course during combat flight.

The Gustavus Adolphus had given chase ever since the Doom Star had dumped masses of lead impregnated aerogel and prismatic crystals near the Sun Works Factory. Social Unity had discovered this by an optic observer carefully hidden these several months between Mercury and Venus. The small ship with its powerful telescopes was sheathed in the latest stealth technology. The Gustavus Adolphus had no chance of hitting them at this range, but with those masses of missiles fast approaching, the Bangladesh’s choices had been narrowed. Its cones of probability weren’t as large as before.

The Tracking Officer sucked in her breath.

“What’s wrong?” asked Admiral Sioux.

“This can’t be right,” said the Tracking Officer. “It must be Highborn ECM playing tricks on us.”

Admiral Sioux hurried to the module, a bad mistake. She had to step down to reach it. The one and one-half Gs caused her to twist her leg and put too much force on her left knee. She hissed, and collapsed as pain shot up her thigh.

“Admiral!” shouted the First Gunner, shucking off his VR-gloves and moving out of his module to assist her.

“Never mind me,” she said, using the tracking module to help her stand. Then she groaned. She couldn’t put any weight on her left knee.

The Tracking Officer looked pale as she kept rechecking her board.

“What is it?” said the Admiral, as she peered into the module.

“The missiles,” said the Tracking Officer, shaking her head.

“What about them?” They were small red blips on the officer’s VR-screen.

The Tracking Officer looked up, her thin lips trembling. “They just began hard deceleration. And I count twice as many missiles as before.”

Shock swept through Admiral Sioux. Twice as many missiles as before? The idea made her dizzy. Then she shouted, “Battle stations!” She shoved the First Gunner’s hands off her—he tried to help her to the command chair. “To your post, mister,” she said. Then she threatened to twist her right knee too, by hopping on her good leg back to the command chair. With a groan, she sank into the cushions.

“Admiral!” shouted the Shield Officer.

“Calmly,” said the Admiral. “I can hear you quite well, thank you.”

The Shield Officer stared at her, nodding a moment later. “Yes, Admiral,” he said in a quieter, more professional tone. “Ship’s AI suggests that we get into the acceleration couches.”

She checked her own compulink to the AI. Hmm.

Several seconds later, she opened intra-ship communications. “Attention crew, this is the Admiral speaking. Prepare for extended acceleration. I repeat, extended acceleration.”

2.

Needles stabbed. A gross, awful, smothering feeling threatened Marten’s sanity. It made him recall a story of his mother’s, the way they say a dying man sees his life flash before his eyes. She’d been a strong-willed woman of faith, a Bible reader, and she’d often spoken about this passage.

Marten recalled the story of Jonah and the whale and he felt like Jonah right now diving into the depths. The pressure, oh it was awful, compressing and mind destroying. He raved, as he heard Vip raving over the comlink, and as their Storm Assault Missile began hard deceleration.

Vip’s screams broke through to Marten. The small man’s cries were hoarse and wild, desperate beyond dementia.

“Vip!” shouted Marten. “Listen to me, Vip!”

More screaming and sobbing.

“We’re going to make them pay, Vip. Hang on. Fight it. Resist. I promise you we’re going to make the HBs pay as they’ve never believed possible. So we’re the sub-human’s, eh? We’re nothing but dung beneath their feet? Their lord highnesses, Highborn, lofty ones, arrogant bastards! We are men! Do you hear me, Vip? You and I are men. Omi, Lance and Kang are men. The shock troopers are men. Hang on, Vip. Because once we have that beamship… oh Vip, we’re going to surprise them. Ha! Surprise, Vip. A really big surprise is what the HBs will get when we sub-humans take over the Bangladesh.”

Kang hissed, “You’re raving.” Then the maniple leader groaned in misery and could say no more.

“Not raving, Kang,” whispered Marten. “I’m promising. Do you hear me? Promising!”

The crushing pain, the nausea and Vip’s screams became too much. Like a dumb beast, Marten endured the horrible deceleration.

3.

The HB missile barrage didn’t sweep at the Bangladesh in one vast clot. They came from a 60-degree arc, from all their various cones of probability originally fired at. Nor did they all fly at the same speed. Some had been programmed to travel faster, to reach the target sooner.

In front sped ECM drones: electronic countermeasure missiles. They scrambled and jammed the Bangladesh’s radar. They had kept secret the true number of missiles, hiding and halving the actual amount. Now they created electronic ghost images. They sprayed aerogel with lead additives, shot packets of reflective chaff and they worked around the clock to break the beamship’s ECM. AI’s, artificial intelligences, ran the drones. Predictive software, battle-comps and probability equations gave them a seeming life of their own. One thing the drones didn’t have was biocomps like the New Baghdad cybertanks. The Highborn loathed biocomps. They felt such things to be unholy and monstrous. Life shouldn’t be mated to a machine, not in such a way—although they found nothing sinister about hooking the shock troopers to the G-suits and packing them into the missiles as biological bullets.

The masses of cocooned space-warriors suffered under the crushing grip of deceleration. Many screamed. Some stared dully. Others wept. A few laughed. Only thirty-nine died from heart failure, strokes and lunatic panic seizures. The rest longed for an end to their agony. The entire time, the missiles remorselessly closed as the Bangladesh fled.

At 80,000 kilometers separation the proton beam stabbed into the eternal night. It slashed through a ghost image. Immediately HB radar and optics recorded the beam, the fact of its being and that the enemy at last tried to hit them. Most of the incoming missiles slowed hard. Twenty others leapt ahead because they slowed less. Each of those mounted a single laser. In three seconds, they were pumped and ready to hotshot, a special process that burnt out the tubes faster but delivered a stronger initial punch. ECM drones locked-on target and fed the battle-data to the missiles. Twenty beams flashed at the Bangladesh.

4.

Everyone aboard the Bangladesh lay on A-couches or belonged to damage control parties, where they were lodged in special repair vehicles that could move about under eight Gs. VR-goggles supplied information, although ship’s AI made the majority of the decisions while the Bangladesh was under eight gravities acceleration.

In the armored command capsule, hidden deep within the beamship, Admiral Rica Sioux presided over her officers via comlink.

“Particle Screen 1 is degrading,” said the Shield Officer.

Outside the beamship, sixteen enemy lasers burned into the 600 meter-thick rock-shield. The hotshotted lasers chewed deeper and deeper into the particle mass. If they broke through and breached the Bangladesh’s inner armor the battle would quickly be over.

Ship’s AI aimed giant spray-tubes and pumped an aerosol cloud in front of the beams. At the same moment, the Bangladesh’s mighty engines quit. The enemy beams leaped ahead of the ship. Six seconds later the beams re-targeted and burned through the aerosol cloud. More aerosols flowed out, tons. The engines re-engaged, quit, started and slued the beamship sideways tiny fractions of percentages. At this terrific speed, the Bangladesh was unable to veer very far and stay within the eight G limit.

“Mine the seventh quadrant,” ordered Admiral Sioux, who had carefully studied the incoming missiles. Overlaying her view of the battle on her VR-goggles was a grid pattern to help her better understand locations, vectors and distances.

Giant rotary cannons poked out the Bangladesh and aimed between the cracks of two nearly joined particle shields. They spewed mines the size of barrels, firing them by magnetic impulse. Every fifth round was a radar mine. Every tenth contained chaff. The rotary cannons fired continuously, so a vast minefield grew in the path of the on-coming missiles.

“I have lock-on,” said the Targeting Officer.

“Proton beam charged,” said the First Gunner.

“Fire,” said Admiral Sioux.

5.

The distances closed rapidly. From their 60-degree arc, the HB missiles swarmed at the Bangladesh.

Flashes winked in space as the proton beam destroyed HB laser missiles. One after the other they ceased to exist. By firing, the missiles had made themselves vulnerable to targeting. With cold calculation, the HB probability equators had accepted that. The majority of the surviving missiles decelerated. Those didn’t decelerate moved ahead of the mass.

Twenty new lasers stabbed at the Bangladesh.

HB optic and radar missiles recorded the breaching of the first particle shied. Behind a cloud of instant aerosols, that shield rotated away and a new one moved into place.

In quadrant seven, as viewed from the Bangladesh, the HB missiles entered the minefield. A signal thus pulsed from the beamship’s AI, activating the radar mines. Mass and velocity was almost instantly verified. The radar mines screamed on their high-band frequency. Thousands of other mines in listening range detonated. They strew depleted uranium shrapnel into the path of the on-coming missiles. The missiles’ speed made such particles deadly. When they met, the shrapnel breached the missile’s ceramic-ultraluminum armor. Ten HB laser missiles disintegrated, as did several ECM drones and five Storm Assaults. Twenty-five shock troopers perished. Their bio-remains were simply another part of the debris of space junk.

Ten EMP Blasters now leapt forward. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Storm Assaults dropped to one-G deceleration. And within them, or those that still worked, the three atmospheres of pressurized glop drained into space as needles and special drugs normalized the shock troops.

The EMP Blasters inched toward the Bangladesh, closing the distance, closing—

One vaporized, the proton beam catching it perfectly.

Nine others exploded, sending a nuclear fireball that arced toward the beamship. Fortunately, they were closer to the ship and farther away from the missile barrage. Heat and blast damage had no effect at these distances and in space. Radiation, electromagnetic pulse and anyone caught in the immediate fireball were the dangers.

In this initial phase of the attack, the nuclear explosions had only one purpose: the electromagnetic pulse, the EMP. It traveled toward and soon washed over the beamship and destroyed any unshielded electronics and played havoc with the rest.

More lasers then stabbed at the new particle shield the ship had rolled into place, burning into it.

6.

“They’re too many of them!” shouted a SU officer. “The missiles closed too rapidly.”

“Kill them one at a time,” said Admiral Sioux, her voice as relaxed as if she sipped coffee.

“Rotating Shield Three into position,” said the Shield Officer.

“Spreading the minefield to quadrant nine.”

“Launch anti-missile torps,” said the Admiral.

“Firing,” said the Launch Officer. “Admiral! Tubes three through eight aren’t responding.”

“Reroute those torpedoes to the working tubes,” said the Admiral.

“What are those missiles to the rear of their formation?” asked the Tracking Officer. “I don’t recognize the type.” “Their ECM drones are fantastic. How could there be twice as many missiles as we suspected?”

“Tubes four, five and six won’t respond,” the Launch Officer said.

“Damage control,” said the Admiral. “Check torpedo tubes four, five and six.”

“Roger, Admiral.”

“How are we supposed to beat off all those missiles? They’re too many of them!”

“Switch offline, mister, if all you spout is defeatist garbage,” said the Admiral.

“Admiral!” said the Targeting Officer. “Look at those.”

“Re-target the proton beam,” said the Admiral. “Don’t let—”

Flashes showed on their VR-images as enemy missiles fired lasers.

Admiral Rica Sioux clenched her teeth. She suddenly had the gut feeling that maybe it wasn’t possible to beat the Highborn, that the HBs truly were superior in every conceivable way. Oh, but what a horrible feeling that was. So she fought off the feeling and tried to think of a way to defeat these masses of clever missiles.

7.

Ten minutes after the one part ethylene glycol, two part molasses-like glop drained into space, water sprayed into the SA missile compartment. Soon the water also swirled out.

Hiss—pop!

The first G-suit cracked open.

Pop!

Pop!

Pop!

The others did likewise.

More buckles snapped. A seam in a suit appeared. Someone groaned. Then a hand, smooth and naked, without any artificial protection, slipped out of the seam and pried at the suit.

“Six minutes to combat acceleration,” crackled an automated voice.

Weak-voiced curses were the only reply, although new hands appeared at the seams of the other suits. Slowly, the shock troopers struggled out of their cocoons.

Marten broke free first. He wrestled through the tangled tubes attached to his suit and dropped heavily to the wet floor. On his hands and knees he panted, naked and trembling, his hair damp and a scraggly growth of beard.

At the sound of hoarse breathing and desperate struggling, he looked up. Vip, his face bone-white and sweaty, his eyes wide and pupils jittering like rubber balls, fought against the masses of tubes around his suit.

Marten forced himself up. He trembled, but he locked his knees. Willing himself, he lurched to Vip’s suit.

“Vip.” Marten’s voice was scratchy. He cleared it. “Vip.”

The small man stopped what he was doing and stared without recognition.

Lance tumbled out of his suit, to lie gasping on the floor.

Marten grabbed two tubes, yanking them out of Vip’s way. Vip continued to stare.

“Leave him there,” Kang said.

Vip’s eyes widened in fright.

Marten turned. The massive Mongol, as naked as himself, stood to his left.

“You can’t stay in there,” Marten told Vip. “You gotta come out and help me kill HBs.”

Kang elbowed him in the side. “Shut up. I said leave him.”

Marten ignored Kang as he helped Vip. Soon, Vip plopped to the floor as he made retching sounds.

Marten knelt by him. “You’re okay, now, do you hear? You’re out of that thing forever.”

“I can’t do that again,” whispered Vip.

“I know.”

“I’d go crazy.”

“We’re all crazy,” said Lance, kneeling on the other side.

Then the hatch cracked open as Kang twisted the wheel. “We got four minutes,” he told them, “and then it’s more acceleration.”

Vip looked up, sick fear giving his skin a greenish tinge.

“Let’s get dressed,” Marten said, helping him by the elbow.

They filed out of the dreadful compartment and entered the other one. There they donned brown jumpsuits and climbed into the battlesuits. Marten still had the shakes, so he dialed up the suit’s medikit. It diagnosed him and shot him with a pneumospray hypo.

In their battlesuits, they looked like mechanical gorillas, huge beasts with exoskeleton power and dinylon body-armor. They screwed on the helmets with the names KANG, LANCE, OMI, MARTEN and VIP, and they strapped on thruster packs. Oxygen tanks were already part of the battlesuits, while laser rifles and breach-bombs had been packed away for them in the separate torpedoes. For tiptoeing in here, the servomotors were geared way down to minimum.

“No neurostims until we’re outside,” Marten said, speaking to them by helmet communicator.

“I’m the maniple leader,” Kang said.

“You’re third in command of the entire mission,” Marten said. “You don’t have time to lead our maniple as well.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your treachery,” Kang said.

“We’re all gonna be killed,” said Lance, “and you’re worried about a few wrong words spoken during the hell-ride here?”

“No defeatist talk from you either,” warned Kang.

“Relax, okay,” Marten said.

“I’m the maniple leader,” Kang said. “Training Master Lycon must’ve known you were a turncoat. So he put someone reliable in charge.”

“Why don’t you shoot me now then?” Marten said, disgusted with the whole conversation. “You’re so ready to be their butt-boy, maybe that’ll earn you points.”

Kang balled his exoskeleton fists. The suit’s engine whined as he revved it for combat power.

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Lance.

The five, battlesuited shock troopers faced each other, their suits purring.

“We’re gonna need everyone we have in order to fight into the Bangladesh,” said Lance.

“And we only have two minutes to enter the torps,” Omi said.

The battlesuit with KANG on the helmet turned away first. He opened the hatch to a long torpedo. The others hurried to theirs. Each climbed into the torpedo’s mini-cockpit. They buckled themselves into the seats and flipped a switch.

Slam, slam, slam, went the hatches, and the forward compartment of the Storm Assault Missile was devoid of men. Five sleek torpedoes, like bullets in a cartridge, waited near the single firing chamber.

Thirty seconds later the SA missile leapt forward at eight Gs.

“Here we go again,” Marten said, via comlink. This time, however, he had a little display screen in front of him. He would have minimal control in the torpedo, once it was fired. But having just that little bit gave him a needed psychological boost.

“Next stop, outer space,” said Lance.

“Where we’ll be as free as eagles,” Marten said.

“Yeah. Sure.”

8.

“What are those missiles in the rear of their formation?” asked the Tracking Officer. “Why haven’t they done anything yet?”

“Good question,” said Admiral Sioux. She’d been wondering that herself.

“Particle Shield 5 rotated aft,” said the Shield Officer. “Shield 6 in place.”

“Fire minefields at will,” said the Admiral.

On the screens nearby flashes told of more enemy EMP Blasters igniting.

“Rotary cannons down,” the First Gunner said.

“Only launch tubes one and twelve are in working order,” the Second Gunner said.

“Fire!” said the Admiral. “Fire everything we have before it’s too late.”

“Aerosol levels in the red, Admiral.”

Outside the beamship, HB lasers almost stabbed through Particle Shield 6.

“Get ready to re-deploy Particle Shield 1,” the Admiral said.”

“It can’t take more than ten seconds of those lasers,” said the Shield Officer.

“Get it ready,” the Admiral said.

“There are just too many of them,” an officer said with a sigh. “They are like a pack of dogs pulling down a lion.”

“Those missiles in back are moving up,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Particle Shield 6 rotated away. Shield 1 re-deployed into primary position.”

“The aerosol tanks are empty, Admiral.” A heavy sigh. “That’s it then.”

Admiral Sioux understood. The aerosol clouds kept the lasers at bay while they rotated particle shields. Without the aerosols, those lasers would probably breach the ship’s inner skin before the shreds of another particle shield could be put between the Bangladesh and the hated beams.

She squinted at the VR-images in her goggles. They had destroyed an amazing number of enemy missiles, fully three-quarters of them. She ground her false teeth together. She wasn’t dead yet, so defeatist thinking was senseless. “Keep firing the proton beam,” she said.

“Next target acquired,” said the First Gunner.

Outside the beamship, it was a mass of confusion and beams and missiles and EMP pulses and torpedoes and exploding mines with depleted uranium shrapnel and wisps of aerosols.

“Point defense cannons ready,” the Second Gunner said.

“What are those missiles?” the Tracking Officer asked. “What is their function?”

“They almost look like ships?”

“Are they orbital carriers?”

“What does analysis make of them?” the Admiral asked.

“In this mess?” asked the Tracking Officer.

“Admiral!” said the Shield Officer.

“Is Particle Shield 1 gone already?” asked Admiral Sioux, a hint of resignation in her voice.

“Yes. No. I mean—”

“Talk to me, mister.”

“The HB lasers stopped just before the particle shield was breached.”

“Have we beaten them?” the First Gunner asked. “Have we actually held out long enough and taken all they can give?” He laughed in disbelief.

“I don’t think so,” said the Tracking Officer. “Here come those mystery missiles. There’re a lot of them, too.”

“But why did the lasers stop?” asked the Admiral. “Are they out of juice?”

Just then the lasers re-energized, all the beams lancing at the proton beam cannon.

“This is it!” someone shouted.

“Long live Social Unity!”

But the lasers snapped off again.

There was a moment of silence.

“It’s like they’re trying to disarm us,” the Admiral said.

“Why would they do that?” asked the First Gunner.

“I bet we’ll know in a minute,” said the Tracking Officer. “I’m picking up activity from those mystery missiles.”

“What do we have left to fight with?” asked the Admiral.

“A few point defense cannons,” someone said. “Maybe in time damage control could get one of the launch tubes fixed.”

“Hold the PD cannons. Don’t fire just yet,” the Admiral said. “And get me an open launch tube!”

“What is it?” asked the First Gunner. “What do you know?”

“Is it a hunch, Admiral?” the Tracking Officer asked.

“They’re playing their mystery card,” the Admiral said. “I just want to have something left in case…”

“In case what, Admiral?”

“We’re not defeated until we’re dead,” said Admiral Sioux. “Remember that. All of you.”

There was silence again as they waited for the mystery to unfold.

9.

The 101st Maniple’s Storm Assault Missile nosed toward the mighty Bangladesh like a hound sniffing at the carcass of a bull elephant. Beside the missile sniffed other SAs. A hatch blew off the nose of the 101st’s missile, revealing a torpedo launch tube.

Inside the missile, the firing chamber opened. Like a shotgun shell, the first torpedo slid into the breach. The chamber clanged shut, and the entire missile shuddered. Within the torpedo, Marten Kluge clenched his teeth. He knew the SA missile would fire his friends one after another.

Open, slide, fire!

Open, slide, fire!

An invisible hand used the SA like a hunter shooting a rifle.

Despite the intense Gs, with the battlesuit’s servomotors it was possible for Marten to lift his hand. He flicked on the torpedo’s screen. The huge Bangladesh leaped into view. The massive beamship was his world. Bright stars surrounded the ship, while the flame of the Bangladesh’s engines showed him that it still tried to run away.

Good.

Shredded particle shields hung around the vast beamship. Black holes showed where the lasers had pitted the rock.

He literally rode a rocket sled toward the Bangladesh. He tried his comlink, but only got crackling static. ECM jamming filled the ether, making communication impossible at this point.

He was the leader in the sense that he’d been shot first. He aimed at the nearest particle shield. Despite his speed, it seemed that he only inched toward it. This was the most dangerous time. Almost anything could destroy the torpedo. It had solely been built to withstand the shock of impact and burrow deep. A ship’s primary lasers would crisp it in a second. Maybe it could shrug off a few point-defense rounds, but military spacecraft usually spewed thousands of such rounds a second.

Something blossomed brightly to his left.

He hoped it wasn’t anyone he knew.

Then more blossoms flickered all around him.

He cursed the Highborn, for having put him in this position.

Pinprick flares dotted the Bangladesh. He was certain it was point defense cannons firing at them.

Chaff would have been fired from some of the SAs, he knew. Radar jammers were blaring. EMP blasts hopefully had made the beamship stupid. And HB lasers—even to his untrained eye the massive beamship looked badly scarred. So why did he feel so naked? He shivered in dread. He wanted to live. To really live! To run again, to eat steak while sitting at a table, to read a book and to kiss a girl. Maybe he should have slept with Nadia when he had the chance what seemed eons ago. Was it reactionary to want to marry a woman before you slept with her? That’s what Social Unity taught, that his ways were old fashioned and out of style. He flinched as a blossom closer than the others flared beside him. He swore he could feel the torpedo shudder—although he knew that was impossible, unless something actually hit his torp. Then he would be dead, not thinking anymore.

He shouted in an effort to release his stress. The sound was loud in his helmet. He felt naked and vulnerable. He wanted to smash his screen. Instead, he chinned his suit for neurostim. The hypo hissed. Ah! Beautiful.

Chemically induced anger washed over him. It covered his feeling of nakedness. Now he wanted to kill.

He veered more sharply for the pitted particle shield.

The rocket-ride was almost over. The pitted particle shield grew dramatically in front of him. He roared and raved, and at the last minute, he remembered to clench his teeth together. During practice runs, shock troopers had bitten off their tongues. The shock could click one’s teeth together like a guillotine.

The pitted particle shield grew mammoth-sized. Then it was all he could see. Blackness! Shock! And he knew nothing more as he passed out.

10.

“They aren’t exploding!” shouted the Shield Officer.

“I don’t understand,” Admiral Sioux said.

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“Admiral,” said the Tracking Officer.

“What?”

“I…”

“Do you know what those torpedoes are?” asked Admiral Sioux. “What they do?”

“I’m picking up life readings.”

“Are you sure?” asked the Admiral. “Command told us that the HBs hate biocomps.”

“Not that kind of life readings, Admiral. Men.”

“Men? Do you mean like us?”

“Yes, Admiral. Men, humans—soldiers, I should think.”

“They fired soldiers at us?” Admiral Sioux asked in disbelief.

“How could regular men withstand twenty-five gravities acceleration?” asked the Shield Officer. “The say the Highborn can take sixteen. But twenty-five! That’s impossible for anybody.”

“They’re there,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Are you certain the ECM blasts didn’t distort your sensors?” asked Admiral Sioux.

“I’ve picked up life readings, Admiral, of Homo sapiens. And there’s not a thing wrong with the sensors. I already ran two diagnostic checks.”

“So what are soldiers doing on the particle shield?” asked the First Gunner.

Admiral Sioux’s old eyes suddenly widened. Her heart beat hard. “They’re trying to capture my ship.”

“Admiral?”

She scowled, and she thought furiously. They’re not going to capture my ship.

“The soldiers are storming us?” the First Gunner asked. “Like pirates?”

“But…”

“Does that mean we can surrender?” asked a suddenly hopeful officer.

“Who said that?” snapped Admiral Sioux.

No one volunteered to say.

“We’re not surrendering,” Admiral Sioux said. “We’re fighting to the last round, to the last bullet.”

“Bullet, Admiral?”

“I’ll blow the Bangladesh before I let the HBs get their hands on her.”

The sudden and profound silence around Admiral Sioux made her wonder if the beamship’s officers would let her carry out such a threat.

“Here comes another volley,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Damage control!” shouted Admiral Sioux. “Get me a working launch tube.”

“We’re trying, Admiral.”

“Then try harder, dammit!”

“Look at that,” said the Tracking Officer.

Admiral Sioux did. It made her snarl. They weren’t going to get her ship. No, sir. That wasn’t going to happen.

11.

Pain throbbed in his head. Marten tasted blood in his mouth. He smacked his lips as klaxons wailed for his attention. Kill, kill, kill, beat somewhere deep within him. He stirred. Then he blinked. His eyelids felt gluey, almost stuck together. He wondered if he had a concussion. Then the fog over his thought lifted and he knew that his torpedo had burrowed into the particle shield. Marten Kluge slapped the torp’s ejection button.

His seat moved backward, picking up speed as it slid out the rear of the torpedo. Buckles unsnapped and the battlesuit’s servomotors roared into life. Eight Gs of the Bangladesh’s acceleration pulled at him. But the battlesuit had exoskeleton power. He used his muscles and the suit amplified it many times over. With such suits on Earth, the Highborn could make 100-meter leaps. Here it allowed him to crawl out the hole made by the torpedo.

Over his gloves, he wore special pads. Every time he put his palm down nine-inch curved spikes thrust out and held on tight. Little barbs jutted out the nine-inch nails, helping the spikes hold onto the particle shield rock. He had the special curved spikes in his boot-toes as well. To withdraw them he had to chin a switch in his helmet. It was hard getting the hang of it. Slap your hand down, slam, the spikes thrust into the rock like explosive pitons, and then out shot the barbs. Chin for the left hand to pull in the barbs and then the claws, lift up the hand, move it, thrust in those spikes again, chin for the right hand, move it, thrust down, chin for the left foot. It was slow work climbing out this hole. He felt the Bangladesh’s high acceleration tugging at him the whole time. So he decided to take his time and do it right.

Soon, like some bizarre space gopher, he popped his head out of the hole. The pitted particle shield spread in all directions. Motion caught his eye. Out of a nearby hole, as if shot by cannon, a shock trooper flew away. The man’s arms flailed in a tragic-comic way, as if he could climb back to the particle shield with an invisible rope.

That man hadn’t been careful enough. The Gs had ripped him off the rock and hurled him into space.

Marten swallowed hard.

The shock trooper became a dot and disappeared because he was too far to see now. His oxygen would last several hours, several lonely hours with absolutely no hope of rescue.

What would he think about?

Marten shook his head, trying to drive away the thought, but it hung there, taunting him, frightening him, reminding him that failure to take the beamship meant death.

He chinned his suit so it glowed with a bright blue color. Then he crawled out the hole, pressing his body against the rock as if he loved it. So very carefully, he moved one hand or foot at a time, crawling across the particle shield, making sure those deeply curved spikes had driven in as far as possible. Other shock troopers did likewise.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh continued to flee from Mercury.

Marten glanced back over his battlesuit’s shoulder. An HB missile moved up. It terrified him. A red laser flashed out its cone. Marten shouted hoarsely. Then something exploded, a flash and then nothing, darkness. Other movement caught his eye. More torpedoes coming. Two blossomed in space, beam hit before they could burrow to safety. Marten groaned. Bile rose in his throat. That could have been him. He didn’t know why he was the lucky one. Then the surviving torps smashed into the particle shield that he was on. The shield shook, and that threatened to loosen his grip.

“No, please, no,” he whispered, as his right hand slipped up and then whipped off the rock, the nine-inch curved claws showing with their little barbs. His servomotors whined as he hammered the spikes back into the rock. Motion in the corner of his visor caused him to look to his left. Another shock trooper had lost his grip and shot backward into space.

“Help me, God,” Marten whispered. “Please don’t let me die like that.”

His helmet crackled. Garbled, static, scratchy voices sounded. For a brief, insane second he thought it might be God answering. The reality of where he was took over. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make out the words.

“One hundred and twenty-fourth Maniple, report.”

More static, then little tinny voices tried to respond.

“Basil here, Maniple Leader.”

Marten dared look around again. He saw blue-glowing shock troopers clinging to the particle shield as he did. A few had green-glowing numbers.

Right, right, he chinned his suit, turning all its colors on. A big green 101 would now be on his back and helmet. And that action seemed to let him think again. He dared dial himself another shot of neurostim. Riding the particle shield with one tiny wrong move that would lead to a lonely, terror-filled death by suffocation was simply too debilitating for normal thought. As the drug pumped into him, more anger, rage, washed through him. It made him mad that he was scared. Then he got pissed.

He started crawling—carefully! Yeah, yeah, he wasn’t that mad.

He avoided a huge laser-made hole. It was deep and big. He glanced around. A lot of those holes dotted the shield. He bet some went almost all the way down.

Marten tried the comlink. It crackled horribly, and he heard many tinny voices.

“One-oh-one, report,” he said. He repeated it several times.

“Marten!”

“Here, Lance.”

“Where?”

Marten wasn’t about to raise an arm.

“Look around. Do you see any one-oh-one’s glowing?” he said.

“Oh, right,” said Lance. “We’re supposed to chin on the numbers. Just a minute.”

Marten swiveled his helmeted head. He saw a green 101 pop-on thirty meters from him, on the other side of a laser pit.

“I see you,” Marten said. “Look across the pit.”

“Gotcha. Oh, yeah, there you are.”

“Let’s meet halfway,” Marten said. He started crawling.

Other maniples called in and now more of the shock troopers showed their numbers. A few of the battlesuits didn’t move. Maybe their owners were too terrified. Most of the men crawled toward their maniple leaders.

As he crawled, Marten noticed how shot up the particle shield really was. It could crumble apart at any moment. That meant—they had to get off it fast!

“Wu, here,” called a man. He was the mission’s second in charge.

“Kang, here, Wu.”

As the dreadful fear of the shield breaking up caused him to crawl faster, Marten also counted battlesuits. Maybe a hundred shock troopers had landed on this broken, battered particle shield. They all had to get off. A hundred was too many to lose. He dared lifted his hand and point to his maniple where to go. He did it as he slid his right hand forward to crawl another inch.

No, they weren’t his maniple anymore. They were Kang’s. He laughed harshly. “Screw you, Lycon,” he said.

The others, close now, crawling together, peered at him. He’d had his comlink open when he’d said that. He could see their questioning eyes.

“We gotta move!” Marten said. “We gotta get off this particle shield.”

“Wu gives the orders,” Kang said.

“Neurostim yourselves,” Marten said. “From here on in you’ll need anger, lots of it to drown out the fear.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Kang said. “I’m in charge of the one-oh-one.”

“Stay if you want, Kang.” To the others Marten said, “Follow me. The particle shield could break up at any time.”

“Wu,” Kang said via comlink.

Wu didn’t answer. Maybe he was out of range, maybe he had other things on his mind.

“The particle shield could break up?” asked Lance.

“Have you taken a good look at the shield?” Marten asked. “There are too many laser holes for my tastes. What if one section of the shield crumbles?”

Vip cursed in fear.

“Neurostim yourselves to a two-dose level,” Marten said.

“No,” Kang said. “Only one dose, as per HB orders.”

Marten hissed, “You’re a stupid idiot, Kang. It’s time to get mad. We gotta hustle off.”

“Three-oh-ninth leader here, Marten,” said a shock trooper. “What’s this about a crumbling shield?”

Marten told him. And so the word was spread.

Marten, getting the hang of it now, crawled faster than before. The horrible tug always dragged at him, threatening to tear him off for good. But like a big mechanical baby, he learned the crawling trick and had almost perfected it to an art.

“Come back here,” Kang said.

“Everyone else is following me, Kang,” Marten said between gasps. Even with the battlesuit, it was hard moving fast under eight Gs. “I suggest you do likewise.”

Kang growled, but he started after them.

In time, Marten reached the edge of the particle shield. He poked his head between the gap of this shield and the one beside it. What if the people in the ship banged the two shields together? Hamburger shock troopers, that’s what. He couldn’t see down to the ship. Six hundred meters, if he recalled this beamship’s specs right, that was the depth of the shields. He swallowed, and then he started down. It felt safer here, but that was an illusion he knew. If he lost his grip, the eight Gs would simply rip him up, up and up and maybe knock others off as well.

What a way to make a living.

His rage against the HBs grew. But he was getting tired, too. All those days locked up in the G-suit without exercise was having its effect.

Keep moving, boy.

“Uh, oh,” said Lance.

“What is it?” Marten said.

“We lost another one.”

Marten said a short prayer for the hapless victim. Then, “Is everyone else following?”

“Seems like,” said Lance. “Omi, can you see?”

“They’re coming.”

Down, down, down Marten crawled. His breathing was harsh in his ears. Then he reached the bottom of the particle shield. He checked his HUD radar, and saw giant struts attached to the inner beamship’s skin. He crawled under the shield, and now he could move faster because the Gs pushed him against the shield. Soon he reached the nearest steel strut, a vast girder that moved the particle shield around to wherever it was needed.

Spikes wouldn’t work on the girder.

Marten cudgeled his wits.

Suddenly a man screamed. That cut through the static all right.

“PD cannon,” growled a shock trooper.

Marten peered at the inner armored surface. There! A cannon poked out the skin like an ancient pirate’s cannon had on those old wooden ships. Suddenly a ball of orange plasma roiled toward the PD cannon that spewed shots.

A second later, the plasma washed over and melted the cannon.

“Ten dead,” said a shock trooper.

“Keep your eyes open for more.”

“They know we’re here,” Marten said. Then he knew what he had to do. “Once you reach the girders put away your spikes.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe,” Marten said.

He put one spike-pad away. Then he reached out. With full exoskeleton power, he clutched hold of the girder. His power-gloves bent the metal. It would leave a handprint, all right. He moved his left hand, and as he tried to slip off the spike-pad, it flew away. He sighed, and then he grabbed the girder with his left. He shimmied down the giant strut, wrapping his battlesuited legs around part of it.

“Marten’s a monkey,” Vip said.

“Just make sure you follow me,” Marten said.

A man cursed as two more PD’s popped up. Plasma rolled at them, but not before five more shock troopers died.

“Bastards!” cried a man.

We all are, Marten decided. Them and us, maybe everybody in the solar system.

Soon others crawled behind him and down the girder. Attached to their battlesuits were breach-bombs and plasma cannons, while hooked to their arms were laser tubes.

“This is thirsty work,” said Lance. He tried for levity. He sounded as frightened as Marten felt. Neurostim didn’t seem to last long while they were doing this.

Marten concentrated on crawling. His skin itched. He wanted more neurostim. No, no, keep your head clear now, Marten, my man. Just enough neurostim to dull the fear. Or maybe just enough to mask it.

The fear, dread, anger and hard work made him sweat. But finally, Marten reached the end of the giant strut. The inner armored skin of the Bangladesh had countless crisscrossing tracks, deep grooves. It was how they moved the shields around, he guessed. He licked his lips. He didn’t know if this would work. If it didn’t… the Gs would hurl him against the underbelly of the particle shield. If he landed with his feet, he might not die on the spot. Maybe crush his bones, though. He shook his head. This was all insane. They shimmied down a giant strut while the Bangladesh sped through space. Suddenly the strut vibrated.

“What was that?” Omi said.

“Why is it shaking?” whined Vip.

“Hurry!” shouted Marten.

“Use yours thrusters?” Vip said.

“No!” shouted Marten. “Don’t be a fool. The beamship’s fleeing at full acceleration.”

“If you use your thrusters,” said Lance, “you’ll barely crawl at one G, but the ship will move at eight.”

“Then it’s bye, bye,” Kang said.

Marten reached for the beamship’s inner armor. He also turned on the battlesuit’s magnetic-clamps at full power. His hand attached to the armor. The clamps were also on his elbows, belt, knee and toes. Like a fly, he attached himself to the beamship. Slowly, with a clang, clang, clang he crawled along the surface.

“Move,” he said to the others.

The ship underneath him shuddered. Marten looked over his shoulder. The struts trembled. Then his eyes opened wide. The struts, the giant girders, blew off and out of the ship’s grooves. The particle shield detached, and it began to tumble away in seeming slow motion. Over the comlink, shock troopers screamed in rage and fear. Some tried to jump, their thrusters burning hard, spewing out hydrogen particles. For a second a man actually crossed the meter of distance he needed to go. Then he stopped and flipped back hard into space.

In silence, the handfuls of shock troopers on the beamship’s armored skin watched their comrades recede into space. As the particle shield faced them, they saw other shock troopers leap off the shield as their thrusters burned. It was a pitiful sight. Hydrogen spray spewed out the packs, but it was much too little. They dropped farther and farther behind as the Bangladesh continued its acceleration at eight gravities.

“Poor bastards,” said Lance.

“What’s going to happen to them?” asked Vip.

“What do you think?” snarled Omi.

Then Kang reached them. His normally slit-shut eyes were as wide open as theirs. Through his helmet visor, he looked terrified.

“Wu is gone,” Marten said. “So now you’re second in command.”

“If Mad Vlad still lives that is,” said Lance. “If he’s dead then you’re the mission commander.”

“What do we do now, Kang?” asked Marten.

Kang licked his lips. He peered at the tumbling particle shield. Soon he faced Marten. “You got any suggestions?”

12.

Cheers and wild whooping filled the Bangladesh’s command capsule.

“Ha-ha, look at them go!” shouted the Pakistani First Gunner. “Bye, bye, you traitorous scum.”

“I love it. They’re trying to jetpack their way to us.”

“Good luck,” said the Tracking Officer.

“Enough of that,” Admiral Sioux said.

“What’s wrong, Admiral?” asked the Second Gunner.

“They’re soldiers just like us,” Admiral Sioux said. “We defeated that batch. And I’m glad for it. But let’s not mock brave soldiers.”

“They’re the enemy,” the First Gunner said.

“Traitors to Social Unity,” said someone else.

“Admiral, I detect enemy on the inner armored skin.”

“See,” the First Gunner said. “They’re still going to kill us.”

“Or they’re going to try,” said the Tracking Officer.

“That’s what I meant,” the First Gunner said. “I hate traitors. If we defeat them, I plan to cheer while Security teams hold them down and slit their throats.”

“What about re-education?” asked the Tracking Officer.

“Not for traitors,” said the First Gunner.

Admiral Sioux only half-listened. She couldn’t find it in herself to hate the enemy soldiers. Fight them, oh yes. But hate? She studied the situation through her VR-goggles. Some of the HB missiles had passed the Bangladesh. They rotated and watched, but didn’t’ fire the lasers. Why?

“Launch Tube Twelve in operative condition, Admiral,” a damage control officer said.

“Here are another swarm of missiles,” the Tracking Officer said.

The First Gunner swore in frustration. “Slitting their throats would be too good. Torture them first.”

“Better hope they don’t play back the bridge vid,” the Second Gunner said.

“Belay that sort of talk, mister,” the Admiral said. “No one is taking my ship.”

“Yes, Admiral. I’m sorry, sir.”

Admiral Sioux suddenly thought she understood the enemy’s plan. The HB lasers and other missiles weren’t firing because these soldiers were on the beamship. Not very many were on, but as long as the soldiers tried to breach the Bangladesh, it was safe from HB missile attacks.

“Pilot,” the Admiral said. “Get ready to rotate the Bangladesh one-hundred and eighty degrees.”

“Admiral?”

“Do it at my command,” said Admiral Sioux.

“What are you planning, Admiral?” the Tracking Officer asked.

“How much fuel do you think those missiles have left?”

“Not much,” the Tracking Officer said. “But what does it matter? It was enough to reach us.”

“Ready,” the Pilot said.

“Now,” said Admiral Sioux.

The Bangladesh’s mighty engines turned off. Side jets fired. The massive beamship rotated in space. Soon the front of the Bangladesh was aimed where the engines had been burning these many days. They were aimed at the Sun. Then the huge engines engaged, pushing at eight gravities as the beamship braked hard.

The HB missiles coming upon the Bangladesh sped that much more quickly at the beamship.

“Enemy torpedoes are firing like before,” said the Tracking Officer.

“PD cannons ready,” said the First Gunner.

“Don’t fire!” shouted Admiral Sioux. “Let the enemy torps hit us.”

“There are fifty torpedoes, Admiral,” the First Gunner said.

“I can count, mister. Just make certain you don’t fire. Shield Officer, adjust Shield Three. Don’t leave any gaps between them.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

The huge beamship shuddered as the majority of the torpedoes slammed into Particle Shield 4, or what was left of it.

“They’ve landed,” said the Tracking Officer.

“Yes, thank you,” said Admiral Sioux. “Pilot, rotate us ninety degrees.”

“Rotating.”

The beamship’s main engines quit again. Side jets fired. Ponderously, the mighty Bangladesh rotated ninety degrees.

“Detach Shield 4,” ordered Admiral Sioux.

“Detaching,” said the Shield Officer.

On their VR goggles, they watched the huge hunk of rock blow off the Bangladesh and tumble away, although not very far. Some enemy soldiers leaped off the particle shield and jetted for the beamship. Both the shield and the beamship kept relative speeds.

“PD cannons fire at will,” the Admiral said.

“Firing,” growled the First Gunner.

All along the Bangladesh’s side spat PD cannons. Shock trooper plasma globs rolled at them, together with battlesuit rifle lasers. The PD cannons shrugged off the small lasers. The superheated plasma was another matter. It took out cannon after cannon. But not fast enough. Soon all the soldiers were dead, blown apart by point defense shells.

“Do we brake or flee?” asked the Pilot.

“Tracking?” asked the Admiral.

“A last spread of missiles is approaching fast, Admiral,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Let’s use the launch tube,” said Admiral Sioux.

“The lasers will take it out,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Belay that order,” said Admiral Sioux. “Yes, you’re right,” she told the Tracking Officer. “Pilot, aim a particle shield at the incoming enemy. We’ll let them come in unharmed.”

“They might not fall for the same trick twice,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Admiral!” cried a damage control party leader.

“Report,” said Admiral Sioux.

“Enemy soldiers have breached the Bangladesh. What are your orders?”

“Security Chief,” said Admiral Sioux, “I hope you’re online and listening.”

“I’m listening,” the Security Chief said, a gruff-sounding man. He’d killed the mutinous ringleaders while they’d orbited the Sun those long months waiting. He had few qualms when it came to killing. He now said, “If you accelerate faster than two Gs we can’t fight. But keep us one-G or less and we’ll take them.”

“How many have breached?” the Admiral asked.

“I’d say ten soldiers,” the damage control officer said. “But they’re wearing high-tech fighting suits. Just like Highborn use.”

“Incoming missiles,” said the Tracking Officer. “Their last batch, I think.”

“HB torpedoes are launching!” shouted the First Gunner. “Let me PD them, Admiral.”

“Not as long as they have laser missiles on this side of us,” said Admiral Sioux.

“But there are fifty to sixty more torpedoes, Admiral.”

“Turn the ship aft,” said Admiral Sioux, hoping to increase the distance between the incoming torps.

Side jets burned. But the shock troop torpedoes proved as maneuverable as the vast ship. The fifty-plus torps came at the beamship on an unprotected side.

“Fire the PD’s,” said Admiral Sioux.

They fired for three seconds. Then HB lasers melted them. In the meantime, five shock trooper torps exploded.

“Good work, mister,” said Admiral Sioux. “Launch our torpedoes.”

On their VR goggles, they saw it for the futility it was. Three torps made it out. Then lasers destroyed them and the tube. Soon thereafter, the HB missiles flew past that part of the Bangladesh. And the mighty beamship shuddered as the surviving HB torpedoes slammed into the ship.

“Those are all inside the Bangladesh,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Thank you,” said Admiral Sioux. “That makes sixty to seventy enemy soldiers. What do you think, Chief? Can Security take them?”

“Depends on how good those soldiers are.”

“That’s the wrong answer, Chief.”

“We can take them, although I’ll need damage control to pitch in.”

“Pilot, one-G acceleration until otherwise ordered.”

“In what direction, Admiral?”

“Where else?” asked Admiral Sioux, “for our rendezvous with the flotilla.”

13.

Nadia Pravda hesitated as she stood before the stealth pod’s airlock.

For seemingly endless days after she’d left the Mercury System she had slept, watched videos and thought deeply about her life. When she’d noticed she was putting on weight she had exercised religiously and ate less. Finally, the boredom had overwhelmed her. So she’d broken open a baggie of dream dust, snorted, and fantasized until she had come down days later, dehydrated, ravenous and the baggie empty. So she had drunk water until she’d been ready to vomit. Then she had eaten and for several hours gazed at the stars. Slowly the desire to return to her fantasizes had come upon her. It had been then when the realization that she was about to commit suicide jerked her upright in the pilot’s chair. She had paced in the simulated light-gravity until she found herself in front of the airlock.

If she broke open another baggie, she would doubtlessly use dust until she died. Maybe that wasn’t a bad way to go. The truth however, was that she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. But the boredom was so awful. Maybe it would have been better to have Hansen and Ervil aboard.

She drank water and like a zombie approached the stored dream dust. She stared at it for a long, long time. This was her stake in the new world. Without it, she would be without credits, valueless in the cold calculations of the habitats. But if she kept it, she was dead.

Slowly, hesitating often and with many doubts, she put baggie after baggie into the airlock. Finally, all the pod’s drugs were piled in the pressure chamber. She closed the inner hatch, rested her forehead on it for fifteen minutes and then activated the outer hatch.

She went to a side port and watched the powder drift into space. She cried afterward. Then she went to sleep. When she woke up, she was bored. “But I’m alive,” she whispered. And in a year, she should reach the Jupiter System. So she did two hundred jumping jacks and settled in the pilot’s chair for another movie.

14.

Ten trolls prowled through the Bangladesh. At least that’s what the others looked like to Marten. Attached to the gorilla-big battlesuits was the mission’s complement of munitions, all they had to take the beamship. Extra laser-juice, more plasma coils and batteries, oxygen re-chargers, suit-fluids and rations and more neurostims, Suspend and Tempo.

The beamship’s corridors were dark. It didn’t matter, though. The battlesuits turned radar and motion scans into VR-images on each of the shock troopers’ HUD (Head-Up Display). Visual information, a grid and targeting crosshairs were all holographically shown on the inner surface of each helmet visor. To the left side of a visor was a grid-map of the beamship. And it showed their position. The Bangladesh had the configuration of a Zukov-class battleship, although there were differences, and sometimes those differences had surprised them.

After the initial breach and their slaughtering of unarmed ship’s personnel, the outer portion of the beamship seemed to have been evacuated. Thus, they tramped down long, empty corridors, crossed various rooms and blasted booby-traps and door-locks.

“Tank coming at three o’clock,” Vip said, who had point in the latest corridor.

“They’ve recovered from their initial shock,” Marten said. “Stay alert. We’re finally going to see what they have.”

“What the—Gas!” Lance said.

“Where?” Marten asked. They were in a recreation area with tables, chairs and a music unit.

“It’s coming through the vents.”

“What kind of gas?”

“It’s not combustible or corrosive,” said Lance. “My guess is it is knockout gas.”

“There are guys behind that tank,” warned Vip.

“Wernher, set up the cannon,” Marten said.

“Roger,” said Wernher, who followed close behind Vip.

“Kang, Conway, watch the rear,” Marten said.

Kang grunted. He’d given tactical command to Marten while he considered strategy.

“The tank stopped,” Vip said. “Now it’s belching grenades!”

“Omi, Lance, burn through the right walls and flank them,” Marten said.

The two shock troopers stuck a breach bomb to the wall and stepped back as Omi activated it. BLAM! The shape-charged blast disintegrated a portion of wall. They bounded through the smoking hole.

The sound let Marten know that this section of ship still had an atmosphere. He switched to Omi’s HUD, putting it on his. They used another breach-bomb to tear through another wall, using the ship’s blueprint on their HUD to show where they had to go to flank Vip’s tank. HB tactics stressed surprise and doing the unexpected. Fighting through the laid-down corridors, which the defenders would always know better than the invaders, would give the tactical advantage to ship’s personnel. Creating new corridors and bursting through walls to make attacks would heavily favor the side that had the ordnance to do so and that was practiced in such maneuvers.

Marten checked Vip’s HUD. The tank had stopped at an intersection of corridors. He studied it. It wasn’t really a tank. He flicked through an itemized list of known SU ship equipment. Ah. The ‘tank’ was a damage control vehicle normally used when the beamship was under eight-G acceleration. The grenade tube attached to it was no doubt a jury-rigged device. That told Marten somebody on their side was thinking fast and turning decisions into commands.

“The tank’s coming forward again,” Vip said. “There are at least ten people behind it.”

“Back up,” Marten said. “Wernher, get ready with the cannon.”

“Should I leave them any surprises?” asked Vip.

“Negative,” Marten said. “Just back up to Wernher.”

The seconds ticked by.

“Ambush!” said Lance. “Omi’s taking hits.”

“Coming,” Marten said. He mentally berated himself for getting sloppy. Somebody on the other side definitely thought on their feet and had already incorporated the wall-breaking tactic into their battle considerations. They had used it to ambush them!

Marten ran though the wall openings that Lance and Omi had made, with two other shock troopers following him. They were the reaction team. He read Lance’s HUD. Omi lay on the floor, a gaping hole in his battlesuit. Lance crouched behind a bulky unit of unknown nature. He fired at the enemy, his heavy laser burning holes in the walls and through personal body-armor. Then Lance dove aside as a plasma glob touched and vaporized the unit he’d been hiding behind. Marten hoped superheated plasma wasn’t what had hit Omi. He sprinted down a different hall with the long glide they had been taught to use in ship corridors. He checked the blueprint grid and slapped a breach-bomb to a wall. Seconds later, he and his two mates burst through the wall and behind the enemy. In two heartbeats of glaring red lasers, enemy jerked, screamed and curled like burning leaves. Then it was over. Marten’s battlecomp counted ten corpses, three of them suited with SU security gear.

“We keep going and flank the tank,” Marten said. “Lance, check Omi. Close his battlesuit with construction foam.”

BLAM, BLAM, BLAM the reaction team burst through three more walls and came upon the damage control vehicle with its jury-rigged grenade launcher and the fifteen people crab-walking behind it. Laser beams and several grenades took them down before the enemy even knew they had been circled. This wasn’t a battle, it was butchery.

As he stood over the dead SU remains—a hulking mechanical troll in the guts of the Bangladesh—Marten finally allowed himself to worry about his friend. “Report,” he said.

“Omi is out,” said Lance.

Marten hesitated, part of him terrified to ask more. He had to, though. “Is he dead?”

“I shot him with Suspend,” said Lance.

Marten couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare close his eyes even to mourn his friend. This was just one more mark against the HBs. No. It was more than that. He tasted his sweaty battlesuit air before he asked, “Was he dead when you did it?”

“No,” said Lance. “But is chest is badly burned.”

Why Omi? Why not Kang? Marten forced himself to hang onto the fact that Omi wasn’t dead. But a plasma burn and with no medical facilities for millions of kilometers—

“Bring him along,” he said.

“We don’t have the luxury to carry our dead. …To take anyone who’s out,” Lance finished lamely.

“You carry him,” Marten said.

“Maniple Leader—”

“Do it!” Marten said. “That’s an order. We’ll all carry each other. No shock trooper leaves another behind. We’re all we have in this lousy universe.”

“Roger,” said Lance.

Marten didn’t want to think about Omi, his one true friend, his only friend ever since Nadia had been torn from him. He switched to the command channel. “What do you think, Kang? Do we continue to lunge at the command capsule or do we go for the engines?”

“Highborn battle-tactics always say to lop off the brain first,” Kang said.

“True. But what’s in our best interest?” Marten asked.

“Meaning what?”

“Have you contacted any more shock troopers?”

“I would have told you if I had,” Kang said. “But they’re jamming pretty heavy down here. So how can we know or not?”

“We can’t know,” Marten said. “So we have to assume the worst. With nine of us the best we can do is bargain.”

“With these pansies?” Kang said. “You’re kidding, right? We’re slaughtering them.”

“Omi is out,” Marten said. “What does the Bangladesh hold, two thousand personnel? We can’t afford to keep trading losses at the present ratio and win.”

“Then we’re dead,” Kang said. “We might as well shoot ourselves and save them the trouble.”

“Why do you figure that?” Marten said. “We take over the engines and make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” Kang asked.

“They take us to the Jupiter System where we all get off.”

Kang laughed harshly.

“Isn’t that better than dying?”

Kang was silent. “What if more shock troopers show up?”

“They haven’t so far. But if they do… why not talk them into the same deal? What’s the use of working for the HBs when nine out of five hundred make it to target?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Listen to me, Kang. The enemy will expect us to go for the command capsule. With nine men, we have to do the unexpected. It’s our only chance for victory.”

Kang was silent for several seconds. “You have a point. But HB battle-tactics say—”

“Screw the HBs! We’re on our own, Kang. Nine of us! You gotta think like a gang leader again, like a Red Blade in the heart of Sydney’s slums.”

More silence, then Kang said, “Yeah. Let’s do it your way.”

Marten switched to open channels. “We have a little change in plans.”

15.

Admiral Rica Sioux made a fist and kept tapping the arm of her command chair with it. The Bangladesh accelerated at one-G for rendezvous with the flotilla of spacecraft that would all join near Venus’ orbital path—the planet wouldn’t be there. It was over sixty days from reaching that point in its orbit. The HB missiles had all passed the beamship or were destroyed. One Doom Star accelerated toward them, although it no longer fired its long-range lasers. It would take several weeks for the enemy to reach them. The other Doom Star had turned back for Venus. General Hawthorne’s ploy of sending battleships at Venus had worked to pull that Doom Star off them.

Despite all these pluses, Admiral Sioux scowled. Her officers huddled by the Tracking Officer’s module. They whispered among themselves and kept glancing at her. She hadn’t given them the gun-locker key yet. It rested in the middle of her fist, the one that tap, tap, tapped her armrest. Enemy soldiers were on her beamship. They were few in numbers: less than one hundred versus her two thousand ship’s personnel. That was twenty to one odds. It shouldn’t be a problem defeating these handfuls. But to use all two thousand personnel meant she would have to give up the code to the weapons bins. Her officers would also demand to be armed. Some might even want to leave the armored command capsule in order to help fight the invaders. But once they were armed—could the Bangladesh’s two thousand stop the enemy space marines? Because if they couldn’t… once her people were armed, she didn’t think the officers would let her blow the beamship. Yet if she didn’t arm ship’s personnel would her Security teams be able to defeat the enemy?

Her chair’s speaker unit blinked. She opened the comlink channel.

“Security Chief here, Admiral. I’m ready to attack the smaller concentration.”

A sinking feeling filled her. “I thought by now you would have slain those few.”

“They’re a tough bunch, Admiral, and very clever. They slaughtered those I sent to keep them busy. Now I’ve left a covering force to slow down the bigger concentration. I want to wipe out these few first so they can’t do anything cute while I turn and overwhelm the bigger concentration with everything we have.”

Her chest constricted and she found breathing difficult. She was the Admiral, the one in charge. She had to make the decisions. Yet space combat was so different from infantry action. She wasn’t sure what to do. “Should I arm everyone, Security Chief?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “Some of the lower personnel might have long memories, Admiral.”

“You mean when we liquidated the mutinous ringleaders while we were in near-Sun orbit?”

“Right,” he said.

“Maybe they will have long memories, Chief. But I’m sure they won’t remember until after the enemy is slain.”

“You’re probably right.”

“So what’s your recommendation?”

“I’d arm everyone and use them. These space marines are tough and obviously highly trained and armored for exactly this type of fight.”

Admiral Rica Sioux massaged her ancient chest. Nothing was guaranteed. “No one is taking my beamship,” she whispered.

“Admiral?”

She punched a sequence of buttons on her armrest panel. “I’m initiating the locker codes now.” She pressed the last button, blowing the locks on the weapons bins in the outer beamship.

“Very good, Admiral,” said the Security Chief. “I’ll swamp this smaller concentration and wheel and hit the bigger one. Out.”

She sagged in her chair, forcing air into her lungs. Slowly the constriction in her chest eased, although now her bad knee started throbbing. She noticed the First Gunner approaching her.

“Yes, First Gunner?” she said.

“Shouldn’t we open our own gun-locker?” he asked.

“Do you want to join the Security Chief?”

The First Gunner stiffened. He wore his tan uniform and hat, a lean Pakistani with deep brown eyes. “I’m not ground-troop trained, Admiral.”

“Ah.”

“But if something should happen,” he said. “It seems the height of reason that we be armed.”

The others now edged toward her. A determined look had settled upon them. Always command, the Admiral knew.

“Tracking Officer,” she said.

“Admiral,” the officer said, saluting.

“Open the gun-locker and pass out ordnance.” She threw the key to the Tracking Officer, who snatched it out of the air and turned smartly toward the locker beside the outer door. Then Admiral Sioux slumped in her chair. It was two thousand or so against seventy-odd enemy. They should easily win. She wondered then why she felt so gloomy about the future.

16.

“Let’s take a breather,” Marten said. “Vip, Wernher, stand guard at either end of the corridor. Everyone else, re-supply yourselves.”

“They’re hot on us,” said Lance.

“We’ve got thirty seconds, the way I time it,” Marten said. They were in a wide corridor, a service ramp. Whenever the beamship entered space-dock, vehicles would use this ramp to bring in heavy equipment and supplies.

Marten knelt an armored knee, reached back and unclipped a laser pack. He powered his heavy laser-tubes with the old pack, pumped the rest of the juice into recycling and then detached the drained pack, slapping the fresh one into place. He rolled ten grenades at his feet and inserted a fresh tube into his launchers. Lastly, he relieved himself, letting his battlesuit take care of wastes, gulped some concentrates and drank a lot of water. While he did that he made two bomb-clutches with the grenades, looked around and rigged one to the pipes overhead, flicking on a motion sensor with a forty-second delay so they could get away. The other clutch he stuck to the corridor wall, timing it to blast in sixty seconds. As Lance had said, the enemy was hot on them.

“See anything, Vip?”

“I killed three scouts while you all lounged around. There are a lot of others working up their nerve in the room just behind those three. Most are armed with las-rifles, useless against our armor.”

“Don’t get cocky, Vip,” warned Lance.

“I hear you,” Vip said. “And I ain’t.”

“Is everyone ready?” asked Marten.

They said they were.

Marten scanned their surroundings, checked the ship’s blueprint and said, “Through the six o’clock wall. Go, go, go!”

BLAM, the hole was made and they charged off the service ramp.

“They coming!” Vip said, who stood guard in the corridor.

“Go!” Marten said. “Run!”

“Relax, Maniple Leader,” Vip said. “I’m slaughtering them. None of them have any armor and like I said, all this bunch has is las-rifles.”

“They’re throwing fodder,” Kang said, “to make you overconfident.”

“I rigged the corridor to blow,” Marten said. “Retreat, Vip! Do it now!”

“Roger,” Vip said. “I’m on my way.”

Marten kept blowing through corridor walls and then using a corridor for a two-hundred-meter stretch. He kept switching methods to keep the enemy off guard and guessing. They entered a large engineering section, with plenty of floor space and big domed generators with panels attached. According to specs, the generators charged the proton beam, or at least they started the process here.

“This is perfect ambush territory,” said Lance.

“So perfect that even they would realize it,” Marten said. “Keep going.”

Nine shock troopers in battlesuits charged past the many domed generators. Their radar pinged and the motion-detectors scanned.

“Should we booby-trap anything?” asked Lance.

“Negative,” Marten said. “Let them get mad at themselves for being too cautious. Then they’ll start getting cocky again and that’s then we’ll hit them. That will turn them even extra cautious later on.”

They exited the huge engineering area. A few stray las-rifle shots hissed near as the boldest SU soldiers entered the generating room.

“Here’s our spot,” Marten said a minute later. It was an intersection of corridors, one going straight up, with ladders and float rails. “Wernher, set up the cannon and melt a clot when they show themselves.”

“Roger,” said Wernher. He put a bulky plasma cannon onto its tripod holder and adjusted the settings. An orange light winked, meaning it was charged and ready. It took ten seconds between shots for the cannon to recharge.

“They might start blowing walls like we do,” Lance said. “Making new ways to move and then surround us.”

“Our sensors will detect them if they try that,” Marten said. “Then we’ll show them another trick about wall busting.”

“Here they come,” said Wernher.

“Wait until the last moment,” Marten said.

“Hey, I’m the cannon king,” said Wernher. The plasma cannon was slaved to his HUD. He hunched over it, adjusting another setting.

Then SU fodder leap-frogged into the corridor. They didn’t wear any suits but had screwed up, terrified faces, with breathing masks over their mouths. Those wouldn’t be much help in vacuum, but with all the fumes from the lasers and plasma cannon it wasn’t a bad idea. They fired as they advanced—running, crouching and lifting their las-rifles. Las-bolts hit walls and corridor equipment. Oily smoke billowed. Despite their breathing masks men coughed. They were brave enough, poor sods. They didn’t stand a chance. Several las-bolts glanced off a battlesuit, that because of reflective microcoating. Wernher chuckled over the comlink. With a sizzling sound, the cannon belched an orange glob that boiled into a horrified mass of men. Some melted, showing bones and spilling guts. Others vanished in the superheated plasma charge. For a few of them, there was enough time for a microsecond scream. One man actually tore off his breather. Then an awful odor of death filled the corridor and dark, greasy smoke and fumes. Lance, Vip and Marten glided forward, firing red laser light into the shocked survivors.

“Advance,” Marten said.

“What for?” Kang asked. “You said we should go to the engines first.”

“We’re fighting our way to the proton generating room,” Marten said. “My guess is that right about now their commander has sent his good troops around in order to ambush us. These poor sods were acting too much like they were trying to herd us forward.”

There was some muttering, but they listened to him.

So for the next several minutes they advanced according to HB tactics. They blew out walls, ambushed many and lobbed light grenades to blind and then fragmentation grenades to kill. It was murderous work. Over fifty enemy corpses lay burned and blown in the corridors. Then they broke into the generating section using breach bombs. Wernher set the plasma cannon and slaughtered another hundred. Then an enemy grenade caught him at just the wrong angle. A depleted uranium grenade-shard sliced through his helmet and lodged in Wernher’s brain, splattering the inside of the helmet with gore.

“Another one down,” Marten said. “Conway, take the cannon.”

“What about Wernher?” asked Lance. “Do we take him too like we did Omi?”

“Kang, carry him,” Marten said.

“He’s worthless!” Kang said.

“He’s full of munitions,” Marten said.

Kang grunted and picked up the dead shock trooper.

“We’re taking a different route,” Marten said. “Nine o’clock and through the wall. Go, go, go!”

17.

“Security Chief here, Admiral.”

Admiral Rica Sioux hunched over the armrest. Her confidence had waned as she listened to the combat chatter on the net, to the constant screams of their dying. Her old lined faced betrayed her worry. I have to set an example. Show your confidence. So she sat up, adjusted her cap and straightened her uniform.

“Things are starting to fall apart,” the Security Chief said.

“I’ve been listening to your communications net,” said Admiral Sioux. “The enemy is good.”

“Good? The smaller concentration is a pack of devils, Admiral. They keep retreating, pulling my people farther and farther away from the main group. And they slaughtered… This is butchery, Admiral. Why don’t we have space marines like this?”

“We did,” said Admiral Sioux. “Now they call themselves the Highborn. I wonder what these marines call themselves?”

“We’re badly out of position, Admiral. So I’m calling off the chase of the smaller group and throwing everything at the larger one. We’ve had better luck with them.”

“How can that be?” asked Admiral Sioux. “The larger group is marching straight here and there are over fifty of them left.”

“That’s true. But we’ve killed more of them, Admiral. Their tactics aren’t so strange and unusual as the smaller group. Whoever’s leading the main concentration—he’s not like the leader of the smaller group, Admiral. That man is uncanny.”

“Can we stop them? Is there any hope?”

“If I can get my Security teams back there in time, Admiral, yes. Every time I tried to trap the smaller group, they avoided a stand up fight. I don’t understand that man. But I’m certain that if I can get my best people into position, then we have a change at stopping the bigger group. All they’ve been facing are unarmored men with las-rifles, yet still we’ve taken out about ten to fifteen of them.”

“Hit the larger group with your Security teams. They’re the real danger anyway. And hurry, Chief.”

“I’m on my way,” said the Security Chief.

18.

The shock troopers led by Marten broke into the main engine control room. It was a vast area crowded with generator domes, comps, consoles and repair vehicles presently secured and locked-down. Engine personnel had been waiting, sprinkled with a handful of Security people. Marten butchered them, although a shock trooper named Gerard died when a main vent blew superheated coolant on him.

After Marten and Lance shut off the main valve and the others rigged the corridors leaning into the Engine Room, they huddled together by the lifts that lead into the guts of the actual engines, where the Fusion Drive expelled the hot gases that propelled the beamship. There they discussed their next move.

“We control the engines and from here we can destroy them,” Marten said.

“How do we do that?” asked Kang.

“Breach bombs should do it,” Marten said, “but I’m sure once we’ve downloaded the specs we can do it from these control boards.”

“We’ll give you that for the sake of argument,” said Lance. “My question is: so what?”

“So now we make our pitch,” Marten said.

They glanced nervously at one another. They knew about fighting. It’s what they did. But this idea of fleeing to the Jupiter System, that meant bucking the Highborn. They had been re-educated by the HBs more than once. First, to get into the FEC Army each of them had passed through brutal training that had taught them the superiority of the Highborn and that one must always obey members of the Master Race. Then they had fought in the Japan Campaign, a murderous affair where thousands of FEC soldiers had died hideously. There the Highborn had once more shown their superiority, that no one in the end could win against them. In a sense, they hadn’t known anything yet, not compared to shock trooper training. Perhaps the trip here had been rough and many had cursed the Highborn, but to go directly against HB wishes… They knew what happened to those who had tried in the past—they were all dead.

“Uh, look, Marten,” Vip said uneasily. “Maybe the HBs are already on their way here. We would look pretty silly sipping tea with the enemy. It would mean the pain booth, maybe a lot worse.”

“All life is a gamble,” Marten said. “We all know that. But what kind of gamble is worth it when nine out of five hundred make it?” He looked around and through their faceplates. They were scared. “Sure this pitch to the enemy is a gamble. But it will get us out of this crazy war. We all survived the Japan Campaign. Now we’ve survived being shot to the Bangladesh. We’re the ones who made it. Omi, Wernher and Gerard made it here too but died anyway. How much more luck do you think the rest of us have left?”

“Yeah,” agreed Lance. “We’ve all used up our luck. But if the HBs are about to land it’s all moot.”

“How do you figure they’re about to land?” asked Marten. “They shot us here as a gamble. Now is the moment to take over and run, but we don’t have the numbers to take over. So we gotta deal. Okay, it might be true the HBs are coming. That’s just another part of the percentages. After today, though, I don’t ever want to count on my luck. I’ve used it all up.”

“Kang?” asked Conway. “You’re officially in charge. What do you think?”

“The HBs put him in charge,” Vip said. “Marten is the one who got us here. If we’re leaving it doesn’t matter who the HBs selected.”

“Do what you want,” Kang told them. “But my vote is against it.”

Marten eyed the others. Most of them looked dubious, but they no longer seemed ready to grab their weapons and stop him. So he found a comlink and opened channels. “This is the leader of the shock troopers speaking,” he said. “I think it’s time the Bangladesh’s Captain and us talked.”

Nothing happened.

“It’s no good,” Kang said. “That’s just what I thought would happen.”

A few of the others shifted nervously.

Marten pressed the comlink again. “I’ll blow the engines unless you talk. We want to make a deal. So I suggest you don’t be stubborn and kill us all.” The seconds ticked by. Marten felt more nervous now than at any time during the battle. His armpits grew slick and his stomach churned.

“Listen up,” Kang said.

Just then, a voice spoke out of the comlink: “What kind of deal?”

19.

The command capsule was filled with arguments and loud noise. Finally, Admiral Sioux stood and shouted, “Quiet! I can’t talk to him if I can’t think.”

That settled down the officers. The First Gunner studied the others—several of them nodded encouragement—then he faced the Admiral and cleared his throat. Admiral Sioux waved him down as she re-opened the comlink.

“What kind of deal?” she asked.

“We want to go to the Jupiter System.”

Several of the officers nodded as if that made perfect sense.

“At least trick him,” whispered the Tracking Officer.

“Why do you want to go there?” asked Admiral Sioux.

“Why else?” said the enemy space marine. “We want to get out of this war.”

“Just a minute,” said Admiral Sioux. “I have to see what my chief officers think.” She switched his link onto standby and opened the comlink with the Security Chief. “You heard him. What do you think?”

“See if speaks for all of them,” said the Security Chief. “This bigger group is slaughtering our people, although the lower deck personnel are holding. Some of them are a lot tougher than I thought. If I can get all my Security teams together in one place, with a few of them circled around behind the bigger group, then we might still win. What I need, though, is time.”

“You’re suggesting we trick them?” asked the Admiral.

“Yes! Yes!” said the Security Chief. “All war is deception. We didn’t call up the Highborn and tell them we were going to beam their Sun Works Factory did we? Any subterfuge is allowed during war. By all means, trick them.”

Admiral Sioux reopened channels with Marten. “Do you speak for all of your troops?”

“Yes,” Marten said. “We’re all agreed to this.”

“I’ll need a few minutes to talk it over with my officers, to see if they can convince their people.”

“By all means,” Marten said. “But don’t take too long.”

Admiral Sioux switched channels to the Security Chief. “He agrees to a temporary truce while I consider it.”

“Perfect,” said the Security Chief. “I’ll pull back the lower deck personnel and regroup to a better defense position. All I need is about five minutes. Then we’ll have them.”

Admiral Sioux sat up, gazing at her officers. “It was all a matter of will,” she said. “Despite their training and effectiveness, the enemy’s spirit was lacking. That is why Social Unity will win in the end.”

Several officers nodded.

Encouraged, Admiral Sioux spoke some more, warming up to her theme. She finally ended with, “Now, we should lock up the weapons.”

“Your line is blinking,” said the First Gunner.

“Let the enemy wait,” said Admiral Sioux. “Let his uncertainty unnerve him.”

“No, the Security Chief is calling.”

Admiral Sioux saw that he was right and opened channels.

“It was a trick!” shouted the Security Chief. “I started pulling back the lower deck personnel and they hit us with everything at that exact minute.”

“But how could they have known what we planned?” shouted Admiral Sioux.

“They must have tapped our communications.”

Admiral Sioux slammed on the comlink to the space marine that she’d spoken with. “You lied to us!” she shouted.

“How have I lied?” He even managed to sound genuinely surprised.

“The others attacked when you said that you would give us several minutes to think it over,” said Admiral Sioux.

“What others?” he asked.

“The others on the A-deck!” she shouted.

“They are more shock troopers here?” she heard a different man say.

Admiral Sioux blinked, and then she bowed her head. It hit her then that this smaller group hadn’t known about the larger one. It seemed that the Bangladesh’s jamming was the one thing that had worked. What was that name the man had said: shock troopers?

“The deal’s off,” said this different man. He sounded brutal, speaking with a slum accent.

20.

“Why did you tell her that for?” shouted Marten.

The shock troopers crowded around the comlink.

Through his helmet’s faceplate peered Kang’s wide, emotionless face with its almost slit-shut eyes. “You heard her,” Kang said. “Others of us made it aboard the beamship. And I bet HBs are on their way here, almost aboard ship by now.”

Marten stubbornly shook his head.

Kang regarded the anxious shock troopers. “Think about that. The HBs are almost here and we’ve captured an important part of the ship. But once the HBs learn what Marten tried to do they’ll kill him for sure. And they’ll kill anybody who helped him.”

“This isn’t the time to lose your nerve,” Marten said.

“That’s right,” Kang said. “It’s time to make sure we keep the Highborn happy. Conway, Higgens, grab him!”

The shock troopers regarded Marten, who stepped back and lifted his arm with the attached laser-tube, although he didn’t directly aim it at anyone. “You can’t possibly know that the HBs are coming.”

The words worked like magic, but not in the way Marten wanted. Conway and Higgens suddenly lunged for him, trying to grab his arms. Marten jumped back and aimed the laser-tube at the nearest, Conway. “You’d better rethink that,” he said, already angry with himself for having stepped back the first time. He should have tried to bluff, but he hadn’t trusted Kang so near to him.

Lance, who had stepped to the side, now came up behind Marten and yanked back the arm. “We gotta put to this to a vote, Marten.”

“Let go!” shouted Marten.

Servomotors whined as their exoskeleton powered battlesuits wrestled.

“This isn’t personal!” shouted Lance. “I just don’t want to fry in some HB horror chamber.”

Marten noticed Conway and Higgens creeping closer. So he relaxed, letting Lance jerk back his arm. “Listen to me,” he said, with all the earnestness he could muster. He even twisted his head to peer at Lance, who frowned and then nodded, relaxing his hold. Marten shifted sharply, throwing Lance off balance. He then grabbed Lance by the shoulders and shoved him into Conway and Higgens. With a metallic CLANG, the three fell into a mechanical heap.

Kang clanked forward with an override unit—each of the top three mission officers had been given one. He tried to slap the unit onto Marten’s suit. Marten jumped backward, slamming into a lift, crumpling the thin metal door.

“What are you gonna do to him?” Vip said, an edge to his voice.

“I’m going to let the HBs deal with him,” Kang said, hopping forward, the override unit almost touching Marten.

Marten got an armored foot on Kang’s chest-plate, and he kicked, hurling Kang’s half-ton battlesuit against the nearest wall. Then Marten righted himself as Lance, Conway and Higgens also rose to their feet.

“Are you siding with Kang?” shouted Marten.

“I don’t want the HBs killing me,” said Lance. “So you gotta forget this Jupiter nonsense.”

Marten glanced at the others. They peered at Kang, who roared curses as he aimed his heavy laser.

Marten ducked, turned and leaped deeper into the huge engine room.

“Traitorous scum!” roared Kang, a red laser beam lashing out after Marten.

Then Vip said, “If you fire again I’ll kill you.” He aimed his laser at Kang.

Marten glided behind another lift, shifted around and then entered it. Over the comlink, he heard Kang and Vip argue.

KANG: You’re helping the traitor!

VIP: That’s what you call him.

KANG: That’s what I’ll tell the HBs.

VIP: So I’d better burn you where you stand, that’s what you’re telling me.

KANG: Why are you aiming a laser at me if you’re not helping him?

VIP: Who’s aiming anything at you?

KANG: Now he’s gone, you idiot.

VIP: Where’s he gonna run to, Kang? Think about it.

KANG: To the enemy, you dolt.

VIP: I don’t think so. Besides, Marten got us here. I sure don’t wanna see him butchered by you because he helped you survive. You want to hunt for him later that’s your problem. Right now, we gotta secure the Bangladesh.

KANG: (grunted angrily)

Marten’s lift opened two levels down and he moved down a different corridor. He’d made his move and lost. Now he had only one option left. Get aboard an escape pod and leave before the HBs arrived.

21.

Admiral Rica Sioux slipped a tight wrap around her bad knee. She’d already had the medic shoot it with anti-pain. The Tracking Officer meanwhile brought body armor and a las-rifle and laid it beside the command chair.

“Admiral!” said the First Gunner. “This is madness. We must all make a run for the escape pods.”

Admiral Sioux ignored him. At her age, she had learned when not to argue. He spoke for the files, nothing more. Around her, the command team watched the VR-screens in dismay. The HB-trained soldiers were uncanny. The larger group smashed straight here. The smaller group had six active members, hitting and running wherever they weren’t expected.

An armrest button flashed.

“Security Chief, here. It’s no good, Admiral. Now they’re slaughtering my Security teams one by one. If only I could have used everybody together. I could have beaten them. It was a mistake to chase the smaller group.”

“I’ll be down to join you for the final assault,” said Admiral Sioux.

“Admiral, I must protest.”

“Noted. Now no more arguments, please. My mind is made up.”

“Aye-aye, Admiral. But you’d better hurry if you want to fight with us.”

Admiral Sioux motioned the Tracking Officer to help her put on the armor. As she did, the Admiral said, “You and the others will head to the escape pods, just like the First Gunner suggests.”

“We want to fight with you,” the Tracking Officer said.

“Senseless. Live to fight another day.”

“Then you’re not blowing the Bangladesh?” whispered the Tracking Officer.

Admiral Sioux knew that several officers watched her closely as they fingered their weapons. She had no doubt they would kill her if they suspected she would use the destruction code. The enemy’s swift success had broken their last scruples—or so Admiral Sioux suspected. The destruction procedure was complicated, so she couldn’t hide it from them.

The last buckles of the body-armor snapped closed. She put on her helmet and slid open the visor. Settling back into the command chair, she put a call through to General Hawthorne on Earth. Those in the command capsule continued to watch.

“General Hawthorne,” she said, “enemy soldiers called shock troops have breached the Bangladesh. We’re fighting desperately. I am about to go down and join the Security Chief. Here are the specs of the enemy battle tactics.” She pressed transmit, sending other files as well. Then she rose from her chair and scanned her command team.

“I am proud to have served with you. I wish you luck getting through to the escape pods.”

“Join us, Admiral,” said the First Gunner.

“I am old.” Admiral Sioux hefted her las-rifle. “But not too old to aim and fire.”

She limped to the sealed door, voice-activated the lock and watched it slide open. Deep from in the Bangladesh came the screech of combat. “Is anyone joining me?”

None of her officers dared look her in the eye.

She nodded and limped into the dark corridor of her beamship.

22.

Earth—New Baghdad

General Hawthorne cleared his throat, nodded to the holo-director that signaled him and peered into the camera. He sat at a desk, with small SU flags on either side of him. Behind him was a space map of the four Inner Planets and with the Social Unity Logo of four hands one atop the other interposed as background. His military hat was cocked at the angle he felt portrayed confidence and a dash of genius. His bony fingers were folded atop the desk.

A recorded voice spoke: “Citizens of the Four Planets, of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, I give you Social Unity’s Supreme Commander, General James Hawthorne.” Martial music played. As the music winded down:

Hawthorne nodded at the camera as he saw the red recording light blink. “Good evening, dear citizens. It is with a heavy heart that I come to you tonight. Let me hastily add that not with a heart bowed with defeat or despair. Rather, I wish to… undo or unsay some of the words spoken to you earlier this year. This has been a year of great tragedy, as I know that you are all aware. The Highborn have brutally invaded the Four Planets and slain many that otherwise would have lived long and useful lives. The words that must be unsaid are those in the past year spoken in haste and fear. Namely, that this is a short war.

“In their love for the people of the Four Planets the former Directors believed the truth should remain hidden. They felt it was better to forge the tools to defeat the enemy and let you go on with your lives in peace. But the Highborn are not easily beaten. They are vicious soldiers, merciless and savage, and let me add, brilliant soldiers who plot well-laid plans. The Directors of many years gone designed the Highborn to be such soldiers. Alas, treachery infected the Highborn and they turned on us all.

“As Supreme Commander I have led the fight against the Highborn. I have witnessed both defeat and victory against our wily foe. I saw what many of you haven’t. That despite our various defeats victory is inevitable. But victory will not come cheaply or quickly. Knowing this, my heart was still troubled because I saw that many of the Directors lacked faith in you, the people of Social Unity. So I came to New Baghdad to speak with Madam Director Blanche-Aster. Ah, her nobility encouraged me to speak plainly with her, even as I saw that the many burdens had worn her down to less than her former greatness. She agreed with me and suggested that in this dark hour that I take the reins of authority and guide the Four Planets.

“I refused. I am a fighting man, not a politician. But she argued that now is the not the time for politics but for rolling up our sleeves, picking up our guns and fighting. ‘Guide us,’ she pleaded. ‘Help me show the other Directors that we must go to the people and tell them the bitter truth.’ I finally agreed, with the proviso that she would remain by my side to help me. She reluctantly agreed, as age has stolen so much of her vigor. Yet I am grateful for her help she can give.

“This is why I have come to you tonight, my dear citizens. As Supreme Commander, I beg for your help and your understanding. In the coming days we will continue to take heavy losses. The Highborn are too powerful for it to be otherwise and they have infected their treachery into too many who should have known better. Yet Social Unity is stronger than mere fighting prowess and without a doubt stronger than base treachery. Our great hearts beat too purely for it to be otherwise. Millions of you will enlist in the armies that push the invaders from Earth. Others will join Space Defense and search and destroy the Doom Stars in our new and improved battle and beamships, while many millions will work overtime in order to build the weapons we need to defeat the so-called Supremacists.

“Citizens of the Four Planets, not all my news is gloomy or about the hardships to come. The Highborn are mighty but they are not invincible. As Supreme Commander, I ordered a space attack on the Sun Works Factory around Mercury. The Ring-factory has become Highborn Central, their processing plant and manufacturing yard. We hit it savagely with our latest beamship, the Bangladesh, a breakthrough design that has challenged all the old ways of space war.

“Many of you have been heard to ask: ‘Where are our space fleets?’ I shall tell you where: Hitting the enemy! Striking him ruthlessly and making him quake with fear! We will go on hitting him until he is defeated. We shall never surrender. Not as long as your hearts are true and as you realize that together, in our united unity, that we shall overcome.

“Thank you, my dear citizens, my fellow cardholders, good night, and may the creative force of our wills continue to shine.”

General Hawthorne peered straight at the camera until the holo-director said, “Cut. That was excellent, General. A fine speech.”

Hawthorne nodded as he rose and strode to the door. Yezhov congratulated him, shaking hands. “Wonderful, General. A splendid speech. The masses will be hardened in their resolve and flood into the recruiting stations.”

Hawthorne nodded, and he shook more hands as he heard more effusive praise. The Chief of PHC worked for him now, although Hawthorne would never trust Yezhov until the man was incinerated and his ashes thrown down a deep-core mine. Bionic Captain Mune stood behind the secret police chief, ready to kill him at the first hint of betrayal.

“I was hoping you could check my latest list,” said Yezhov, edging forward.

“Assassination teams that are to be slipped onto the orbital farm habs?” asked Hawthorne.

Yezhov winced and glanced around. “Please, General, this is a sensitive project. Its success hinges on the fact that it remains secret.”

Only those screened by Hawthorne’s MI teams were allowed in his presence, and his bionic men watched those closely. A glance around showed him seven bulky bionic men. They held gyroc rifles and continually scanned the crowd, making them nervous. Good! Let them all quiver at the thought of treachery.

He and Yezhov had made a deal Slippery Yezhov, the sly and cunning chief of Political Harmony Corps. During his coup attempt, Hawthorne hadn’t the strength to take PHC in a straight shooting match. So he’d made the deal and now worked to chip at their power, just as they tried to chip at his. All the directors had been replaced except for Blanche-Aster for him and Gannel for Yezhov. The others were non-entities. So in a sense the tripod of power in Social Unity had become two: the Military and the Secret Police.

Wait until the Cyborgs arrive was Hawthorne’s policy. He wasn’t sure what Yezhov’s plan was. These assassination teams were part of it, maybe the core. Yet the secret police chief’s plan was ingenious and bold. The assassination teams would infiltrate Highborn areas and kill them. Just like PHC had infiltrated the Joho Command Center and almost kidnapped him. He needed to keep reminding himself how close PHC had come to victory.

A door opened and Madam Blanche-Aster wheeled in on her bulky medical unit. Behind her followed the guard-clone, unarmed these days. Neither the clone nor the director looked happy. Hawthorne excused himself and greeted the Madam Director. He inclined his head, even as he heard Captain Mune clump behind him.

“A fine speech, General,” said Blanche-Aster, only a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

“Thank you, Madam Director.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“Can’t it wait?” asked Hawthorne. “I need to meet with the new directors and—”

“It’s about the Bangladesh,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

“It’s been captured.”

“What?”

People turned and stared.

Hawthorne noticed. He lowered his voice and said, “Come with me.”

23.

Hawthorne clicked off Admiral Sioux’s recorded message and with his bony fingers, he massaged the side of his head.

“It doesn’t appear as if the Highborn themselves stormed aboard,” said Blanche-Aster. She scanned a readout-slate hooked to her chair. “Normal men did this. Which is amazing. According to the Admiral’s report, seventy to eighty space marines captured the Bangladesh. Actually, amazing is probably the wrong word. Treachery is more like it. How can seventy to eighty space marines capture a beamship the size of the Bangladesh?”

Hawthorne sat behind his desk, shaking his head and with his shoulders hunched. Captain Mune stood at attention behind him. The Director’s guard-clone kept her gloved hands on the handles of Blanche-Aster’s medical unit.

“The Admiral called these space marines shock troopers,” said Hawthorne.

“Does that mean anything?”

“It must signify something. Perhaps shock troopers are like our good Captain Mune.”

Blanche-Aster wouldn’t look at the hulking bionic soldier. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think seventy Captain Mune’s could capture the Bangladesh.”

“I strongly disagree,” said Hawthorne.

“I imply no disdain upon these mechanically enhanced warriors of yours, General. But to me treachery seems like the more probable answer.”

“Seventy bionic soldiers could capture the Bangladesh—quite handily in fact,” said Hawthorne. “But I’m not saying that the Highborn have modified people in such a fashion. Their psychology dictates against it.” Hawthorne pursed his lips. “Shock trooper is an interesting term. The same philosopher, Nietzsche, influenced both the ancient Nazis and the Highborn. He espoused the doctrines of the superman and the will to power. Perhaps the Highborn have combed the FEC ranks for superior soldiers and trained them in space marine tactics.”

“That’s all very interesting,” said Blanche-Aster. “But normal men can’t accelerate at twenty-five Gs.”

“You’re missing the point, Director. Why are the Highborn training regular men to fight in space? Have they run low of Highborn personnel?”

“I would think so,” said Blanche-Aster. “And if so, then Yezhov’s plan becomes even more essential.”

Hawthorne regarded the Madam Director. “A momentous decision rests on us.”

Blanche-Aster looked away, troubled.

“I think Admiral Sioux knew that when she sent the message.”

“I don’t understand why she didn’t self-destruct the ship,” said Blanche-Aster. “That she didn’t validates my theory that treachery, not some new combat species, lost the beamship.”

“Circumstances may have warranted against self-destruction.”

“You saw the Admiral as she dictated the message. She wore armor and held a las-rifle. Her officers surrounded her and they stood in the command capsule. Unless… do you think these shock troopers had broken the destruction-link?”

“Who can know,” said Hawthorne. “Perhaps not all the officers had agreed to self-destruct.”

“I realize that too much emphasis on training the intellect and not enough on social responsibility has left much of our military weakened. But these officers were our best, the elite. When the moment came that the Bangladesh fell into enemy hands they should have pleaded with the Admiral to destroy it. At the very best, the Highborn will break them in reeducation camps. They gutted sections of the Sun Works Factory. The Highborn will savage them. No. It makes no sense to wish to live through that. Treachery, General, if you had all the facts you would see that treachery overcame the Bangladesh.”

Hawthorne appeared thoughtful. “Maybe the enemy gave them generous terms. They have after all become adept at turning captured soldiers into their own creatures.”

“That’s what I’m saying. How could an officer steeped in social responsibility possibly consider surviving the capture of his ship?”

“The will to live is strong,” Hawthorne said philosophically. “It may be that not all the officers were up to the task.”

“Treachery piled upon treachery. This is a terrible blow, unfathomable, mysterious and sinister. We can’t allow the Highborn to tow the Bangladesh to the Sun Works Factory.”

Hawthorne began to pace. “If you’ll excuse me, Madam Director, I must see the new Space Commander and get his recommendations on how to achieve our goal.”

Blanche-Aster motioned to her guard-clone. “I’m sorry to have brought this news, General. My recommendation is to look into each of the officer’s records. Somewhere is the clue as to who sold his comrades to the Highborn.” The guard-clone wheeled the Madam Director away.

Hawthorne turned to Captain Mune.

For the first time during the conversation, the hulking bionic soldier seemed other than a statue. His steely eyes flickered over the hunch-shouldered General. “It has to be done, sir.”

“You’re right, Captain. But it’s a filthy business.” Hawthorne knew he had to order the Bangladesh destroyed, to kill his own people, those who had survived the storm assault.

“That’s why they pay us, sir, to do the dirty work the civilians won’t.”

Hawthorne smiled painfully, putting his hand on Captain Mune’s shoulder. “Let’s get this over with, shall we.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two men headed down the corridor to Space Command.

24.

With his battlesuit powered on low Marten crept through a corridor.

For 72 hours, he had won the cat and mouse chase. First, he’d modified his battlesuit, removing its electronic ID tag and switching the setting of his Friend or Foe selector. Then he’d jury-rigged Bangladesh damage control crawlers, setting them on automated hunt and fix. The massive inner destruction to the beamship kept them busy. They thus constantly moved, which showed up on the Bangladesh’s motion detectors. Said detectors Marten destroyed with religious fervor, along with destroying ship’s cameras. Then a virus—preset by Admiral Sioux—shutdown the beamship’s computers and engines. From their comlink chatter Marten learned that the shock troops gave first priority to restarting the engines, then to hunting him and finally to inserting new Override software.

For the past 72 hours Marten had lived on stims, Tempo and by drinking plenty of water. He had debated about walking into of group of his old comrades and explaining reality to them. They could listen or gun him down. He’d abandoned the idea when he couldn’t think around the fact that they would simply capture him and leave him for the HBs. Then in a recreation room he’d found several recorders. He went outside the ship and carefully thought out his options. After a half-hour, he recorded a message.

MARTEN: I’ve given this a lot of thought, longer probably than any of you realize. The Highborn mean to rule us, the premen herds. They won’t stop with the premen herds of Earth or Venus, but go on to the Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus herds. At least that’s how they think of us, as cattle. If Omi were awake, he’d confirm the story about their gelding plan. Think about that: cutting your balls to make you more docile. That’s what Training Master Lycon said. I heard it and so did Omi. Sure, we’re the shock troopers, the elite, the purebreds, I suppose. But what kind of future is it if we’re the premen, the Pre-Men?

He’d switched off and thought more. Finally:

MARTEN: Kang and others will tell you it is the best deal we can get. They’re probably right. The HBs won’t give you a better deal than what you already have. The truth is I’m not promising you anything new, the fact of your manhood. What I’m suggesting is to use it, to make your manhood count. Stand up like a man and take action. Or play it safe and remain a slave as you are. I heard Omi say a few weeks ago that we’re nothing more than those five-inch fighting fish at the Pleasure Palace. If that’s all you want to be, then you deserve castration. Only I don’t think that’s true, either. No one deserves that. So that’s what I think, I, Marten Kluge the Man. What do you think?

Marten turned off the recorders and played back the message. Maybe he could refine it to something perfect, but it said what he felt. When he returned inside the ship, he left the recorders in various open spots he knew they would come through. He hoped it would sway them, but he didn’t think it would. He just wanted somebody to know what he thought. Besides, it felt good to speak his mind.

Now, after 72 hours, he realized that as good as he was he couldn’t keep ahead of thirty or so expert shock troopers forever. That’s how many they kept in rotation hunting him. It was a big ship with kilometers of open corridors and spaces, but they were good and learning fast. So as little as he had in way of supplies and without Omi, he crept for the escape pods. Earlier there had been too much fighting around them. Now the escape pods would be rigged, he knew, but he had to get off the ship while there was still time. He paused, extreme fatigue pulling at his eyelids. Every part of his body ached. At times he found himself blinking, wondering how he’d walked so far. He realized he was falling asleep on his feet. Soon he’d simply keel over snoring. Then he’d probably wake up, with Kang holding a vibroknife under his chin.

The corridor was dark. Blasted utility units lay like junk on the floor. Dried blood was smeared everywhere. The corpses had been removed, whether by busy damage control vehicles or shock troopers he didn’t know or really care. To ping his radar might give away his position, so his visor was up and he washed the corridor with a helmet-lamp on low.

The Bangladesh was a cocktail of strange odors. He picked out blood, the stench of laser-burns, plasma and hot grease. The tread of his half-ton battlesuit was loud, the servomotors a constant reminder that eventually his suit might break down.

A loud click made him freeze. It came from around the corner.

He switched off the helmet-lamp and waited in darkness. No one washed radar over him and no motion detector could see what didn’t move. His eyes couldn’t adjust to complete darkness, but his fatigue caused splotches and imaginary images to dance before him. So he finally turned his beam back on. The weariness made his skin sag and his limbs tremble.

On ultra-low power, he shuffled toward the corner. He listened, but all he heard was his suit’s whine. Finally, he snarled to himself and bounded around the corner, to see two shock troopers aim heavy lasers at him.

When they didn’t fire, he washed his headlight over their helmets. Stenciled on the foreheads was LANCE, VIP.

Vip’s visor opened, although Lance’s remained shut.

Marten wanted to tramp the last few meters between them and hug the rat-faced little Vip. The crazy eyes jittered and the mashed nose was the same. Vip even managed a grin.

“Hey, Maniple Leader.”

“Hey, Vip.”

“I listened to your tape. Made some sense.”

“What about Lance? What does he think?”

“He thinks you’re crazy.”

“Is he going to shoot me?” asked Marten.

“I don’t think he’s made up his mind.”

“Where are the others?”

“Around.”

“How come you’re here, Vip?”

“Doesn’t this seem like the obvious place for you come?”

“Yeah, I suppose it does. So why isn’t everyone here?”

“They’re not as patient as me.”

Marten smiled.

“But you’re also out of luck,” Vip said.

“Why is that?”

“The other shock troops launched escape pods whenever they came upon them so the Social Unitarians couldn’t use them. Once Kang linked up with them and we took control of the ship, they launched the rest. I think maybe one got away with SU people aboard.”

Marten swayed as he felt his resolve beginning to crumble.

“Maybe that’s why some of the others didn’t stake out this area. They knew the pods were gone, so why should you try for them?”

“Yeah,” Marten said.

“So you’re out of luck.”

Marten nodded.

“If you want to come with me I’ll see that they treat you right.”

“Until the HBs show up.”

“You’ve burned your bridges, Maniple Leader. Which isn’t like you. Usually you have two plans going at once.”

“I’m a soldier. It’s what I’m supposed do.”

“Yeah,” Vip said. They looked at each other. “What should I tell Lance?”

Marten glanced at the dark visor, at the laser-tube aimed at his chest. That wasn’t a little las-rifle but the heavy-duty stuff that could penetrate battlesuit armor.

“Ask Lance if he wants it on his conscience that he’s the one who captured me so the HBs could put me in a pain booth.”

“I can answer that for him. It would bug him.”

“That’s it?” Marten said. “Just bug him?”

“Yeah. Lance is pretty set on making it out alive.”

Marten nodded. He was so tired. He wanted to quit now anyway. Instead: “I’m leaving, Vip.”

“Where can you go?”

“I don’t know. But I haven’t given up yet.”

Vip chuckled.

“If Lance’s wants to shoot now is the time.”

Vip glanced at Lance, and it seemed as if Vip listened. Then Vip grinned again. “Good-bye, Maniple Leader.”

“Good-bye, Vip. And Vip?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you leave Omi somewhere I can pick him up?”

“Maniple Leader… it’s over, finished. You’re a dead man. Do you really want to take Omi down with you?”

Marten considered that. He finally nodded. “Omi would want me to.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it.” Vip cocked his head. “You’d better go if you want to stay free for awhile.”

Marten hesitated, and then he stood at attention and saluted Vip and Lance. When Lance saluted back, Marten hurried away into the darkness.

25.

A 623 Prowler Repair pod scanned the inner ring of the Sun Works Factory. Expelled hydrogen particles propelled it across the metallic surface, a man-sized globe with a small radar packet and searchlight that swept back and forth. It cut a twenty-meter swath as it first went fifteen kilometers one way and then turned around and traveled fifteen kilometers the other way. Twenty meters at time, searching, scanning, the white light washing over the station for signs of breach or meteor damage.

Then it braked. Its searchlight washed over a large hole. The tiny pod computer beamed a message to the main station comp. As it waited, the red strobe light atop it winked at ten second intervals. A message returned.

The Prowler pod acknowledged and logged the command, and then so very gently it applied thrust as it entered the gapping hole. The white light washed over a large cavity and over what appeared to be ship locks and oxygen pumps. Then two floating objects, highly reflective, man-shaped and secured by lines to the farthest reaches of the cave came to light. The Prowler pod paused, rotated and slowly withdrew from the gapping indentation. All the while, it broadcast an emergency code for the two lifeforms it had found outside the livable portion of the station.

26.

Anxiety on one hand and boredom on the other had turned Training Master Lycon irritable. He sat in front of a computer screen and checked report after report. He rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Outside his cubicle marched a platoon of monitors, barking orders and promising dire wrath to anyone that slacked off.

The anxiety came because too few shock troopers had made it aboard the beamship. The skill of the enemy in repelling so many space marines had surprised the Top Ranked Highborn and even more surprised Lycon. It was another dreaded indication that not everything went according to the great master plan. That in turn had weakened the Grand Admiral’s position—and that hurt Lycon because the Grand Admiral was his sponsor. The Bangladesh’s surprise proton-beam attack had already dealt the Grand Admiral a hard blow. That a premen spacecraft had been able to cause such damage and thereby throw the Highborn into such a crisis meant that someone had erred. Premen were inferior, a fact that no one could deny. Inferior beings do not deal superior beings such surprises unless those in charge are reckless or careless. Logic dictated as much. And since the Grand Admiral was ultimately in charge of all Highborn activity, this crisis hurt his exalted position.

Even worse, however than the weakening to the Grand Admiral’s position—in Lycon’s view and to his goal—was that because of the Bangladesh’s success the Sun Works premen had become restless. They stirred with hints of rebellion. And the scandal with the Chief Monitors, that they had been practicing drug lords, had hurt, too. Their daring was amazing and disconcerting to the Top Ranked. How Hansen and his chief aide had escaped was still a mystery. That there had been corruption among the most trusted premen and now with these hints of rebellion had proved to the Top Ranked that premen could ever be trusted. And that severely weakened the idea of the shock troops in space. In other words, the Praetor’s philosophy and those who held it had gained ascendancy. Except for the Praetor himself. That drug lords had worked under his administration undermined his authority. He thus pressured all Sun Works personnel to acts of perfect precision and relentless activity.

That meant the Training Master and his marshals helped suppress preman thoughts of rebellion. Thus the four ‘beta’ Highborn, Lycon’s training team, and he over-watched monitors who made sure premen repair teams worked to capacity.

Lycon read more reports. A few minutes later, a cough interrupted him. He scowled at a monitor, a lean man who stared at the floor.

“Yes?” asked Lycon.

“Highborn, there is a report that might interest you.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lycon.

Without looking up the monitor held out a paper.

For reasons he couldn’t explain Lycon hesitated. Then he snatched the paper. “A pod found two premen, so what?”

“The pickup ship did a bioscan, Highborn.”

Lycon dropped to:

Bioscan: Heydrich Hansen, Ervil Haldeman

“Is this right?” asked Lycon.

“Yes, Highborn. My team awaits your orders whether to bring them around or not.”

“Meaning what?”

“They’ve been given Suspend, Highborn. Both are very much alive.”

Shocked, Lycon wondered what this meant to him. Maybe nothing at all or maybe— He nodded. “Yes, revive them and let me know when they come around.”

“Yes, Highborn.” The monitor saluted and marched away.

Lycon thoughtfully rubbed his jaw and then he turned back to the reports and kept on reading.

An hour later Lycon stood in a sterile medical center. A gnomic doctor in a green gown stared meekly at the floor while nurses hurried by. A level down was the Neutraloid surgery room. This level saw to burn and revival victims.

“Are they both lucid?” asked Lycon.

“Yes, Highborn,” said the doctor, a wizened old woman with bad breath.

“Have either made any statements?”

“Both were cautious, Highborn, and were clearly terrified. They raved, in fact, one of them trying to break free to kill the other. At my orders, both were been given tranquilizers. They are heavily sedated.”

“I’ll see them anyway.”

“Yes, Highborn.” The old doctor opened the nearest door.

The room was small, with two steel-lined beds, each holding a white paper-clothed occupant. Short, broad-shouldered Ervil lay strapped to his bed. He stared at the ceiling with blank-looking eyes. Hansen kept testing his straps, until he noticed Lycon. He paled considerably.

“You may leave,” Lycon told the doctor.

“Yes, Highborn.” She hurried out.

Hansen managed to pry open his lips. “You-you-you.”

Lycon cocked his head. As a former Chief Monitor Hansen should know better than to speak first, even drugged he should know. Why was it that both the Praetor’s chief monitors lacked proper protocol skills?

“You are an odd species,” said Lycon, moving closer, putting his hands on the bed’s stainless steel railing. “Given rank and trust you turn around and practice the worst kind of deceit. Whatever motivated you to manufacture dream dust?”

“Motivated me?” croaked Hansen. “What about you?”

Lycon shook his head. Hopelessly deranged this one. He had scanned the report of the 623 Prowler’s find. It had been a hanger of some kind, and by the particle traces in the hanger, a spacecraft had left within the past few weeks. These two had probably planned to escape and been double-crossed and left behind. As Chief Monitor Hansen had an enviable life ahead of him, Lycon couldn’t understand why he would make drugs and then try to flee to who knew where?

Hansen drooled and spoke in sly undertones. “You killed Bock for a reason. I know that much.”

“Highborn,” corrected Lycon. “When you speak to your superiors you must use the correct protocol procedures.”

Hansen blinked several times before he asked, “If you’re so high-born how come everyone’s been able to trick you so easily?”

“Explain.”

Hansen’s head lolled back and forth across his pillow. “No, no, no. Nothing for nothing is my motto. If you wanna know then you gotta promise to help me.”

“Don’t trust him,” warned Ervil.

Lycon was surprised that Ervil meant the warning for him. “Why shouldn’t I trust Hansen?” he asked, bemused by these two.

“Because he’s a double-dealing bastard. I’ll kill when I get the chance.”

“Be quiet, Ervil,” slurred Hansen. “We gotta use Lycon and get him to help us.” With his long, sly face, Hansen regarded Lycon. “You’d better deal with me. It would be in your long term interest.”

Lycon snorted at their audacity. Two hopeless buffoons that had no idea of the danger they were in. The best way to use them surely was as a lever on the Praetor. It seemed incredible that these two had been the masterminds behind the dream dust operation.

“So do we have a deal?” asked Hansen.

For their lack of proper protocol, he should discipline the premen. But what was the use? Lycon strode from the room and found the wizened old doctor.

“Yes, Highborn?”

“Transfer those two downstairs,” he said.

“To the Neutraloid section, Highborn?”

He checked his chronometer. “Do it immediately and inform me when the operations are complete. Oh, and by the way, tell no one about this, not even the Praetor’s people. I want to surprise him.”

“Yes, Highborn, it shall be as you say.”

27.

The cell door slid open and a shock trooper shoved Admiral Rica Sioux in. She staggered and collapsed in a heap, the front of her dress uniform spotted with blood. She’d been captured during the fighting and later had the privilege of watching the shock troopers break her officers. A brutish monster named Kang had laughed as he’d used a shock rod on the First and Second Gunner. Both had died under the shock trooper’s caresses, revealing nothing about the beamship’s functions. The Pilot however had broken after the third shock-rod stroke.

Thus, the enemy had been able to turn the Bangladesh and now braked at two-Gs. Kang had then continued to torture the others for further information, turning the command-capsule into an abattoir.

“Are you all right, Admiral?” asked the Tracking Officer. They were in a security cell, six of them packed in a room built for two.

Rica Sioux spit blood from her mouth. They had knocked out her false teeth and had given her drugs to keep her tripping heart from quitting. Her chest thudded, knotted and it made breathing a dreadful chore. She knew that at best she only a few hours left.

“They’re monsters,” said the Tracking Officer, as she knelt over the Admiral and carefully blotted blood with a dirty rag.

“It doesn’t matter,” whispered Rica Sioux.”

“Yes it matters,” said the Tracking Officer.

Rica Sioux closed her eyes. The Bangladesh was doomed. The monster in the command capsule was doomed. Sadly, so were the last of her officers. She’d seen the dead shock troopers laying in their battlesuits. Too bad, they hadn’t been able to kill all the enemy space marines. She’d asked to speak with the cunning leader who had foiled them, the one who had called her and had led the smaller team. None of the enemy had looked at her then. That’s when her beatings had really started. So she’d asked only once more, and Kang had knocked her teeth out one by one, telling her to mind her own business.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” asked the Tracking Officer.

Rica Sioux opened her eyes and closed them again. The Tracking Officer had only been a blur. Anyway, it hurt her head too much trying to see. She wouldn’t tell why it didn’t matter because she was afraid the officers had all cracked. They knew she planned something and worked no doubt for that monster in her command capsule. The Highborn had trained him well. That monster, Kang, he was much more clever than he looked. He understood about breaking people. It was an art with him. Her officers should have let her blow the ship.

“Admiral!”

“Leave me alone,” whispered Rica Sioux.

“She’s dying,” said someone.

“Better tell Kang.”

Rica Sioux smiled. There! Now she knew they had been cracked.

“Admiral!”

“Good-bye,” said Rica Sioux. Her old heart defeated the drugs trying to keep it going. The ancient organ quit and Admiral Sioux stopped breathing.

28.

Marten woke up outside the beamship, secured to the underside of a blasted particle shield. He’d slept nineteen hours. It didn’t repair his extreme exhaustion, but he’d woken with an idea. That’s how it usually went with him. He had a problem. He wrestled with it and then he went to sleep. When he woke up or during a shower, the answer just popped into his head.

He could use a shower now. His jumpsuit was grimy and he itched all over. As he sipped water from his tube and relieved himself—a battlesuit’s waste-disposal system reverted a shock trooper back into a baby with diapers. He went in his suit and the battlesuit flushed the body wastes for him. A handy feature, Marten supposed, but he always felt strange using it. In any case, he slurped concentrates and began the journey back into the beamship.

Once aboard he used a comlink to check various damage control crawlers that nineteen hours ago had been under his command. Six of them had been shut down. He checked his own motion detectors that he’d been setting up the entire time and saw that six battlesuits hunted the engine room for him.

They had probably grown tired of searching for the unfindable, the reason only six did it and not the usual thirty. Anyway, he finally had the answer to his problem. The question was could he implement the answer before the HBs arrived? Leaning his half-ton battlesuit against a wall and switching off, he began the three-minute procedure that took him out of it.

He felt naked stepping out the suit in his bare feet. The two Gs of braking pulled hard at his muscles, but it felt wonderful to scratch his chest and legs and a spot on his back. Then he put on a special cup around his genitals. Two Gs could do the nastiest things. Finally, putting on combat boots, he prowled the corridors until he came upon one of the shutdown damage control crawlers.

He manually opened a hatch, slipped into the cushioned seat and checked the HUD controls. Soon he revved the crawler into life and peeled out, traveling down the long, empty corridors. He sped toward a specially selected missile locker. It took him an hour to crawl past various battle-damage and take two detours from prowling shock troopers. Finally, he entered a huge storage area devoid of light. With the crawler’s beam, he viewed huge missiles that still hung from their racks. Using the vehicle’s mechanical arms, he hauled two of the missiles from their racks and to a nearby firing tube. Unfortunately, the firing tube was blasted wreckage.

He checked the time and decided to leave on the double. Too long in one place was asking for bad luck. As he drove, he pulled a detonator out of his pocket and pressed several buttons. The Bangladesh shuddered so he knew that several of his pre-positioned bombs had gone off. Just as importantly, the two-Gs of braking quit. The auto engaging of the crawler’s magnetic locks told him that.

He grinned. That should keep the others busy, fixing the engines. The damage shouldn’t be too great. Enough to temporarily stop the engines but not enough so they would throw up their hands and hunt him in vengeance. Still, this would make them mad and search harder. So he headed for his battlesuit. It was time to go outside and make them rusty again.

From outside the Bangladesh he worked to clear his chosen firing tube. He’d found several Zero-G Worksuits and torn them apart, taking a welder arm and work-laser. As he clung like a fly to the vast beamship, he used both tools on the tube, cutting a bigger opening. The glare of the welder and the laser had caused his visor to polarize.

“Marten!” suddenly blared in his headphones. It was Kang.

Marten shut off the work-laser, hooking it to his battlesuit. Magnetic clamps kept him attached to the mighty Bangladesh. Around him shone millions of stars. The particle shield behind him kept the blazing Sun from cooking him.

“I know you can hear me, Marten. And I know that you’re too scared to answer. But here’s my deal. We’ll stop hunting for you if you promise not to blow any more bombs. The men agreed to let the HBs do their own dirty work. You were a shock trooper once and you did help some of us enter the beamship. Vip says you want Omi. So we’re leaving him in the Deck 15 Recreation Room. I know you know the ship’s layout like the back of your hand. You can pick Omi up if you want. We won’t stop you. And I’ll give you this, Marten. You’re a bastard. Kang, out.”

Marten managed a chuckle. A neat little trap old Kang had set. Could he trust him? He would continue to work on a war footing. Then he reconsidered. This might mean that the HBs were almost here.

Marten swore, turned up his air-conditioner unit, detached the work-laser from his suit and with its beam began to cut through more armor plating.

29.

Lycon stood in the Game Room, as it had come to be called. Sage-dotted dunes rolled under a holo-simulated, sun-bright sky. A simulated breeze blew past tall cacti while somewhere an eagle screeched.

Lycon wore his blue dress uniform with crisscrossing white straps, with a blaster on his hip and his “Magnetic Star” First Class on his chest. A wall panel slid up and the powerful, two-foot taller Praetor strode in. He too wore his uniform, brown with green strips on the sleeves. His pink eyes glittered and a frown gave him a dreadful presence. Lycon noticed that he carried a folder in his big hands.

“Greetings, Praetor.”

“Training Master.”

“I request an intersystem shuttle so I may head to the Bangladesh.”

“You have requested such a spacecraft earlier and I denied it. What has now caused you to think that I’ll change my mind?”

“Your generosity, Praetor.”

If anything, the Praetor seemed to become more dangerous. The inhuman angles to his face tightened and the bristles atop his head seemed to stand that much stiffer. “I am generous to those who help me, Training Master. Once I offered you a position. You refused. Thus I too must refuse this request.”

“As you know I am not fond of the Neutraloids. Ideas, not chemicals, are the method to controlling premen.”

“I am aware of your position.” The Praetor held up his folder. “This will considerably weaken it.”

Frowning, Lycon took the proffered folder and paged through it. Space photos, mostly, little specks against the backdrop of the black void. “I don’t understand.”

“Flip to the back and read the charts.”

Lycon did. Missiles, it said. Then he noticed that sweat stung his eyes. He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat. Suddenly he felt weary. Handing back the folder, he asked, “What about the Gustavus Adolphus, can’t it intercept them?”

“If you would have read a little farther you would have seen that several attempts have been made. The Gustavus Adolphus is now headed here. The second Doom Star headed back to Venus quite a bit earlier.”

Lycon knew that the Venus Doom Star headed back in order to intercept SU battleships that had sped for Venus as soon as the Doom Star had left the system. Fleet maneuvering was such an intricate game. He shook his head. Infantry tactics is what he knew.

Lycon asked, “Did the Gustavus Adolphus try to intercept with battle lasers?”

The Praetor nodded. “Enemy jamming is good and of course they jink enough to cause misses.”

“What about ant-missiles torps?”

“Did you read the distance spreads?”

Lycon shook his head.

“The Gustavus Adolphus is still too far out, much too far away to be able to effect the battle. Perhaps battle is the wrong word. Annihilation is more appropriate. The Bangladesh is doomed.”

Lycon suddenly hated how the Praetor loomed over him. He hated the arrogance in the pink eyes that blazed with the accusation that he was only beta, an original, an inferior Highborn who couldn’t think through elementary facts.

“There will be no more shock troops,” the Praetor said. “Long-range capture assaults are meaningless when the enemy simply destroys the prize ships.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Lycon, desperately trying to control his temper. “Still, I must try and achieve in the manner I think best.”

“Your sponsor, the Grand Admiral, has lost face.”

“But he hasn’t lost rank.”

“No,” said the Praetor, “not yet.”

For a moment, they listened to the holo-simulated eagle screech. Lycon marshaled his thoughts, mastered his anger and spoke in an even tone.

“I say this without rancor, Praetor, but you too have lost face.”

The nine-foot tall Highborn grew very still. Lycon felt the hostility, the emanating rage.

“Is this how you would move me to give you a shuttle?” the Praetor asked softly.

“I appeal rather to your logic.”

“I see no such appeal.”

Lycon detached a small capsule from his belt. He handed it to the Praetor, who merely eyed him with a strange, pink-eyed fervor.

“There is a button on this capsule. When you press it four Neutraloids will be released into the Game Room.”

The Praetor shrugged.

“The names of the Neutraloids might interest you.”

“What possible interest could such names contain for me?”

“Dalt and Methlen are two of them. Ervil and former Chief Monitor Hansen are the others.”

A weird ecstasy twisted the Praetor’s features. In a husky voice he asked, “Is this true?”

“It is true.”

The Praetor reached for the capsule and hesitated. “Once their capture is known it will strengthen my position.”

“Yes, Praetor, this I realize.”

“Changing them into Neutraloids will also prove that traitorous premen can through my procedure be rehabilitated.”

“Agreed.”

“It would seem I owe you a favor.”

“My only desire is to serve.”

The Praetor nodded. “I order you to the Bangladesh, Training Master. Take your training marshals and do what you can for your doomed shock troops.”

“As you wish, Praetor.” Lycon clicked his heels and dropped the capsule into the Superior’s huge hand.

The Praetor closed his fingers around it, an awful smile on his pearl-white face. “I’ll wait until you’ve cleared the room.”

“Thank you, Praetor.” Lycon strode quickly, and once over the first set of dunes he began to jog. After the third set of dunes, he passed two cages. One held three Neutraloids, savage beings, their muscles strangely quivering and stark and tattooed a deep blue color. They snarled at the fourth Neutraloid, one alone in its own cage. He was thinner, with white bushy eyebrows and a long face. His muscles also quivered and hate blazed from his eyes. He held onto the bars of his cage, watching Lycon as he passed, never taking his eyes from him.

Lycon felt uncomfortable being the object of such hatred. How the Praetor hoped to use these creatures was beyond him. They were brutes, nothing more, berserk killers, unusable in any but the most artificial circumstances.

“Hansen!” snarled one of the Neutraloids, the shortest of the caged three, he with extra-broad shoulders. “We’re gonna skin you alive, Hansen!”

“Eat you!” shouted another, straining, reaching between two bars as if he could clutch the one he hated.

“Kill you, you bastard!” howled the third, rattling his cage as hard as he could.

Hansen shuddered, but he didn’t take his eyes off Lycon.

Then, thankfully, Lycon topped the last set of dunes and hurried for the exit.

30.

Marten waited until the end to get Omi. He didn’t trust Kang. But he was certain the others had spoken honestly. He probably would never have been able to build his jury-rigged craft if they had kept after him.

His ship amounted to two missiles, minus the warheads he’d detached from them. To the missiles, he’d welded several damage control vehicles. Those he had cut apart and re-welded, gutting some to make room for a medical unit, supplies, computers, radar equipment and the like. What his ship amounted to was a seat and toilet for him and a medical rack for Omi, who would remain in his Suspend condition. Unfortunately, Suspend wasn’t cryogenic sleep. It was meant for temporary suspension of cell death until a doctor could repair massive bodily damage. The longest anyone dosed with Suspend had been kept under and brought back to normal was three months. Marten figured his trip would take at least a year, and that would merely bring them to far Earth orbit. From there…

He refused to think about then. One problem at a time was all he could deal with. A year sitting in one spot—He blanked that out too. Survival, the refusal to quit was what drove him. Social Unity hadn’t broken him. He wasn’t going to let the Highborn kill him.

The time finally came to get Omi. He used an engine core-lift with detachable controls, normally used to go into the Fusion Drive and repair damage. From outside the beamship he controlled the core-lift, which drove to where they had put Omi. Under Marten’s guidance, the vehicle picked up the motionless Korean and carried him to an outer lock. There the core-lift deposited Omi, who still wore his battlesuit and helmet. The inner lock closed and the outer one opened ten seconds later. Marten couldn’t know it, but Vip had removed the bug that Kang had put on Omi as well as shut off the alarm rigged to him.

After a long wait, Marten picked up Omi and carried him to his ship, which like a lamprey was clamped to the side of the Bangladesh. His craft’s airlock took up half the free space of the escape vehicle. Inside the ship, he pried Omi out of the battlesuit and hooked him to the medical unit. The battlesuit he stored in the same locker where he’d put his own. Then he settled into his chair and activated the bombs that he’d put on this particle shield’s struts. They blew, and the busted shield detached and floated from the Bangladesh. Marten flipped switches and released his ship’s magnetic locks. He too floated from the beamship.

The mighty Bangladesh braked at two-Gs, although such was its velocity that it still moved from the Sun.

Marten used the hydrogen burners he’d taken off several Zero-G Worksuits and welded to his Joe-Magee capsule. Slowly, he moved toward the floating particle shield and then up and over it and then behind it. From there Omi and he were shielded from the Bangladesh.

Marten stared at the stars. One year sitting in this seat beside his only friend in the medical unit was how long this was going to take.

“Here goes,” whispered Marten. He fired the first missile, and was slammed back into his chair as the rocket burned and accelerated them.

31.

Marten traveled five hundred kilometers from the Bangladesh when the missiles ordered by General Hawthorne slammed into the vast beamship. The missiles had been fired from the missileships that the experimental beamship had been en route to meet—from the flotilla the beamship was to lead to Mars. The nuclear explosions vaporized much of the mighty structure and radiated everything else. More missiles arrived and detonated, chewing up the mass into finer debris.

Marten had fled far enough so that the heat and blast from the explosions had no effect upon him or his ship. The electromagnetic pulse however blew his main controls, prematurely detaching the living quarters from the two missiles. Marten and Omi tumbled end over end as the welded missiles sped in the direction of where Earth would be in a year.

Openmouthed, shocked and uncomprehending Marten stared at the spinning stars. Finally, numbly, he used the hydrogen burners to stop their endless spinning. He wanted to scream, to rave at the injustice and futility of life. Yet he wasn’t vanquished. So he refused to surrender. They still had air and could survive for a long, long time.

In order that he wouldn’t cry and so he didn’t go berserk, he began to sing the songs his mother had taught him in the Sun Works Factory. A Mighty Fortress is Our God by an ancient called Martin Luther was the song he remembered best. He sang until his throat went raw, and as a lunatic absorbed in his dull witlessness, he stared at the vast star-field the entire time.

32.

Sometime later Lycon’s intersystem shuttle sniffed through the Bangladesh’s debris, which maintained their velocity and heading. Scanners searched the junk for signs of life.

Lycon had studied the shock trooper transmissions sent from the Bangladesh, at least before it had been destroyed. Those who had stormed aboard the beamship had clearly taken losses. Highborn training had given them strict procedures for dead or dying shock troopers. Such individuals were to be injected with Suspend and battlesuited with fully charged tanks and their vents opened to ship air. When the beamship had been destroyed, the air vents would have automatically closed and the battlesuit would have switched to tank-air. Those suits were the best in the Solar System, able to take incredible damage. Lycon’s hope was that a few such premen had survived the nuclear explosions. He needed live shock troopers as examples of the success of his idea.

A day’s search garnered exactly nothing.

To go home empty-handed meant at the very best that he would become a trainer of the Neutraloids. Lycon loathed the idea. “Increase the range of our circuits,” he ordered.

“At once,” said the training marshal acting as pilot.

They searched a second day and then a third. On the fourth day, the pilot turned to Lycon.

“I’m picking up a distress call.”

Lycon lurched to the com-board.

“I can’t make anything out of it,” said the pilot.

“Go there,” said Lycon.

“Are you certain?”

Lycon laughed harshly. “I grasp at straws because we have nothing else.”

The pilot set course for the weak distress call.

33.

First, Marten saw the braking jets, a bright smear in the darkness of space. Then Marten watched the shuttle visibly grow from a dot to that of a discernable spacecraft.

A beard covered his face and his muscles had already grown slack. He couldn’t describe his emotion. Birth was indescribable. To float alone in space, drifting, hopeless, rethinking conversations and actions repeatedly, it was a hellish experience. He shuddered and made a sound that many do after crying for a long, long time. He would walk again, talk to people, eat, think, and have plans, hopes and dreams, and fight.

He tried to concentrate. Training Master Lycon came. Lycon was Highborn. The last time they had spoken Lycon had been unhappy with him. Marten couldn’t marshal his thoughts. Instead, he wiped tears from his cheeks. Oh how he wanted to live.

“But not on their terms,” he croaked.

He sipped water from his bottle and shook his head. The stirrings of hatred returned. To be born afresh, that’s what he experienced. Life! What an incredible word it was. What a gift to breathe, play, eat and meet women. Life!

“Hurry up,” he whispered, his heart beginning to race.

34.

The shuttle eased beside the tiny life-pod, dwarfing it, belittling its crudeness. An emergency tube of flexible plastic snaked from the shuttle and glued over the pod’s airlock. Soon air was pumped into the tube. After a time the pod’s hatch slid up and Marten Kluge floated an inert Omi toward the shuttle.

Marten peered at the vastness of space surrounding him. He used the plastic railing attached to the inner tube, pushing Omi and pulling himself. The shuttle airlock opened and Lycon waited at the end, his angular face impassive, but his strange energetic eyes filled with questions and it seemed to Marten traces of wonder.

As Marten pushed Omi to Lycon, the powerful Highborn nodded. Marten nodded back as one would to an equal. They entered the shuttle’s airlock. As the inner hatch opened, Lycon removed his vacc helmet.

“He has a plasma burn on his chest,” Marten told a waiting Highborn, a seven-foot fellow with a medical tag on his shirt. “If you have any medical facilities—”

“We do,” said Lycon.

“Good,” Marten said. He took Omi from Lycon and pushed him to the other Highborn. “Let’s get him hooked in and brought around.”

The two Highborn exchanged glances. “Yes, a good idea,” Lycon said a moment later. Together the three of them floated Omi to the medical center. There the second Highborn took over, stripping Omi of his filthy clothes, tsking at the sight of the ugly plasma burn across his chest and then securing him into the medical cradle. Drugs, blood and special concentrates surged through the attached tubes and for the first time in weeks Omi’s body quivered.

The Highborn checked his medscanner. Then he turned it on Marten, sweeping it over him. To Lycon he said, “He should shower, change into clean clothes and take an injection I’ll prepare.”

Lycon turned to Marten.

“I heard him,” Marten said. “Just point the way.”

Lycon hesitated before pointing toward a hatch.

Apparent gravity returned to the shuttle as it accelerated at one-G for Earth. Marten relaxed in a chair, sipping coffee. He wore a clean jumpsuit with the shock trooper skull-patch on his right pectoral and left shoulder. The beard was gone and his hair cut to the short buzz of blond hair. He was thinner, with his cheeks gaunt. His eyes had changed. They were hooded, guarded, wary. It seemed too as if part of him still floated alone in space, as if not all of him had returned to the land of the living.

The exercise room had padded walls and ceiling and several isometric machines. Lycon sat across from Marten. The seven-foot Highborn, with his legs crossed, doodled with a stylus on a portable comp-screen.

A door opened and the Highborn acting as medical officer poked his head in and reported to Lycon. “It looks like it will be a full recovery.”

“When can I talk to him?” asked Marten.

The Highborn scowled, although he said, “Two days, two and a half at the most.”

“Thanks. I appreciate what you’ve done.”

The Highborn lifted his eyebrows before he withdrew, closing the hatch behind him.

“Your experience was no doubt horrifying,” said Lycon. “But you must use correct protocol procedures when addressing us.”

Marten smiled, but more the way a gang leader would to a cop than with any genuine pleasure. “Yes, Highborn,” he said, saluting him with the coffee cup.

Lycon frowned. Then he sat a little straighter and tapped the tip of the stylus on the portable comp-screen. “I’m curious how Omi and you found yourself in such a makeshift escape pod.”

Marten crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. He didn’t stare at the Highborn. Rather, he picked a point on the wall to examine.

“The Bangladesh’s pods had already been jettisoned, Highborn.”

“Yes. But how did you come to make your spacecraft?”

“From an intense desire to leave the beamship, Highborn.”

“You knew that the missiles were coming?”

“To my knowledge, Highborn, the shock troops never fixed the beamship’s radar pods. Yet the enemy missiles did seem like a logical move on Social Unity’s part. Logic then demands one find a way to avoid the missiles.”

“Your craft only has what appear to be hydrogen burners taken off Zero-G Worksuits.”

“The EMP blast from the enemy missiles wreaked havoc on my controls, Highborn. Because of mixed signals the missiles I’d attached to my pod dropped off and rocketed away.”

“Your heading appears to have been toward Venus or Earth.”

“To Earth, Highborn.”

“Shock troop headquarters is on the Sun Works Factory.”

“The Sun is also much hotter there, Highborn. Among other things I feared radiation poisoning.”

“What did the others think about your escape plan?”

“I didn’t ask all of them, Highborn.”

“They didn’t try to stop you?”

“For awhile they did, Highborn. Then they said they wouldn’t try to stop me anymore.”

“What convinced them that what you did was correct?”

“I worked hard to persuade them, Highborn. I can only think they finally fell to the force of my arguments”

“Your answers are evasive, Marten. Why is that?”

“I’m merely stating facts, Highborn.”

Lycon tapped the stylus once again. “Facts as you deem them or the truth?”

“Highborn… You consider me a preman. How am I supposed to discover truth?”

“You are a preman, Marten.”

Marten remained silent.

“Ah. You don’t believe that, is that it?”

“I fought in the FEC ranks, Highborn, and was among the first to storm the merculite missile battery in Tokyo. Because of it, I received a medal and entrance into the shock troops. As such, I led the experimental assault upon the Bangladesh. We conquered the beamship as ordered, but it was destroyed. Omi and I are the only survivors, at least as far as I know. Given these facts it is difficult for me to think of myself as just a preman.”

“You have done well,” Lycon said, “and you are a gifted tactician. Sometimes I wonder about your loyalty, but as you say, you have worked hard in the service of the Highborn. Such hard service brings rank, as you have learned. The facts also show that you have a touch of excellence. Who else among the shock troops escaped the Bangladesh? That is why as Training Master of the shock troopers I am recommending that you receive the “Hammer of Thor” medallion for excellence in combat.”

Marten sat up. “You honor me, Highborn.”

“The Grand Admiral himself will pin you with the Hammer of Thor and Omi with the Crossed Swords.”

“We head to Earth, Highborn?”

“We do. And the shock troopers are to be reborn.”

“But… The beamship was destroyed, Highborn.”

“The Grand Admiral has a different use for you, one in orbital Earth. Omi and you will each be a commander of an assault force. They will be named, Assault Force Marten and Assault Force Omi.”

“You’re making us into heroes?”

“You will be models of what one can achieve if he labors hard in the service of the Highborn.”

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Highborn,” corrected Lycon.

Slowly, Marten said, “Yes, Highborn.”

Lycon rose. “Excellence brings rank, Marten. Ponder that.” He strode out of the room.

Marten did ponder it. A hero for the beings he hated. They had once thought to castrate him. What was to stop other Highborn from doing it? They had loaded the shock troopers into missiles, as living ammunition. They treated him as an inferior, as a trained animal. These medals were pats on the head.

Marten squinted. He was on a shuttle, a spaceship. Only three Highborn were aboard. If the Highborn died… he would finally own his own spacecraft.

Marten’s heartbeat quickened as he began to make plans.

35.

It was dark in the shuttle as Marten crept to the medical unit. The ship was under one-G of acceleration. Using the glow of the life-support monitor, he examined Omi lying in the clear cylinder. Tubes were attached to the Korean’s flesh. His chest rose and fell with each breath.

Marten studied the cylinder. It was airtight. He pressed a switch. There was a beep as a small red light blinked. Clamps appeared, securing the medical unit for emergency ship maneuvers.

Marten exited the chamber. His features were stern and his heart hammered. Any number of things could go wrong. He knew Highborn arrogance had given him this chance. Surely, they couldn’t believe they were in danger from a lone preman.

The hatch to Lycon’s sleep cubicle was open. This evening, all the hatches were open. Marten had been busy and had made sure.

He eased onto his stomach and slithered past the hatch. Soon on his feet again and in another section of the shuttle, he used a stolen electronic key, opening the suit locker. With practiced speed, he donned his old vacc suit. He tried to be quiet, but there were clunks and clatters. Finally, he sealed his helmet and shuffled to the airlock.

A fierce grin spread across his face. The Highborn had been careless. He was only a preman. What could he do to them?

Marten produced an override unit, one he’d tampered with the past few hours. He licked his lips and entered his code. Then he engaged the manual override. Numbers flashed on the unit. A klaxon should have sounded, but Marten had overridden it with his stolen unit.

There was a hiss as the inner hatch slid open. Marten worked feverishly, applying clamps, making sure it was impossible for the inner hatch to close. With the last clamp in place, he stepped into the airlock. He switched on the vacc suit’s magnetic hooks to full power, securing himself to the wall. Then he manually opened the outer hatch.

Immediately, air hissed past as it rushed out into the vacuum of space. Then the airlock was open all the way and the sound became a gale-force shriek.

A stylus with a purple tip shot past Marten. Then cups and cutlery flew past as they tumbled into the colds of space.

Marten heard screaming. Almost too fast to notice, the Highborn pilot flew past him. Marten resisted the impulse to lean out and watch. Instead, he remembered how shock troopers had tumbled off the Bangladesh’s particle shields. Now their arrogant, uncaring commanders would pay.

The medical Highborn flew outside next.

Then Lycon the Training Master appeared. The seven-foot Highborn managed to latch his fingers onto the hatch clamps. He strained to hang on, his massive body inches from Marten. In a feat of amazing strength, Lycon tore off a clamp. With desperate will, he began to work on the second.

Then the rapidly dropping air pressure began to tell on Lycon. His body and face began to bloat as his blood and other bodily fluids began to turn into water vapor and form in his soft tissues. The ebullism occurred even more strongly in his lungs. The escaping water vapor cooled around his open mouth and nostrils, creating frost.

Then, as he was magnetically secured, Marten began raining body blows against Lycon’s horizontal and now grotesquely swollen torso.

With the last of the ship’s air shrieking past his bloated face and whipping his hair, Lycon peered blindly at Marten. The Highborn must have realized he was dying. Maybe he wanted to take Marten with him. His clothes had shredded off him and blown into space. Bare Highborn fingers reached for Marten. Marten desperately slapped the freakishly large hand. Lycon’s frost-covered lips moved soundlessly. Then the huge Highborn lost his grip and he shot out into space. Marten leaned out and watched the Training Master tumble away into the void.

Marten closed the outer hatch. Next, while breathing hard, he turned off his magnetic hooks. Then he removed the clamps and let the inner hatch hiss shut. The shuttle immediately began to pressurize.

A terrible laugh escaped Marten as he removed his helmet. He owned a spaceship and he was free. Free! Now he had to decide what he was going to do with his hard-won freedom.