Cyborg Assault

-1-

In the lonely vastness of space, Arbiter Octagon continued to tumble end over end. In his ears, he heard the harshness of close breathing. It was a hoarse sound, a bitter one and it told about the futility of his existence.

His throat was raw from screaming. His eyes had bled a thousand tears. Now he stared like a dead man at the many stars shining in mockery around him.

Soon, he would choke to death on carbon dioxide. He would likely beg for an extension of life to whatever being could hear in the chilling vacuum of space. He realized that the Dictates were a bloody pack of lies. Man wasn’t logical, but a seething bed of passions. Men yearned for existence and they desperately wanted things. Men did not rationally reason out each step as the Dictates implied. Perhaps for the first time, Octagon realized that man was not a rational animal, but a rationalizing beast, making excuses for whatever suited his yearnings.

All these cycles aboard the warships, and before that the grueling courses readying him for duty as an arbiter—everything was composed of lies. It was all the bloody, pathetic ravings of idiot-buffoons. It had led to this, to his tumbling in space, hopeless, helpless and defeated by a primitive barbarian. The Dictates….

Arbiter Octagon frowned as something entered his vision. Something out there—

His jaw dropped as his mouth hung slackly.

The something blazed brighter than anything else did, making it greater than a star, greater even than Jupiter, at least from his vantage.

Octagon’s frown changed texture as a decided change came over him. The futility of life dribbled away. A dim thing, a chattering thing, an animal longing burst into life and quickly become hope. The hope thudded like his heartbeats and revived his spirits. It also rekindled his hatred for barbarians, for the supreme bastard of them all: the arrogant Marten Kluge.

The brightness was a flare of exhaust. It grew larger and larger as he stared at it. In time, Octagon realized it was the exhaust of a pod.

It’s a rescue pod. I’m being rescued.

A weird smile twisted Octagon’s face. It wasn’t a sane smile, rather that of a madman whose prayers had been answered. The universe, maybe the Dictates or some divine being, realized that he had been unjustly abused. Now he was going to be allowed to exact his revenge against barbarians, against vile Marten Kluge.

Octagon laughed with glee, a wild, whooping noise.

As he tumbled end over end, as he twisted his head to get a better view, he read the pod’s lettering. Ah, he was in luck. This wasn’t a pod from his old ship. This one said, Pod 3, Hobbes.

A fierce grin stretched Octagon’s lips. A new ship, a different Force-Leader and Arbiter would listen to his tale. In a matter of weeks, he was going to be before the Philosopher’s Board on Callisto. They would hear his story. They would learn that he had been right and Strategist Tan had been wrong. This could well mean a leap in status.

Octagon rubbed his gloved hands.

The bright flare had died. Now smaller jets appeared as the pod slowed and moved toward him. An airlock opened and a vacc-suited rescue-worker jumped out. The worker was strong, for the leap quickly accelerated the worker. A tether line hooked to the worker’s belt played out behind him.

Octagon’s grin was beginning to hurt, he smiled so widely. The indignity of his kidnapping and the horror of being launched in a prefixed pod—he continued to whoop with laughter. Oh, his certain death had miraculously changed into life and coming revenge. He could almost feel the thrill of shocking a captured Marten Kluge for the first time.

“Hurry!” shouted Octagon. He waved his arms as his hysterical laughter increased. Oh, this was the most glorious moment in his existence. What had he ever done to deserve this? It was uncanny. It was—

The vacc-suited worker reached him. It was such a serene thing. The worker grabbed his boot and halted the slow tumbling. With a strong hand and a deft twist that shoved against his hip, the worker hooked the tether line to Octagon’s belt.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Octagon whispered.

Then something cold blossomed in Octagon’s gut. It came from the sight of a silvery sheen, something… metallic. The worker’s faceplate—Octagon craned his neck, trying to get another glimpse.

The worker drew him closer and Octagon had his first good look into his rescuer’s faceplate. Behind the glassy visor was a mask-like face with black, plastic sockets and silver eyeballs. Each ball bearing-like eye contained a red dot for a pupil. His rescuer wasn’t human, but a cyborg.

The cold in Octagon’s gut mushroomed outward until his arms and legs felt numb. If a cyborg was rescuing him… that meant the melded creature would take him to a converter. Evil Marten Kluge had warned him about this. The barbarian had suggested that suicide would be preferable to cyborg conversion.

With a hoarse cry, Octagon grabbed the tether-line’s hook, trying to tear it off his belt.

The cyborg moved with an insect’s speed. It gripped his wrists, immobilizing his hands. Then the thing activated a thruster-pack. They lurched. Octagon whipped his head back and forth. He saw the hydrogen particles propelling them. He saw the open airlock in the pod. It was like the jaws of a beast. It was hideous doom, and the airlock seemed to grin and hiss with Marten Kluge’s voice.

“No,” Octagon said. “You can’t do this.”

The cyborg paid no heed as it jetted for the pod. With a madman’s bellow, Octagon attempted to fight, to flail against fate. Remorselessly and with steely strength, the cyborg tightened its hold, taking him to a sinister new future that promised a metallic world of enslaved electrons and motorized limbs.

-2-

The Descartes headed toward Jupiter, deeper into the heavy gravity-well. Behind it followed the last Zeno, rapidly closing in. At the present speeds, the ship had less than ninety minutes until the drone reached it. Unfortunately, the Highborn ship had already swept past in its comet-like rush and no longer fired its laser.

Marten sat in his module in the command center. He scowled at his screen, at the Praetor’s wide face, at the pink, arrogant eyes and the predatory features chiseled in flat planes. Marten quietly replayed the Praetor’s system-wide speech. He heard the harsh voice that had once told Training Master Lycon that the shock troopers needed to be gelded. What he couldn’t understand is why the Highborn had sent a lone ship all the way out here.

Marten clicked off the Praetor’s image. On the screen, he brought up Chief Controller Su-Shan. She’d spoken to Yakov, to the officers of the Descartes. Marten had learned that she was the ranking governor of the Guardian Fleet. She was presently in one of the laser-satellites of Callisto Orbital Defense.

Su-Shan had the same elfin quality as Tan. She wore a golden headband, had pale hair and strikingly green eyes. Surprisingly, she wore a sheer robe. Every time she’d moved, Marten had caught a glimpse of her perfect breasts or the slenderness of her waist.

Marten replayed her quiet voice. It was utterly devoid of emotion. She’d spoken with Yakov, demanding an audience with Strategist Tan. When Yakov had said that was impossible, Su-Shan had informed Yakov about armed uprisings on Ganymede and the detention of visiting dignitaries. She’d told him of his coming destruction and that of every terrorist. She said it in such inflectionless tones that Marten couldn’t decide if it was comical or chilling.

Marten froze her image. He’d listened to Yakov’s attempts to reason with her. She’d fallen silent then, as if waiting for Yakov to halt his flood of nonsense. When he’d stopped talking, she’d continued where she had left off, as if Yakov had never spoken.

Marten squeezed out of the module and moved to Yakov in his chair. The Force-Leader examined a holographic image. It hovered over a rectangular section of flooring before him. Yakov made adjustments with a control unit. The orbital paths of the four Galilean moons appeared as dotted lines around holographic Jupiter.

“Ours is a complicated system,” Yakov said.

Marten nodded.

Jupiter dominated everything with its size and its horrendous gravitational pull. It meant that moving here took much greater fuel as compared to other planetary systems. It also meant that maintaining a high orbit, the high ground, was even more advantageous here than elsewhere.

It would take eleven Earths placed side-by-side to stretch across Jupiter’s visible disk. More than one thousand Earths would be needed to fill Jupiter’s volume. Because Earth was denser than Jupiter, the Jovian planet only had three hundred times the Earth’s mass.

Yakov fiddled with the control unit. A sea of pale dots appeared. They were everywhere. Some circled the Galilean moons. Some traveled between them. Others boosted from Jupiter and headed to the Inner group moons. The majority of the dots were obviously civilian or corporation spaceships. Yakov adjusted the control, and orange dots appeared among them, a fraction of the number.

“Those are the known locations of Guardian Fleet warships,” Yakov said. “By their maneuverings, we should now be able to tell if they’re cyborg-controlled.” He pressed a button. Two of the orange dots turned green. “Those are under Secessionist control, those who have radioed us.”

“It doesn’t look as if any of those can help us against the Zeno,” Marten said.

“They cannot,” Yakov said.

After Jupiter, the biggest bodies were the four Galilean moons. The last two were larger than Mercury, while Io was larger than Luna of Earth. Io, the nearest to Jupiter, completed an orbital circuit every 1.77 days. According to Yakov, the mineral complexes on Io had light defensive equipment, enough to hurt orbital fighters, but negligible against even one meteor-ship.

“The cyborgs could easily cripple mining on Io,” Yakov said.

“How does any of this help us against the Zeno?” Marten asked.

“Patience,” Yakov said.

Europa was an ice-ball. The intense radiation from Jupiter and Io’s volcanoes made it a harsh place on the surface. Its ice provided most of the system’s water and protected the deep communities there.

A green dot orbited Europa.

Yakov indicated it. “We have a Secessionist dreadnaught and several patrol boats there. At the moment, it is our greatest concentration of strength.”

“This orange dot,” Marten said, pointing out a ship moving between Europa and Ganymede. “It’s not traveling in a direct route. Is there a reason for that?”

“Yes. The reason is the Laplace resonance.”

“Meaning what?”

Yakov began to explain.

The first three Galilean moons formed a pattern known as a Laplace resonance. For every four orbits Io made around Jupiter, Europa made a perfect two orbits and Ganymede made a perfect one. The resonance caused the gravitational effects that distorted the orbits into elliptical shapes. Each moon received an extra tug from its neighbors at the same point in every orbit. However, Jupiter’s strong tidal force helped to circularize the orbits and negate some of the elliptical shape. Those forces also affected ships traveling between the three moons.

Yakov clicked his control unit.

Three orange dots were highlighted as they moved into a low-Ganymede orbit. Those were clearly Guardian Fleet ships. Their commandant had threatened planetary bombardment if the surface fighting did not cease at once.

To try to stem the fighting between Secessionists and Guardians, Marten had recommended a doctored file. Too many Jovians still refused to believe that cyborgs had infiltrated the system. Therefore, Yakov recorded mock attack sequences by Osadar in the Descartes. These fabrications Yakov sent as beamed distress signals from several now-silent Guardian Fleet vessels—those warships they were certain were under cyborg control. The recording had helped convince some that the cyborgs had truly arrived.

Yakov changed the holographic image, showing Marten the entire Jovian System.

Counting the Galilean moons, there were sixty-three different bodies orbiting Jupiter. Most were asteroid-sized and contained less combined population than Ganymede, the second most populous moon. Four small moons known as the Inner group orbited Jupiter at less than 200,000 kilometers. In economic terms, they were important, as each was part of the automated, atmospheric system gathering helium-3. None had powerful military forces stationed on or near them, although there was civilian space-traffic there.

The rest of the Jovian bodies were far beyond the Galilean moons. The Himalia group were tightly clustered moons with orbits around eleven to twelve million kilometers from Jupiter.

There were three other groups. In order of distance, they were Ananke, Carme and the Pasiphae group. These asteroid-sized moons were far away from Jupiter and far from Athena Station, some over twenty-five million kilometers.

Marten frowned as he took in the immensity of the system. Jupiter was unlike any of the Inner Planets. There were vastly more moons here that were incredibly distant from each other. If they survived the Zeno, the coming fight would be unlike anything he’d known. Normally in a system, a single planetary body dominated strategic thought. Here, he hardly knew where to begin.

It brought him back to the Zeno. “What are we going to do about the drone?” he asked.

Yakov clicked the unit. It showed the Zeno heading for them. The Force-Leader rubbed his thumb along the control unit. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

Marten didn’t like the sound of that.

-3-

Far from Marten and his troubles was a small spec of a spacecraft. It was in the outer Jovian System and the craft contained one passenger. She presently lay on her bunk, staring at the bulkhead above. Her clothes had worn through in too many places, showing skin. It also showed that her muscles were firm and that she had lost weight. The lost weight heightened the shape of her breasts, and it had caused her butt to return to its shape she’d had at sixteen.

A lifetime ago, Nadia Pravda had slipped out of the Sun-Works Factory in a secret stealth-pod. She’d taken drugs for a time, before spacing them. To combat loneliness, she’d exercised endlessly, often to exhaustion. Despite the exercise, her new thinness had mainly come about because she was sick of the concentrates.

In the other room, a klaxon began to wail. It was at the lowest possible setting, but it caused Nadia to twist her neck as she stared in dumbfounded amazement.

With a frown furrowed across her forehead, Nadia sat up. She didn’t—

A bizarre whine occurred as the pod’s engine kicked into life. The pod’s walls vibrated and the craft’s thrust slammed Nadia against the bunk. She wheezed for breath. What was happening?

She blinked again. She had been alone a long time, trapped in these cramped quarters with nobody to talk to. Sometimes, she wondered if life would have been more bearable with Ervil along, even if the man had raped her every day of the voyage. At least she would have had someone to talk to. The endless loneliness, the weary journey out of the Inner Planets and to the Jovian System—

The klaxon blared as the thrust pinned her to the bunk. Nadia found it hard to lift her chest high enough to draw air. As she did, her ragged shirt pressed against her breasts.

She hated the loneliness. She hated being trapped in a small pod in the vastness of the universe. Why had Marten Kluge left her? She thought about him. She remembered his promises. He had lied. All men lied. All men made promises they never kept. It was their philandering nature to do so.

Then the klaxon and the thrust stopped.

Nadia made a gasping sound as she struggled upright. The frown lines had reappeared, but now she forced herself to sit up and swing her legs over the bunk. She pushed toward the other room, floating in the pod’s returned weightlessness.

She made a mouse-like noise upon entering the second compartment. The window shields had opened. Had the command been buried somewhere in the computer’s program? She couldn’t remember anymore.

What terrified her was the shape outside the polarized window. It was sleek and deadly looking, with military style lettering on the sides and obvious cannons poking from stubby wings. It… the sleek craft had matched velocities with her, seemingly remaining stationary now.

Nadia tried to speak. It had been weeks since she’d uttered anything. She finally croaked the words, “Patrol ship.”

The sight and her speech was more than her mind could comprehend. It caused her to forget she was floating weightlessly toward the window. She remembered as her hip bumped against the console and as her face mashed against the cool window. Her nose pressed against the ballistic glass and her tearing eyes stared at the spacecraft.

The throb in her hip combined with the sting of her nose helped engage the neurons in her brain. After endless months and months of journeying, she was near Jupiter. In another three weeks—

Nadia blinked her eyeballs. Had she phased out again? It had been happening more these past months. Had those three weeks already passed?

She frowned as a red light began to blink on the console.

With another of her strange yelps, Nadia pushed herself into the pilot’s chair and hurriedly strapped in. The red light—

“Oh,” she whispered. She remembered what the light meant. This was… was… was….

With another blink and with a trembling hand, Nadia flipped a switch.

“Identify yourself,” a female voice said from the com-unit.

More tears welled in Nadia’s brown eyes. They were large eyes: ones that Marten Kluge had loved to stare into. The tears helped fire neurons and synapses in her mind.

“This is your final warning,” the voice said.

Nadia trembled violently as she opened a channel. She made a croaking sound as she tried to speak. With slow deliberation, she moistened her lips. Then she bent near the console and whispered, “This is Nadia Pravda speaking. Who… who are you?”

“Say again?” asked the woman.

“I’m Nadia Pravda.”

“What sort of cyborg name is that?”

“What?” Nadia asked. She knew nothing about the Third Battle for Mars, and she knew even less about cyborgs.

“Are you a cyborg?”

“What’s… what’s a cyborg?” Nadia whispered.

“Who are you? Identify yourself.”

“I’m from Mercury,” Nadia said.

“You’re Highborn?”

“No!” Nadia said, with the first hint of emotion. Something flared in her eyes then. She moistened her lips again and cleared her throat. She was vaguely aware of hunger. That her stomach had almost shrunken into nothing.

“I escaped from the Highborn,” Nadia said. “I want asylum.”

“You’re a political escapee?” the woman asked.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“We’re Aquinas Patrol, Boat Seven, of the Guardian Fleet. You’re in the outer boundary of the Jovian Sphere. We request an inspection, which means we’re going to board you. Will you comply, Nadia?”

Nadia’s eyes grew wide. Someone was coming aboard her pod. Why had that made the klaxon wail and the pod’s precious hydrogen-particle engine to fire?

She glanced around at her vessel. Several squeezed tubes of concentrates floated in the air.

“If you refuse—” the woman began to say.

“No,” Nadia said, terrified that the patrol boat would leave, leaving her all alone again. She was actually talking with someone. It was such a glorious feeling. “I want you to inspect me. I want to go with you.”

“Are you well?” the woman asked.

“No,” Nadia said. “I think there’s something wrong with my thinking. Please—” the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Please, take me with you.”

“Do you have a vacc-suit?”

“I… I don’t know. It’s hard to think. I’ve been alone in space for a long time.”

“I understand.” There was compassion in the woman’s voice. “We’ll send a rescue team immediately. Patrol Boat—”

“Please,” Nadia whispered, “keep talking to me until the others come. I… I haven’t had anyone to talk to for a long time.”

“Someone will be there soon, Nadia. Tell me about Mercury.”

With the back of her hand, Nadia Pravda wiped tears from her cheeks. She had completed the journey. She had made it to the Jupiter System. Finally, everything was going to be all right. As the woman in the patrol boat listened, Nadia began to tell her about the Sun-Works Factory and her harrowing escape from it.

-4-

As Nadia boarded Boat Seven of the Aquinas Patrol over thirty million kilometers from Jupiter, Marten eased into a module in the Descartes command center. The command personnel were busy in the nearly silent room. Some tapped at computer screens. Others murmured into their implants. In the middle of the room, Yakov watched the main screen, his face impassive.

An hour had passed, meaning that the Zeno drone was thirty minutes behind them.

Marten switched on his vidscreen. Through the ship’s sensors, he watched the Zeno.

“Force-Leader,” Rhea said.

Yakov minutely turned his head.

“The Chief Controller wishes to speak with you.”

Yakov pursed his lips. “Put her on the main screen.”

The image of the Zeno faded away as Chief Controller Su-Shan appeared. There was faint color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there earlier, and the serenity that had been in her eyes before had changed. She still wore the sheer robe. Because of the large main screen, Marten noticed her delicate frame and the buds on her breasts. He’d never pictured philosophers looking like this. She appeared to be in a large room. There was a statue to her left of a satyr blowing a reed flute. Occasionally, behind her, an officer in a white robe strode past.

“Force-Leader Yakov, you have made an unwarranted leap in status.” Su-Shan hardly moved her lips as she spoke, which highlighted her elfin features.

“Force-Leader,” Rhea said. “The drone accelerates.”

“Give me a split-screen,” Yakov said.

On the main screen was a shot of the drone, its exhaust seemingly doubling the Zeno’s length. Beside it was the video image of the Chief Controller.

“Your altered cyborg file shows your duplicity,” Su-Shan was saying. “Surely, you did not believe that would fool us.”

“We are presently under attack,” Yakov said. “So if you could make your point, it would be greatly appreciated.”

“I grow weary of your falsified proceedings,” she said.

“Send her the sensor readings,” Yakov told Rhea.

“Is that wise?” Marten asked.

“Who speaks with such a strange accent aboard a Jovian warship?” Su-Shan asked. “Show him to me.”

“I’m in the middle of a battle and must disconnect,” Yakov told her.

“Do that and I shall order an immediate bombardment of the Galileo Regio,” Su-Shan said.

Marten had glanced at a map of Ganymede earlier. The Chief Controller referred to a dark plain that contained a series of concentric grooves or furrows. It was one of Ganymede’s most significant geologic features. Yakov had informed him that it was also critical to the Secessionists, stockpiled with weaponry and with secret planetary defenses soon to go online.

Yakov raised an eyebrow. “You accord my decision far too much weight, Chief Controller.”

“Again you prattle falsities.”

“Would you clarify your statement?”

“Force-Leader,” Rhea said. “The drone continues to accelerate.”

“Do not look away from me,” Su-Shan said as she accepted a missive from a hand appearing onscreen. She glanced at the message before continuing. “We have discovered your importance in the terrorist plot. As amazing at it sounds, you are either the heart or the intellect of the so-called Secessionist Rebellion. Therefore, you will dialogue with me or the Galileo Regio shall receive several precision bombardments.”

“Force-Leader,” Rhea said, “you must—”

“Begin the Code Six Defense,” Yakov told Rhea.

On the main screen, Su-Shan’s eyes hardened. She turned her head and seemed to be in the process of giving an order, possibly a most terrible order.

“I am Marten Kluge of the Highborn Shock Troopers,” Marten said, who’d been following the conversation closely.

On screen, Su-Shan turned back. It caused her robe to shift, to highlight her smooth skin underneath.

Marten hurried before the main screen. “I’ve come from Mars,” he said. He dug out his credentials. “I am a fully accredited representative of the Mars Planetary Union.”

“You expect me to believe such nonsense?” Su-Shan asked. “Firstly, your words are unreasonable, considering your original statement that you are a shock trooper. We have heard about them: Earth troops trained in advanced Highborn space-combat techniques. Secondly, the Martians would have informed us concerning an accredited representative in our system.”

“I was a shock trooper who escaped the Highborn. The Martians hired me during their recent struggle and afterward granted me accreditation. They learned that I journeyed to Jupiter and wished to open secret negotiations with you. Unfortunately, they feared Highborn and Social Unity communications-cracking. My proof is this,” Marten said, holding up the booklet’s cover and then paging through the contents, hoping their video could record it.

As Marten did this, the Descartes shuddered. Anti-missile rockets zoomed from the meteor-ship, rocking it with their combined blasts. Usually, Yakov would have detached the rockets before they fired. There was no time now. Point-defense cannons fired for long-range spreads, and the rail-gun shot minefield canisters into the Zeno’s likeliest path.

On the split-screen, Su-Shan glanced at something out of sight. “Your credentials appear to be genuine. You should have headed directly to Callisto.”

“As a representative of the Mars Planetary Union,” Marten said, “I can assure you that cyborgs boarded my ship.”

Su-Shan stared at him. “We are aware of the Zeno, Representative. It would have been better for you if you’d headed directly to Callisto. Now your doom is imminent. I suggest you return to your module and trust to Yakov’s performance.”

Marten hurried into the narrow module. He yanked a strap over his shoulder, buckling it with a click. Through the ship-wide intercom, Yakov was already instructing ship personnel to hurry to their acceleration couches.

Twenty seconds later, the Descartes engaged full thrust and began hard maneuvering. A harsh whine sounded and the command room’s bulkheads trembled. Marten was pressed into the module as a hardened piece of plastic dug into his side. Then the pressure eased as the ship’s thrust minutely changed. Now the side of Marten’s head pressed against a cushion.

Meanwhile, outside the warship, the anti-missile rockets sped for the drone. Depleted uranium pellets followed, spreading into predictive paths. Behind them tumbled the rail-gun’s barrel-sized canisters.

“Deploy three decoys,” Yakov said.

The ship shuddered as electronically powerful missiles left the meteor. ECM pulsed from each as they attempted to imitate the ship’s signals. Their task was to lure the enemy onto them instead of on the ship.

“Begin spraying the defensive gels,” Yakov ordered.

Rhea initiated the sequence. Outside, tubes sprouted. From them sprayed a thick gel with lead additives. It formed a cloud behind the ship as the engines cut out. In several seconds, the cloud expanded. It was a dull gray with glittering purple motes.

The Zeno gained on them. But now rockets, pellets and canisters zeroed in on it.

Suddenly, the Zeno sprouted targeting rods. Then it ignited its massive thermonuclear warhead. X-rays and gamma rays traveled microseconds faster than the rest of the annihilation. Those rays used the rods to focus and aim at the targeted vessels: two decoys and the meteor-ship itself. The nuclear destruction destroyed the rods and destroyed the targeting computer as the x-rays and gamma rays traveled at light speed toward their destinations.

The two decoys exploded. The other rays hit the gel-field. Some of the energy made it through. One x-ray beam struck the meteor shell and burrowed into it, burning crewmembers on the outer levels. The command room was in the center of the ship. The arbiter’s rooms were also deep within the protective core, and the crewmembers there were spared the worst effects.

As Marten stared at the screen, damage reports began to pour in. The ship’s motive functions had survived. But the Zeno had struck a blow that affected many personnel and would likely reduce the ship’s usefulness for days and perhaps weeks to come.

“Impressive,” Su-Shan said from the main screen. “It is a pity we weren’t able to give you a dreadnaught to command. Is that why you joined the rebellion? Did we under-appreciate you?”

“I have casualties to contend with,” Yakov said. “If you could make this brief, I would be grateful.”

Golden-banded Su-Shan studied Yakov. Then she smoothed out her robe. She spoke as before, without inflection. “In the next few hours, the Galileo Regio shall receive precision bombardments. You can thank yourself for it.”

“Mass retaliation?” asked Yakov.

“No. This is an eradication of ingrates, a purging of philistines. We have achieved near perfection here, which your rebellion now imperils. I assure you that we shall not watch this occur as bystanders, but ruthlessly act to save our unique civilization.”

“It would be good at a time like this if you could speak the truth,” Yakov said. “You plan this bombardment in order to save your rank.”

“I grieve to hear you utter such a nonsensical comment. In the Confederation, those best suited to rule do so. It is a matter of the Dictates and our rigorous tests.”

“If your tests are so accurate,” Yakov said, “why are all the governors from Callisto and not from Ganymede, Europa and Io?”

“Ah. Is this the source of your unwarranted arrogance? The answer is easily explained. We at Callisto possess superior genetics because we have striven to improve our bloodlines. Our educational system soars above yours and above those of Europa and elsewhere. If you desire rank, do as we’ve done. Earn greatness.”

“We have earned it,” said Yakov, his gaze boring into hers.

“No. You have acted as philistines and destroyers. We of Callisto serve as watchdogs over Jovian humanity. We use our teeth as it were and our valor to build. You have committed yourselves to the annihilation of things you cannot achieve. Perhaps you do not even understand what you’re attempting to destroy.”

“That’s why you plan to murder thousands of innocents,” Yakov said, his sarcasm heavy. “You’re proving your philosophic superiority, is that it?”

“You are a clever man, Force-Leader. Who taught you to dialogue as you do?”

Marten pushed himself beside the command chair. This was going entirely the wrong way. These two obviously hated each other. “You Jovians are the oddest people I know,” he said.

Su-Shan’s left eyebrow twitched, which for her placid mannerisms amounted to wild emotionalism. “You are a barbarian, given to animalistic outbursts. Still, you are an accredited representative and in theory belong to the governing class of Mars. Would you care to clarify your statement?”

“Your system is under massive assault and the two of you bicker over philosophy,” said Marten. “Who fired the Zenos at us? Who ordered those ships to attack? No one in the Guardian Fleet did, meaning that cyborgs ordered it. You’ve seen our data. The Rousseau really attacked the Descartes’ pod and likely stranded an arbiter in space.”

“You expect me to believe that obvious fabrication? I am insulted, Representative. The pod’s destruction was a clear ploy to murder your arbiter and create a sensation. Yakov achieved both. Now he and his kind will pay the penalty for trying to destroy perfection.”

“Have you spoken with Athena Station lately?” asked Marten.

“Of course,” said Su-Shan. “The controller there assured me that nothing unwarranted has occurred. And let me add, and this will dismay you: the War Council at Athena Station has decided to act decisively. They will shortly launch needed munitions, sending them to Callisto. Did you hear that, Force-Leader? Your rebellion is doomed.”

“What supplies?” Yakov asked.

A faint smile slid onto Su-Shan’s face. “Your rebellion has failed before it could truly begin. Disarm, Force-Leader, and save your people in the Galileo Regio.”

“Wait!” said Marten. “Athena Station is sending supplies to Callisto? Is that what you said?”

She gave him a level stare, with the faintest hint of a sneer. She looked at him as if he were a buffoon who had committed some buffoonish offense. “I am not in the habit of lying, Representative. Frankly, your insinuations weary me. And it causes me to wonder how you gained your credentials.”

“I already told you,” Marten said, “the hard way.” He was sick of being called a barbarian and fed up with her airy manners. “I gained them by putting my life on the line, by bleeding in combat and by killing armed enemies.”

“Gross barbarism,” Su-Shan said. “It shows your brute nature and likely your Highborn affinity that you revel in battle. You boast about fighting and killing and thereby show your lack of sensitivity and desire for reasoned dialogue.”

“Maybe,” Marten said. “But I earned my credentials.”

“Your insinuation is that I failed to earn mine. You disappointed me, Representative.”

“Have bullets ever whizzed past your ears? Have you ridden a torpedo into a particle shield and stormed your way aboard a warship?”

“I am a governor,” said Su-Shan, as she lifted her elfin chin. “I am not a brute guardian. Please, cease these veiled insults.”

“You use reason?” Marten asked, stung now. He wanted to break her placid manner, to see if she was human.

Su-Shan gazed at him coldly, as if he emitted a foul odor.

Marten shook his head, berating himself. He was as bad as Yakov and the others. Arguing with the Chief Controller was madness. He cleared his throat, deciding to try a different approach. “The Highborn commander has broadcast his data. He is the former Praetor of the Sun-Works Factory.”

“I have heard his proclamation, yes,” Su-Shan said. “It is bombastic twaddle. And it confirms my suspicion concerning the so-called Highborn. They are like our myrmidons: genetic aberrations, brutes in love with fighting. The Highborn are bigger than our myrmidons and display greater reasoning abilities, but their days are numbered because they’re too emotive. Perhaps you are not aware that emotions are irrational.”

“What about the cyborgs?” Marten asked. “You must have watched the files from Mars.”

“They are strange,” Su-Shan said, “a decided mistake in forced evolution. But that has no bearing on our present situation.”

“You’re wrong,” Marten said. “The cyborgs are here in your system. They’ve already taken control of many of your warships. I killed three as they tried to board my ship, and I helped destroy a dreadnaught filled with them.”

“You have joined the rebels? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Your hatred is blinding you to the facts,” Marten said.

Su-Shan stiffened. “How dare you accuse me of emotionalism? Reason guides me. Logic governs my actions. That you fail to understand this and insist on showering me with insults proves your brutishness. We are done dialoguing.”

“You must alert your orbital defenses,” Yakov said.

“They are alerted,” Su-Shan said, “never fear.”

“You’re likely going to need every warship you possess,” said Yakov. “I suggest you recall what you can from Ganymede.”

Su-Shan laughed softly. “Your ploy is obvious and fruitless, Force-Leader. The warships approach a low-Ganymede orbit. You must tell me quickly, what is your decision?”

“The cyborgs have arrived,” Yakov said. “On my oath, it is the truth.”

Su-Shan waved a small hand. Golden wires were wrapped around her delicate fingers. “Do you truly expect us to believe that you timed your rebellion with a cyborg assault upon Jupiter? The odds—”

Yakov leaned forward in his chair as he struck an armrest. “Can’t you understand?” he asked.

“You have spirit and possess a willingness to fight. None can doubt that. Now, however, you must make a momentous decision. Will you surrender your vessel and save Ganymede from precision strikes?”

Yakov glanced at Marten. It was the nearest to helplessness that Marten had seen from the Force-Leader.

Then it hit Marten, a possible key to turning the Chief Controller. He asked, “What if I show you an actual cyborg?”

“How could you achieve this feat?” she asked.

Marten unclipped a two-way, using his thumb to press a button and open a channel with Osadar. The device crackled more than before, and Marten wondered if the enemy gamma rays had caused that.

“Is there trouble?” Osadar asked.

“Hurry to the command room,” Marten said.

“Will you present me with an actor in a suit?” asked Su-Shan.

“You can decide that for yourself,” Marten said, as he clipped the two-way back onto his belt.

A minute passed. Then Osadar entered the room, causing command personnel to recoil. Osadar floated to Marten and stood before the main screen. Her melded torso, the branded OD12 on her forehead, the skeletal arms and legs, and the plasti-flesh cyborg features—Osadar stared at the small Chief Controller.

“It appears compelling,” Su-Shan admitted.

“What if Strategist Tan confirmed the cyborg’s reality?” Marten asked.

Su-Shan blinked rapidly. “Tan lives?” she whispered.

The strain in Su-Shan’s voice startled Marten. He nodded, and said, “Of course.”

Su-Shan turned away, and she brushed something out of her left eye. Soon, her small shoulders squared under her sheer robe and her chin lifted. When she regarded them again, she seemed colder than before.

Yakov looked up from his armrest. A small screen was embedded there. He’d been scrolling through something, reading data. “I’d forgotten,” he whispered to Marten out of the side of his mouth. “Our Strategist is the Chief Controller’s cousin.”

“Will that make a difference?” Marten whispered.

Yakov glanced at the main screen, and he rubbed his jaw so his hand partly covered his mouth. “Callisto law is firm, and there are few children among the governors. I doubt Su-Shan has any other relatives in the same generation. Yes. It is important.”

“Bring the Strategist into view,” Su-Shan was saying. “I would speak with her.”

Marten cleared his throat. “I’d gladly do it, but she’s presently under Suspend.” Suspend slowed all biological functions, putting its recipient into a hibernating state.

Su-Shan’s beautiful features turned pasty. “Barbarians,” she whispered. “You shall….” With a small finger, she rubbed the inner corner of her left eye as if removing a speck. Then she glared at them, and her eyes glistened. “Revive her at once. Let me speak to her face to face.”

“First,” said Yakov in his normally calm manner, “you must postpone the bombardment.”

“A Chief Controller cannot be blackmailed,” Su-Shan said slowly.

Yakov shook his head. “No blackmail is intended. We simply wish to prove our point, to prove the validity of our argument.”

“Yes,” Su-Shan whispered. “I will grant you an extension. Now hurry, bring me my cousin—I mean, revive Strategist Tan this instant.”

-5-

Small Strategist Tan lay nude on a medical slab with a med-officer hovering over her. He removed a tube from her side and sprayed the wound with quickheal. He had drained much of Tan’s blood, heating it and pumping it back into her. Then he had shocked her several times. Each shock had caused her to jerk and her thighs to quiver.

Finished spraying, the med-officer draped a thin blanket over Tan’s nakedness.

Tan shuddered suddenly and inhaled sharply. The monitor-board clicked, beeped and flashed lights and various numbers. The med-officer observed them as he studied Tan. She eased into a relaxed position and breathed normally. Then her fingers twitched and her eyelids snapped open.

“Lie still,” said the med-officer. He wore a yellow smock, with a yellow cap over his round head. He had soft hands and stroked her nearest arm, which lay on the blanket.

Tan blinked at him, and she frowned.

“You can’t talk yet,” he said. “Your mind is thawing. You’ll be fine in several minutes.”

It seemed as if she wanted to answer. She stared up at him. Her blinks were earnest and her eyes straining.

Marten watched the proceeding. The entire situation was a mess. The Confederation’s philosophical rulers were odd and strangely blind for people who prided themselves on using reason to solve each problem. Instead, it seemed as if they’d cut themselves off from their humanity, or as if they’d failed to consider their emotions. Thinking to become wise, they’d become foolish in bizarre ways. People weren’t creatures of cold reason, although people could reason. For instance, why did a man fall in love with a woman? Did that have anything to do with reason? No. It was passion, desire—it was a basic need that erupted with volcanic power.

Marten shook his head. The odds this time were piling against him. Callisto had more warships. The cyborgs had even more. The Secessionists side was the weakest of all. Maybe Osadar had it right. They should flee to Saturn and start over.

“Where am I?” whispered Tan.

“You’re aboard the Descartes,” the med-officer said. “You’re in the medical room.”

“I can’t remember what happened,” she whispered.

“It will come back to you.”

“Was I sick?”

“No.” The med-officer glanced at Marten.

Marten shook his head.

“Then why—” Tan groaned, and she strained to sit up.

The med-officer gently pressed her against the slab. “Wait a few more minutes.”

“The barbarians pumped me full of Suspend,” Tan whispered. “I have to warn—” Tan stopped talking as she lifted her head and spotted Marten.

“You’re helping them,” Tan accused the med-officer. “You will be demoted for this, possibly mind-scrubbed and sent to Io.”

The med-officer removed his hands from her, stepped back and glanced at Marten.

Marten eased near. “Your cousin is online, wishing to talk with you.”

“Su-Shan?” asked Tan.

“There have been a few changes,” Marten said. He told her about recent events.

Tan sat up groggily as she wrapped the blanket around her. “If what you say is true, why would Su-Shan order a bombardment of the Galileo Regio?”

“You can ask her,” Marten said, trying to forget that she was naked underneath the blanket.

Tan rubbed her face. When she lowered her hand and turned to the med-officer, she said, “I need a drink and something to eat.”

He gave her a bottle and some wafers. Once finished eating, she slid onto the deckplates and leaned against the med-slab for support.

“I need some clothes,” Tan said.

“Yes,” said the med-officer. “I’ll get them.”

“Are you under duress?” Su-Shan asked. She spoke through a wall-screen in Octagon’s former chamber.

Marten sat behind the desk. Osadar stood to the side. Strategist Tan faced the wall-screen.

“I am in the Arbiter’s room,” Tan said. “No one points at gun at me and no one has threatened me. But they did kidnap me from my quarters and hold me hostage under Suspend.” She glanced at Marten. “However, I no longer sense hostile intentions.”

“How can I be sure of that?” Su-Shan asked.

“Do the bands of Jupiter leak into space?” Tan asked.

A quick grin flashed across Su-Shan’s face.

Marten wondered what that signified. Was the phrase a code sequence?

“Where is Force-Leader Yakov?” Su-Shan asked.

“He’s indisposed,” Marten said.

“Ah,” said Su-Shan. “You mean he is busy plotting with the other ingrates. We shall soon break into their signals, never fear. Now, I demand that you escort Tan to Callisto.”

“First we must come to an understanding about the cyborgs,” Marten said.

Su-Shan hesitated. “What is your analysis concerning these cyborgs?” she asked Tan.

“The one standing in the room with me is real,” Tan said.

“Does that mean the others exist?” asked Su-Shan.

“It doesn’t have to follow,” Tan said. “Still, I think something odd has occurred in our system.”

“Yes,” said Su-Shan, “the rebellion.”

Tan shook her head. “I do not believe that Yakov planned open rebellion.”

Su-Shan minutely tilted her head as she studied her cousin. “The fact of their successful rebellion means they have planned it for some time. Therefore, Yakov did plan it.”

“Agreed,” said Tan. “What I meant to say is that Yakov did not plan to begin the rebellion this soon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Since boarding this vessel, I have monitored his messages. I have also conferred many times with the ship’s Arbiter. He was like a living stick-tight and searched for rebellion with unusual zeal. He had his suspicions, naturally, but never the proof.”

“Yet the rebellion occurred,” said Su-Shan. “Therefore, you failed to—”

“If I may,” Tan said, “I disagree with your overall analysis—I am inferring portions of your beliefs, that’s true, but I have ingested the thrust of your argument. You and I both know that system-wide oddities have occurred independently of the Secessionist Plot. We have both spoken about the strange events before this. We first suspected the Secessionists, and that is why I boarded the Descartes. After seeing one cyborg with my own eyes and witnessing further odd occurrences, I have begun to believe that cyborgs have indeed invaded our system.”

“What would be their purpose?” asked Su-Shan.

“Conquest, I should think. Solar System dominion.”

“You believe cyborgs have suborned Athena Station?”

“It is a possibility,” Tan said, “one worth considering.”

“What is your recommendation?”

“I may be the last Strategist of the War Council,” Tan said.

“If true, you would be the new Chief Strategist. Your words would have even greater weight, given that you were free to speak your mind.”

“While they do not overtly threaten me,” Tan said, “obviously, I am a prisoner.”

“I demand her immediate release,” Su-Shan told Marten.

“Under certain conditions,” Marten said, “I believe that Yakov would agree to that.”

“I cannot halt the bombardment,” Su-Shan said.

“Could you postpone it?” Marten asked.

“Possibly,” said Su-Shan, “depending on the timeframe.”

“Until the supply vessels from Athena Station reach a low-Callisto orbit,” Marten said.

“You believe the ‘vessels’ will turn into a cyborg strike,” Su-Shan said in reproof.

“Why does it matter what I believe?”

“Because it taints your good faith,” she said.

“If I’m right,” Marten said, “your postponement will have left more of the Jovian System intact. If I’m wrong, you can still send in your warships.”

“As the rebels gather reinforcements and send everyone in the Galileo Regio into the deep caverns,” Su-Shan said.

“If I’m wrong, you will have an over-powering fleet and easily be able to sweep aside whatever reinforcements the Secessionists have gathered.”

“So you’re saying it is to be total war?” Su-Shan asked.

Marten thought fast. “No,” he said. “Under those conditions, I would urge Force-Leader Yakov to surrender. And as the Mars Planetary Union Representative, I would be forced to recognize the ruling Jovian government.”

“You should recognize us immediately,” Su-Shan said. “I cannot understand why you don’t. As an accredited representative, it is your duty to recognize the lawful government.”

“Let us put that aside for the moment,” Marten said.”

“No,” Su-Shan said, “as a representative—”

“Chief Controller!” said Tan, giving her cousin a tiny shake of her head.

“Very well…” Su-Shan said. “I will agree to a temporary truce. You will give Strategist Tan a pod and she can set a course for Callisto.”

“I agreed,” said Marten. “Now, as to the details of the exchange….”

-6-

As Strategist Tan ejected from the Descartes and headed in a pod for a Guardian Fleet dreadnaught, millions of kilometers away Octagon gibbered for mercy.

He lay on a steel table, with his head strapped down and his torso, arms and legs secured by metal bands. He was stark naked, his manhood a shriveled lump that lay like a beaten dog on his hairless scrotum. Whenever he squirmed, punishment zaps sizzled across his skin. He quickly learned to lie perfectly still as the two cyborgs in the room continued their experiments.

Hypos, prods, needles and a strange, bulky instrument that looked like an oversized gun were attached to the nearest wall. A medical unit monitored his status, and its occasional sounds sent a shiver of terror through Octagon. He’d always hated doctors and dentists in particular. The taps, massages, drills, the needles and the cold scope on his chest, he had always hated them. Such ministrations had made him feel vulnerable again, as he had as an orphan in his youth.

He’d been reared in a harsh world of Platonic instructors, and Master Gensifer had been the worst of his teachers. Octagon could still feel the slaps against the back of his head, and the evil cheek-pinches by the man’s strong fingers. Worst of all, however, had been Master Gensifer’s acid tongue. Gensifer had used his tongue like a wire lash, and it had slashed Octagon’s young ego with brutal precision. It was strange, but over time, Octagon had come to admire Gensifer. He had seen the old man as a tower of strength. If he could become sharp-witted, if he could slap and pinch others, then he would be safe. He would be strong and secure. Maybe the savagery of his childhood had driven Octagon to excel. Maybe the need to defend himself had forced him to hurt others.

Octagon didn’t reason these things out on the steel table. Instead, he felt small again, vulnerable and weak. He loathed these sensations. They shriveled his gut. He was a hurt thing, and he would do anything to stop the hurting, anything to get off the table.

At the moment, Octagon remained rigid—the electrical discharges were too painful to resist. Only his eyes roamed free. A metal band circled his head, keeping his neck from moving. He strained his eyes to the left to see what the nearest cyborg detached from the wall. He peered to the right as the door opened. From the next room came an awful green glow. It implied horrors beyond imagination.

He was still aboard the pod, Octagon was certain of that. Where did they go? What did the cyborgs want with him, other than to convert him into one of them? The idea… is this why he had survived the vacuum of space? It was inconceivable. He had prayed. He had prayed to a myriad of deities.

A horrible thought occurred then. Which of the supernatural entities had heard him? Because he lay on this cold, steel table, the sickening conclusion was that an evil entity must have responded to his prayers. The entity probably laughed at a man’s attempt to wrest an ounce of joy from life.

Octagon wanted to whimper, and that made him cringe, fearing more shocks. Maybe whimpering offended cyborgs. However, no electrical discharges were released. Octagon strained to see what the awful beings were doing now.

A cyborg pulled the bulky, gun-like instrument from the wall. The metallic monster turned toward him, raising the barrel of the ‘gun’. The weapon showed a large opening, and something seemed to be in it. The cyborg floated nearer, both it and the bulky thing were weightless.

“What are you doing?” Octagon whispered. His voice was badly damaged from prolonged screaming. “I insist that you stop at once.”

Octagon writhed then, making horrible croaking sounds as the metal bands activated and zaps surged through him.

The second cyborg reached out to the medical board and clicked something. The shocks ceased, bringing blessed relief.

Octagon sagged as he blinked his watery eyes. Had the thing turned off the pain? Before he could think to ask why, the first cyborg pressed the bulky, gun-like thing against his neck.

“Wait,” Octagon whispered. “Tell me what you want.”

He tried to squirm away from the gun-thing, and this time no shocks tortured him. Octagon failed to rejoice, however. Spider-like claws emerged from the gun-thing and rigidly clasped his neck.

“If you’d just speak to me,” Octagon pleaded.

Then he screamed as knifing pain pierced the base of his neck. Hypos hissed against him as drugs entered his bloodstream. His neck numbed, but the cutting feeling horrified him. He tried to thrash away. Tears poured from his eyes and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He could feel the thing digging into him. It seemed the gun-thing deposited metal into his flesh. What was its purpose? Why did the universe hate him?

“Marten Kluge!” he hissed in a dry whisper of hate.

Before Octagon could elaborate on his hatred, his eyelids grew heavy and his bodily functions began to shut down. He did not know it, but the cyborg had inserted a Webbie-jack into him. They had modified him because they desired knowledge that only he possessed among their captives. Through careful tests, the two cyborgs had determined he possessed this knowledge.

As former Arbiter Octagon relaxed and entered sleep mode, the first cyborg removed the jack-gun. The second cyborg began to remove the metal bands. The restraints would no longer be necessary.

As Webbie Octagon sped toward his fate in the Hobbes’s pod, Gharlane rode a lift to the surface of Athena Station. He physically wished to observe the missiles launch. Then he would leave Athena Station and head for the Locke. The main cyborg fleet was gathering, even as the humans attempted their last-minute ploys.

Gharlane knew a moment of disquiet then, and he realized that once again he’d known better. Through the Web-Mind’s wish for one more warship, the biomass brain had possibly lost their advantage of strategic surprise. There were indicators that many of the humans still didn’t understand the situation. But Gharlane doubted the data. The chaos-factor humans from Mars had revealed too much, and the chaos-factor Highborn had added to that knowledge.

Gharlane froze with a sudden thought, a new input. He wondered if he should continue to categorize the Highborn as human, or as a subset of Homo sapiens or as new species. Men and chimpanzees were a different species. The relative differences between Homo sapiens and Highborn were stark. Were Highborn as superior to Homo sapiens as men were to chimpanzees? It was an interesting question. The answer might help the campaign to eradicate both. Was it possible for two species to coordinate? Could men and chimpanzees cooperate as allies? It seemed doubtful. The Highborn might be so superior to Homo sapiens that it was impossible for them to achieve a true alliance. The arrangement under which the Homo sapiens fought for the Highborn pointed to a possible master-slave relationship, however.

The lift slowed and the door opened. Gharlane exited into a large lobby of motionless cyborgs, each hooked by cables into a generator. It was a new technique: hot-shotted cyborgs ramped with overloaded energy. The Web-Mind readied a beta unit of overloaded troops. One cyborg with its cable slotted in its chest jittered, causing its metallic feet to rattle against the floor. Gharlane wondered how long that had been occurring. Then the cyborg’s eyes snapped open.

Recognizing the danger signs, Gharlane drew a laser carbine from the back-sheath on his vacc-suit. A red beam stabbed through the dim lobby. The fatally damaged cyborg screeched as it tore the cable from its chest-slot. Then its neck-armor melted as the beam stabbed through. Expertly, Gharlane sliced upward. As the screeching cyborg attempted a bounding attack, the beam cut the head in two. Electric sparks and loud whining sounds accompanied the hot-shotted cyborg’s clattering death.

Gharlane observed the others. They remained in sleep mode, charging with power. Gharlane was aware of the Web-Mind’s observation and assessment of his action. In three seconds, the Web-Mind’s presence departed, no doubt realizing that Gharlane had acted correctly.

After exiting the lobby and resealing the chamber, Gharlane floated outside. Several kilometers away the bulk of the Voltaire Missiles waited. They were hidden from view by the curvature of the surface and by intervening buildings.

Gharlane expected no less than annihilating victory from this strike. Cyborgs had modified the giant missiles for weeks, as this day had long been anticipated. Some of the missiles remained as before. Most contained advanced electronics, stolen goods from Onoshi Electronics, once one of the primary Houses of the Ice Hauler Cartel in the Neptune System.

Gharlane had a moment to wonder why the Prime Web-Mind hadn’t fully subjugated the Neptune System. It had allowed one massive habitat to survive, a preserve of Homo sapiens. Perhaps it was because of the analysis program that had discovered that the humans of Neptune System produced more technological equipment as free agents than as suborned cyborg units. Gharlane halted as he pondered another input of new thought.

Why didn’t the Prime Web-Mind build mini-Web-Minds as technological agents? Was there some creative process lost in the conversion to a mass mind? That was an interesting possibility. Is that why each Web-Mind used a master unit like himself?

That seemed more than probable. It also seemed like something that the Web-Mind would not want him to dwell upon.

Gharlane checked an internal chronometer. Ah, it was ninety-one seconds to liftoff. He waited, with the anticipation building, while his calculations ran through the known data.

Callisto orbited Jupiter approximately every seventeen days. Athena Station orbited every thirty-one days. Considering the position of Athena Station at the time of launch and Callisto’s continued orbit, the distance between the two in a straight-line flight would take a little over one hundred hours. The Voltaire Missiles possessed fantastic acceleration and of considerable duration, especially considering the relatively short distances between the two points. But the missiles would not use the fantastic acceleration at first. That would come later, when it was too late for the Jovians to react.

As an added bonus, there would be a second wave assault behind the missiles. The second wave contained a dreadnaught, a meteor-ship, a troop-ship and a squadron of patrol boats. The troop-ship would land on the smoldering surface to complete the destruction.

As Gharlane estimated destructive factors, the first Voltaire Missile blasted off from Athena Station. Missile after missile ignited their fusion core and erupted off the blast-pans. The ground under Gharlane trembled because of the mass exodus of missiles.

The first missile appeared—a space-needle with a bulbous warhead. Behind it followed others. Their hot exhausts blazed like fiery blue tails. There was no sound, as vacuum carried none. The missiles appeared as lazy behemoths, their tails rapidly growing to abnormal lengths. As the tails grew, the missiles accelerated. As each missile zoomed for Callisto, they quickly merged into one continuous blur of motion.

The quake ceased as the last Voltaire Missile lofted into the blackness. In short order, the final missile vanished from sight. Soon, the seemingly fast-moving star cluster vanished—the dots of the missiles’ exhaust.

The first strike had been launched. In a little over one hundred hours, the rulers of Callisto and the chief bastion of Jovian power would cease to exist.

Gharlane spun on his heel and headed back for the lift. There was much to coordinate. After his tasks were completed, he would leave Athena Station. He would leave to join his taskforce. A pleasurable sensation filled him, similar to the one he felt in the holographic chamber. He would scour the Jupiter System, ending all resistance. Cyborg victory would be assured.

-7-

Marten and Yakov sat in the Force-Leader’s room, hunched over his desk. On it was displayed the Jovian System, the orbits of the various moons and the known locations of fleet units.

The last few days had built an affinity between the two. Yakov’s calm demeanor, his deliberation and his inner intensity appealed to Marten. Most of all, Marten appreciated Yakov’s thirst for freedom and his desire to rip the shackles from Ganymede. Yakov reminded him of Secretary-General Chavez of Mars. Both men fought for more than just personal freedom, they also fought to free their world. As Marten mulled over the Jovian map, he wondered about that.

Why was he always running into this sort of man? Was… God trying to tell him something?

Marten shifted in his chair. That was too heavy for him. He was just an ex-shock trooper on the run, trying to stay ahead of an overwhelmingly intrusive political system and crazed genetic freaks with delusions of godhood. He’d fled to Jupiter to escape both. Now he was in the middle of another war, a three-way battle for control and maybe for the soul of humanity.

“If we could combine our fleets,” Yakov said, tapping the dot that represented Ganymede.

Marten tried to concentrate on the computer-map. He rubbed his chin and stared at the dots and the various, colored clusters representing warships.

Secretary-General Chavez and Force-Leader Yakov: both men risked their lives to free their worlds. For years, Chavez had struggled against Social Unity. Now the brave man was dead, turned into radioactive dust by the Highborn-launched Hellburner. The struggle had cost Chavez his life. However, Marten doubted the freedom fighter would have wished it any other way.

Yakov had plotted for years, becoming a key mover against the philosophically arrogant Dictates and the rulers of Callisto. The hidden fight had forged Yakov into a steely conspirator and into a ship’s captain of abnormal calm.

What did Yakov see in him? Marten wondered. He fought for freedom as hard as anyone did. True, it had always been personal freedom and freedom for the friends around him. His larger goals had always been on the horizon, to flee to a better, safer and easier place. Chavez and Yakov stayed in their bitter situations and fought with others to improve it.

Marten nodded slowly. Chavez and Yakov were superior to him. They had more guts. They stood their ground and they defied their enemies by battling head-on, trying to kick their enemy in the teeth. Maybe it was time to do the same. Maybe it was time to stop running and start advancing. Maybe it was time to realize that there was something more than just personal freedom.

As Yakov adjusted the desk-controls, bringing the outer Jovian System into view, Marten gripped his edge of the desk.

Should he run to Saturn? What if the cyborgs were already there? Would he run to Uranus then, and then run to Neptune? Why stop there? Why not run to Pluto? And then why end his flight at the edge of the Solar System? If his enemies were so powerfully strong, why not board or build a starship and flee to Alpha Centauri?

Marten squeezed the synthiwood edge. The Solar System had become too crowded. Social Unity, the Highborn and the cyborgs… there were too many sides, too many powerful forces all desiring to subjugate free men. He had run out on the Martians. He had been running for a long time, practically since birth if one counted his rat-like existence on the Sun-Works Factory. It was time to stop running. It was time to plant himself on a spot and say as the German Reformer Martin Luther had: Here I stand.

Marten looked up. “I’m in all the way,” he said.

Yakov gave him a quizzical glance.

Marten placed a palm on the computer-map. “I fled the Sun-Works Factory. I fled Social Unity. I fled from the Highborn and then I fled from Mars. Now I’m done running.”

Yakov leaned back as his dark eyes measured Marten. “We could use a soldier with your skills.”

“You mean my shock-trooper training?”

“Who else has stormed aboard a warship as you did? By the account, you absorbed more of the Highborn training than anyone else I know.”

“It was hell,” Marten said. “I never want to do that again.”

“No soldier does,” Yakov said. “But are you willing to say that you could do more as a slave than as a free agent?”

Marten grinned tightly. “That’s why I like you, Force-Leader. You cut through the crap and strike into the heart of a thing. What are you suggesting?”

“At the moment,” Yakov said, “nothing. I’m speaking about priorities.”

“Yeah,” Marten said. “I get it.” He squinted at an upper corner of the cramped room. He flexed his hands. Omi and he were the last of the shock troopers. Maybe that’s what he should do: train Jovian hard-cases into shock troopers. No one could match Osadar. No one could match the cyborgs, or match the Highborn for that matter. But that didn’t mean you should curl up and die. He had killed Highborn before. He’d even killed cyborgs. If free men were going to rise up, if they were going to win, then they needed the best space marines he could train.

He regarded Yakov. The silver-haired Force-Leader watched him. Those dark eyes were too knowing. Marten understood then why Yakov had been the hussade captain.

“If I have to go through Hell to be free,” Marten said, “I’ll do it.”

Yakov remained quiet.

“And if I have to do that so others can be free, yeah, I guess I’ll do what every soldier knows is the stupidest thing of all. I’ll volunteer for the shitty job because no one else can do it better than I can.”

Yakov said, “Being a Force-Leader sometimes means you have to understand that you’re the best man for the task, or that you’re the best at hand to do a thing.”

“Yeah,” Marten whispered.

Yakov’s lips tightened. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a bulb and two shot glasses. The Descartes was under acceleration, headed for Ganymede. Because of that, there was pseudo-gravity. Yakov squeezed clear liquid into each glass. With a knuckle, he slid a glass to Marten.

Marten waited until Yakov had filled his. They raised their glasses and touched them, causing them to clink.

“To victory,” Yakov said.

“Victory,” Marten said. He tossed the Jovian whiskey into his mouth and swallowed fast. It hit in his stomach with a blast of warmth. Then his face flushed with the heat of alcohol. This was better than the synthahol he used to drink in Greater Sydney.

Yakov swept up both glasses and the bulb, depositing them back into the bottom drawer. His grin was wider than Marten had ever witnessed. That’s how Yakov must have looked on the day Ganymede U won the hussade trophy.

“In a fight,” Yakov said, “I’ve noticed that you’re a man that stands. You’re one I want on my side.”

“I’ve thought the same about you,” Marten said.

“We are guardians,” Yakov said. The grin vanished as an inner fire lit his eyes. “The philosophers who wrote the Dictates believe they should rule. They are wrong. The ones who dare should rule.”

“Men should rule themselves,” Marten said.

Yakov snorted. “You’ve fought long enough to know that most men cannot rule themselves. They need others to tell them what to do.”

Marten didn’t want to argue, not now, not with Yakov. Besides, he wasn’t going to change Yakov’s opinion today. And he was learning that maybe only he among humanity knew that freedom for everyone was the greatest prize. The time to preach that would come later. First, humanity had to survive. The people of the Jupiter System had to live through the cyborg assault.

“I just want you to know that I’m staying until we win or die,” Marten said. “If that means going down to Ganymede with a laser carbine, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“You’re too valuable for ground action,” Yakov said.

“Come again?” Marten asked.

“That’s part of your skills. You’ve fought through terrible perils more than once. You know more about Social Unity, the Highborn and possibly the cyborgs than anyone else here does. That knowledge is vital.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because knowledge of your enemy is always vital,” Yakov said.

“Yeah,” Marten nodded, “the HBs have a maxim about that.”

“Who are these HBs?” Yakov asked.

“It’s what the shock troopers called the Highborn.”

Yakov ingested the information before he bent toward the computer desk and began to adjust controls. They had been studying known warship locations.

“The first phase of our strategy is to keep the Guardian warships from attacking Ganymede,” Yakov said.

Marten agreed with a snort, meaning, that was obvious.

The two of them had been carefully studying the strategic situation. It wasn’t just about who had the most ships. Position was critical too.

Marten pointed at the red cluster of the so-called supply vessels that had launched from Athena Station. “This shows us the cyborgs are frightened.”

“An open attack shows that?” asked Yakov.

“Their stealth campaign indicates they would have preferred to strike Callisto with a secret attack. Now, they’ve launched an open strike.”

“Most sensor date indicates they are supply vessels of the Montesquieu-class,” Yakov said.

“Osadar did some checking. Montesquieu-class vessels are similar in tonnage to Voltaire Missiles.”

“I am well aware of that.”

“Good ECM could be masking some sensor data.”

“I have radioed Su-Shan again,” Yakov said, “arguing the same thing.”

“What did she say?”

“That she would relate my words to Callisto High Command,” said Yakov.

“I believe the cyborgs are striking openly instead of in secret for a reason,” Marten said. “The reason is fear.”

“Can cyborgs fear?”

“Maybe not as men fear,” Marten admitted. “So call it something else. The point is they’re striking now, probably before they were ready to do so.”

Yakov adjusted the controls, bringing the fourth Galilean moon into sharper focus. Heavy laser satellites ringed Callisto. On its surface were large missile installations and point-defense cannons.

“If the cyborgs can smash Callisto, they will surely attack Ganymede next,” Yakov said. “If they can destroy Callisto… they will have gone more than halfway to achieving victory.”

“Would the cyborgs have launched an open strike if they believed it would fail?” Marten asked.

“Are the cyborgs infallible?”

“Their destruction in the Mars System would say no,” Marten said. “But I’d hate to bet against them in their first open strike here. They will have studied the matter in depth. If they didn’t believe they could smash Callisto, I doubt they would have attacked.”

“Did your Osadar cyborg suggest these things to you?”

Marten nodded as he said, “You have to call Su-Shan again. You have to convince her to target the so-called supply vessels.”

“You and I know it is the most rational course,” Yakov said. “The philosophers will believe otherwise.”

Marten bit his lip, wondering how you woke a blind man to his doom. He recalled an ancient quote his father had used. It was from an ancient philosopher named George Orwell. Orwell had said, ‘It would take a Ph.D. to believe something so stupid.’ The High Command of Callisto seemed to be hard at work proving the adage.

-8-

As the Jovians and cyborgs readied for the next round of battle, the Highborn ship continued its desperate circuit around Jupiter. Unfortunately for them, things were going badly, and it had forced the Praetor to act directly to save the warship.

In his battleoid armor-suit, the Praetor clanked through the hard decelerating vessel. Deck lighting flashed erratically, creating strobe-light conditions. One light shattered, showering sparks onto the gunmetal-colored battleoid. The suit’s servos whined at full power and still the Praetor found it difficult to move through the corridor, as the intense Gs made every step miserable.

The ship’s engines had burned at ninety-seven percent capacity for days. One of the dwindling crew had died because of it. Radiation had caused an embolism in his brain. The Highborn had bled to death before anyone discovered the problem.

In the corridor, the Praetor breathed heavily as he slid another armored foot forward. Sweat bathed him even as the suit’s conditioner blasted his flesh with cold. In such a battleoid-suit, he could have made one hundred-meter leaps on Earth. With such a suit, he could have taken out a company of SU soldiers or a squad of cybertanks. In the gut-wrenching, decelerating ship, with the murderous Gs pummeling him, the suit could barely move.

The Praetor yearned to halt and rest. His lungs labored for air and his side ached horribly.

“You have three minutes and forty-three seconds to overload,” a harsh, Highborn voice said in his ears.

The Praetor snarled, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He wasn’t going to have made it to Uranus and back to die as an unsung hero in the Jovian System. Grand Admiral Cassius had thought to trick him, to sweep him from the board like a pawn. He—the Praetor—had won the Third Battle for Mars, launching the missile strike that had opened the way for the Doom Stars. Now he was going to conquer the Jupiter System with a single warship—and a badly crippled ship at that. It was going to be the greatest military exploit in the annals of war. Only Francisco Pizarro of Old Spain would have done something in league with what he planned.

The Praetor wasn’t a historical expert like the Grand Admiral, but he recalled his lessens from the crèche-school. Even for a Highborn, he had a phenomenal memory. He’d climbed to Fourth Rank for a reason.

The Praetor laughed madly and wheezed, utterly exhausted. His throbbing limbs threatened to rebel. He would soon be reduced to a quivering lump, unable to move. Then he would die as a loser. Grand Admiral Cassius would have defeated him. Cassius would have won.

“Never,” the Praetor whispered, as he forced another foot forward.

The Praetor concentrated until his mind became like a ball of energy. He willed his legs to shuffle forward. He clamped down on the pain, on the exhaustion.

Will… iron will….

“I am the Praetor,” he whispered. “I will conquer the Jupiter System.”

He remembered a lesson from his crèche-school. It had thrilled him with its daring, with its sheer ruthlessness. In his strange state of mind, which was like a feverish dream induced by the constant declaration and his straining effort to cross the ship, the Praetor hallucinated. For a time, he believed he was Francisco Pizarro.

Pizarro had been a Spanish Conquistador, perhaps the greatest of that daring breed. In 1531, Pizarro had set out on the most improbable conquest of history.

Luckily, Pizarro had Hernan Cortez’s fabulous conquest of Aztec Mexico before him as a guide. Pizarro knew that Spanish swords, gunpowder-propelled arquebuses and horses combined with Spanish courage could triumph over the hordes of Indian warriors with their stone-edged swords and hatchets. On first sighting horses and their riders, many Aztec and Incas had believed that the horsemen were some odd creature like centaurs. Thus, the horsemen had fiercely intimidated the natives. That didn’t mean the Indian nations were primitive in a quantitative sense, at least not compared to the conquistadors. The golden city of Mexico had awed Cortez and his men with its beauty, its teeming population and cleanliness, being bigger and more orderly than any Spanish city of that time. The same held true in the case of the Inca cities and for Pizarro’s expedition.

Pizarro had heard wondrous stories about a vast empire in the interior mountains. For years, Pizarro searched for this elusive empire. Then in the fateful year of 1531, he landed at Tumbes, what was now the smoldering ruin of San Miguel. From there, Pizarro marched with a minuscule army into the towering Andes Range. He set off with one hundred and two infantry, sixty-two horsemen, two cannons and a pack of savage mastiffs. He marched toward the Inca Empire, which boasted a standing army of over a hundred thousand veteran warriors.

The Inca Empire was the largest that primitive humanity had ever constructed at such a high elevation. They had gold-laden cities on mountaintop locations, richly cultivated fields on the mountainsides, rope bridges spanning amazing gorges and a powerful veteran host of victorious warriors.

Inca scouts watched the pitifully small Spanish force wind its way through the mountains. The Inca, the Emperor Atahualpa, scoffed at any noble who told him to fear such a weak force of white men. At any time, it was obvious, hardy warriors could ambush the Spaniards and annihilate them.

So Emperor Atahualpa allowed Pizarro to march to Cajamarca, where he waited with an army of over 40,000 warriors. Pizarro and his seemingly frightened men huddled in a walled village, surrounded by the seething mass of highly decorated warriors.

A day passed, and Emperor decided to go see these strange men with white skin and shining armor. He entered the walled compound with five thousand Incas armed only with ceremonial axes. They bore him on a litter into an empty square.

All the Spaniards waited in the buildings, gripping their swords and priming their clumsy arquebuses. Each gun weighed ten to fifteen pounds, the gunner needing to rest the barrel on a hooked stick in order to fire. Finally, a Spanish priest walked alone to face the Inca. With an outstretched Bible in hand, the priest demanded the Inca surrender to them. When the Emperor was given the Bible, he threw it down in disgust. The priest backed away horrified, and with a shout, he gave the signal.

The Spanish erupted from their buildings. On horse and using lances, the cavalry waded into the masses of Inca nobles. The swordsmen hurried after them. The two cannons boomed and the savage mastiffs tore into Indian flesh.

The astounded Incas died as they tried to defend their emperor. The Spanish went berserk, filled with terror at the numbers of their enemies and filled with greed because of promised treasure.

The only Spanish blood spilled that day occurred when Pizarro grabbed a Spanish sword that slashed at the Emperor. It cut Pizarro’s palm, but it saved Atahualpa’s life. With the emperor’s capture and hustling into captivity, Pizarro paralyzed the massive host waiting outside the walled village. As in the Aztec Empire, the Inca or Emperor was considered semi-divine and his person sacrosanct.

The shrewd Spaniards understood this to a nicety. And that spelled the end for the Inca Empire, which had effectively fallen to the gold-crazed, God-besotted and glory-mad conquistadors of Spain.

Francisco Pizarro had conquered an empire of over ten million with sixty-two horsemen, one hundred and two infantry, two cannons, a pack of savage mastiffs and inspired daring.

What a mere preman could do among his fellow subhumans, a Highborn could outdo. The Praetor was absolutely certain of this. First, however, he must survive. Second, he had to end the terrible velocity that had nearly sent him to an inglorious oblivion in the void. The Praetor returned to reality then and realized that he had been standing still in his battleoid-suit for several long seconds.

“One minute and thirty-one seconds,” a Highborn said in his ears.

The Praetor hissed a litany of curses as he struck the hatch before him. The battleoid armor supplied him with exoskeleton power. The open palm caused steel to crumple and the hatch to tear from its moorings. It clanged in the conversion chamber as a fierce red glow bathed the Praetor’s ten-foot battleoid suit.

Covered in sweat, trembling from exhaustion but driven by a greater will than Francisco Pizarro had ever possessed, the Praetor entered the deadly chamber. Radiation bathed him. He heard the clicks in his suit and knew what it meant, too many rads, far too many. He would have to endure a chemical bath later and ingest many anti-radiation pills. He still might die. But unless someone came in here and fixed the malfunction, they were all doomed.

“I am the Praetor,” he whispered.

He shuffled ten more meters and then he un-shouldered the welding unit. Groaning, he sagged to his knees. It was hard to see, and his skin prickled horribly. The warning clicks nearly drove him to despair.

As the missile-ship decelerated, the Praetor began to work on the malfunction, his welder’s blue arc the only hope against the glowing red that meant death.

“Twenty-seven seconds until overload,” the voice said.

“Sixty-two horsemen,” the Praetor whispered, “one hundred and two infantry, two cannons—”

“Lord, are you well?” the voice asked.

“One missile-ship,” the Praetor said, “that’s all I need to win the Jovian System.”

“He’s raving,” Canus said.

Perhaps Canus was right. The blue arc continued to burn as the seconds reached zero and beyond. Still, the blue arc glowed, and the red glow lessened by agonizing degrees.

Finally, Canus said, “He did it.”

The Praetor snapped off his welder and lurched to his feet. He wanted to claw and scratch at his skin. His guts felt awful, but he’d be damned if any of the crew would drag him to sickbay. He would walk there, and he would swallow the pills and take the chemical baths. He had a planetary system to win and enemies to trick. He was the Praetor, and he would endure until the Sun no longer shined on the worlds of men.

-9-

As the Highborn ship circled the mighty gas giant at terrific velocity, and as Jovian and cyborg warships converged toward their various destinations, Strategist Tan found herself involved at the highest level of strategic planning. It was a three-way conference via lightguide laser.

Tan had scoured her pod for listening devices. Stick-tights, insect-crawlers, passive probing, she had studied all of these during her stint as arbiter while aboard the Kant, the premier dreadnaught of the Guardian Fleet. The Kant was presently at Ganymede, the flagship of the flotilla ready to bombard the wayward Secessionists. After scouring the pod and finding nothing, Tan had concluded that either Yakov was cleverer than she was or her pod was clean.

Yakov could never have achieved his goals without Marten Kluge and his cyborg. They had tricked her regarding Arbiter Octagon.

For hours, Tan had sat in the pod, in a lotus position, practicing her meditations. She’d defeated her grosser emotions of anger and disgust at her naiveté. She was a Strategist. She might even be the Chief Strategist of the Confederation. Therefore, she purged herself of unworthy feelings and filled her mind with syllogisms, logic formulas and pertinent axioms from the Dictates. These soothed her mind. She was honest enough with herself to admit to a stubborn core of… hard feelings against Force-Leader Yakov. Marten Kluge was a barbarian and therefore unworthy of her anger. Yakov on the other hand—

Her musings ended then as she opened a secure channel with her cousin, Chief Controller Su-Shan. It proved the strength of their bloodline that both of them should stand high in military planning. It also proved their educational integrity and fierce drive to excel.

Through the lightguide laser-link, Su-Shan outlined the situation to her. Two days had passed since the supply vessels had launched from Athena Station. Some seemingly insignificant data kept troubling certain quarters on Callisto. Now the Solon of Callisto, the highest wisdom of the Dictates, wished to confer on high strategy with Chief Controller Su-Shan and with Chief Strategist Tan. Finally and decisively, they would decide on the nature of the struggle and act accordingly.

“But I’m only a Strategist,” said Tan, “a Strategist of the third class. Surely, there are others higher ranked than me to decide these things.”

“I believe that is false,” Su-Shan said. “Events have likely propelled you into the highest slot of the War Council. You’ve also been rigorously trained in strategic matters, you have the required rank and you’ve witness an actual cyborg.”

“Meaning what?” asked Tan.

“That the Solon trusts you. Now clear your mind of clutter. Then fill it with the truths and axioms of the Dictates. We must possibly decide the Jupiter System’s fate.”

Tan blinked at the vidscreen showing her cousin. She was still far away from her dreadnaught. This—Tan pressed her palms together and sought the inner peace of the Dictates.

“Yes,” she said, “I await the three-way.”

2351 March 4, the three-way Strategy Conference of Guardian Fleet. The participants: The Solon of Callisto (identifying name submerged in his office), Chief Controller Su-Shan of Callisto Orbital Defense and Strategist Tan of the War Council. Reference symbols: Solon, Su-Shan and Tan. Conference committed via laser lightguide system.

SOLON: We three have a solemn duty to perform concerning the future of the Dictates and our perfected system of life.

Men, and in this I reference all humans, are born in a chaotic world of seething emotions. It causes endless grief and boundless misery. This we have alleviated by our intellect and rationally reasoned codes. I would like to say we have ended unproductive thought and hence, false actions. By false I mean to say mindless, useless actions, which are ultimately harmful to life. But such thoughts occur even in our idyllic system. This saddens me, a sadness I allow to color my hope but never my overarching reason.

SU-SHAN: You are the Solon of the Confederation. You have achieved rarified rationality.

SOLON: I would be false to the Dictates to dispute your statement. Yes, you speak the truth.

TAN: I am humbled by it.

SOLON: Social mechanisms force us to utter such statements. Perhaps what you say is true. However, rationality does not accept humility, because it hints at false modesty. My reason compels me to say, ‘Expunge this humility, Chief Strategist.’ Today, you must excel in rationality. I need your logic. I need your intellect. And in saying ‘I’, I quite naturally mean all the Confederation. I am the supreme mind. In me, I codify all that is best about the Dictates. If I am false, the system we have erected with such care is false. Because the system is true, it means that I must be true and my thoughts filled with penetrating insight.

SU-SHAN: Have you arrived at a conclusion concerning our objective?

SOLON: Your rigor is lacking, Chief Controller. I will not accept that today. A conference of this magnitude means that I have not reached a conclusion. Today, I will add your rational expertise to my incisive thinking to arrive at the needed conclusion. This united effort will achieve greater accuracy than my thoughts alone could do. Even though I am the supreme logician of the Confederation, I will gain by your references and insights unique to your perspectives. Therefore, let us lay out the subject and arrive at the truth through our united reason.

SU-SHAN: Shall I state the problem?

SOLON: As the wisest among us, I will state it, and I will state it aptly and precisely. Do I have your full attention?

SU-SHAN: Yes.

TAN: The Dictates guide me.

SOLON: Our society has achieved near-perfection in regards to human potential. In this, naturally, I refer to reason. The wisest among us rule. The most spirited fight and the sensation-gluttons perform the laborious and onerous tasks. Since their minds are already dulled through the indulgence of their basic drives, it harms them little committing these repetitive jobs. Those who love battle, risk their lives fighting. We, who reason, think for the rest, as would benevolent parents. Now, however, a virus attacks paradise, an infestation of hostile organisms that cannot comprehend the damage they do.

SU-SHAN: Pray forgive my interruption. Do you accept the evidence to mean that cyborgs exist in dangerous numbers within our system?

SOLON: Chief Controller, Chief Controller, this hasty rush to assumption is entirely unwarranted. We are the strategic triumvirate. We must deliberate and cogitate with precision. Let barbarians rave and foolishly stumble into decisions. That is not how the Dictates teach us to proceed.

SU-SHAN: You are the Solon.

SOLON: A rational truth spoken with meaning that implies I can guide the three of us into strategic brilliance. I concur, and I know now that my choice in confiding in you two was correct.

TAN: Are we under any time constraints?

SOLON: That is subtle, Chief Strategist. If I have a flaw, it is in waxing prolix. Yes, in war, in battle, time constrains the individual soldier and often the executive agent. I will now turn my intellect onto the first critical subject. Athena Station has launched supply vessels. Incoming data suggests these vessels had jumped to velocities that exceed human endurance levels.

TAN: Our file on the shock troopers indicates that humans can endure tremendous Gs in special suits. The Guardian Fleet does not possess such suits, however.

SOLON: Has the Guardian Fleet possibly built such suits in secret?

SU-SHAN: I am unaware of it.

TAN: No.

SOLON: Can you be absolutely certain, Chief Strategist, that a hidden department in the Guardian Fleet didn’t authorize such tests?

TAN: I am certain enough to risk my reputation on it.

SOLON: We are not here for histrionics, Chief Strategist.

TAN: The Dictates prohibit that. And such was not my intent. I feel I must add that in no way does my statement imply histrionics.

SOLON: Hm…. I detect imprecision in your statement. We must study each possibility in turn to arrive at certain knowledge. I will also point out that your reputation does not correlate with possible, secret suit-testing.

TAN: You are the Solon. Yet rationality… compels me to a different methodology.

SOLON: (in a cool tone) Do you wish to instruct me?

SU-SHAN: (hurriedly) Your intellect shines too brightly for either of us to hint at ‘instruction’.

TAN: The Chief Controller verbalizes my own belief, sir. Perhaps this is a foolish thought. I will state it in the hope of instruction from the Solon. You, as the guidance of an entire world, of an entire planetary system, have a myriad of responsibilities. Each decision requires time and an iota of nervous energy and firing neurons. As a Strategist and intimately involved in the war—

SOLON: We have not declared a state of war. Therefore, your final statement is false. I must insist that you apply a more rigorous use of the language. Truth is the watchword, our armor against barbarism and its accompanying ignorance.

TAN: Naturally, I agree, sir. But isn’t it true that the Secessionists have foisted violent action upon us?

SOLON: ‘Secessionist’ implies a higher level of sanction to their actions than is warranted. They are terrorists, and as such must be expunged with ruthless vigor as an exterminator sprays for fleas.

TAN: Yes, I see your point. Ah. I wonder if you could clarify a point for me. In an emergency, can an enemy of my enemy act as my temporary ally?

SOLON: Show me this enemy.

TAN: I believe that the growing velocity of the supply vessels lends credence to the cyborg hypotheses.

SOLON: Hm. I have examined this so-called ‘cyborg file’. The Mars barbarians or the terrorist Force-Leader staged it. The file shows a single cyborg committing acted sabotage. I find it completely unwarranted to base a strategy on a doctored file and am surprised you suggest it.

TAN: I agree on the doctoring of the file. Still, data from the Rousseau, the missile attack on the Descartes and the advancing vessels all logically infer a stealth enemy of unique capabilities.

SOLON: Or greater cleverness from the terrorists than we expected. Remember, they have benefited under our philosophical and educational systems. Their ploys could be deeply laid indeed.

TAN: The law of simplicity implies a cyborg stealth-attack as the more probable explanation for these various occurrences.

SU-SHAN: You overstep yourself, Chief Strategist. The Solon can reason all this—

SOLON: There is no need to defend me, Chief Controller. I called for the three-way to add your minds to mine. I concur with the Chief Strategist’s analysis.

SU-SHAN: (whispered) You believe that cyborgs are attacking Callisto?

SOLON: Reason would suggest this, yes.

SU-SHAN: I don’t understand. You just said—

TAN: The Solon is right!

SU-SHAN: But his preamble implied differently. All those words—

TAN: Don’t matter in face of the cyborgs. We must act now to save our system.

SU-SHAN: If the supply vessels are cyborg-controlled—Sir, we must summon the warships from Ganymede to help defend Callisto.

SOLON: It is too late for warships to affect the Battle for Callisto.

A seven-second period of silence ensues.

TAN: (quietly) May I query you, sir?

SOLON: I will indulge your curiosity by answering your question before you ask it. The Dictates have failed us versus the cyborgs. It is a galling truth to ingest. For hours, I have struggled internally with this truth. Now we must decide on the future. I have hesitated, and I hesitate still to arrive at the bitter conclusion.

SU-SHAN: Orbital Defense will defeat whatever—

SOLON: There is a high probability that Callisto will never recover from the coming attack. And by Callisto, I mean the paradise created by the Dictates.

TAN: We must not surrender or give in to despair, sir.

SOLON: (monotone) Who do we wish to succeed us? The terrorists have used this opportunity to do us harm. They lack mercy. The cyborgs… do they possess higher reason than we do?

TAN: They’re trying to annihilate us. The Dictates show—

SOLON: The cyborgs have reasoned more deeply than we have. Our coming destruction proves their superiority.

TAN: Would such reasoning also imply that the Secessionists are our superiors?

SOLON: (coldly) You are hereby relived of your station, Chief Strategist.

TAN: Article twenty dash A3 states that only a quorum of the War Council can relieve a Strategist from his or her post.

SOLON: You dare to quote articles to me?

TAN: I have begun to wonder if you are well, sir. The strain of office—

SOLON: I am the Solon, the wisest of Callisto. Emotive despair cannot shatter my reason. I am sending immediate orders to the ships at Ganymede to begin their bombardment. If we cannot survive the coming nightmare, neither shall the ingrates of Ganymede. With our death, the cyborgs will have proven our superiors. We can only hope they read the Dictates and see its value in the new order.

TAN: Su-Shan, the Solon is sick. You must send your Orbital Defense arbiters down to the surface and relieve the Solon and his archons from office.

SOLON: I have already relieved you, Chief Strategist.

TAN: (to Su-Shan) I will contact the Ganymede Flotilla and instruct them to coordinate with the Secessionists. We must unite against the cyborgs. We must save our civilization from destruction. Do you hear me, Su-Shan?

SOLON: I am the wisest. You will obey me or face extinction.

SU-SHAN: (softly) I hear you, Chief Strategist.

SOLON: (monotone) We are doomed, but we can decide and should decide on whom is the most worthy to succeed the Dictates. I relieve you both of office. I await the end now that I foresee it with such clarity. Humanity has lost. The New Order of melded-men is at hand.

TAN: Reason implies that you fight until you’re dead, sir. We’re not dead yet. Therefore, we shall fight to survive and reinstate the Dictates in whatever remains after the war is won.

SOLON: We are doomed. The cyborgs have achieved strategic surprise and superiority. I deem them worthy to replace us—and my voice is decisive. For none can see as well as me, as I am the supreme intellect of Jupiter.

TAN: Send those arbiters at once, Su-Shan, and begin making priority targets. The Solon has said one thing I agree with. Those aren’t supply vessels heading for Callisto, but the first wave of the cyborg assault.

End of the three-way Strategic Conference.

-10-

From her coasting pod, Chief Strategist Tan spoke urgently to the commandant of the Guardian Fleet flotilla in low-Ganymede orbit.

She sat in the pilot’s chair as she wore her Strategist whites. It had taken some doctoring, but now she wore a Chief Strategist’s megastar pinned to her chest. A diamond glittered in a five-pointed, golden star.

Tan strove for calm as she stared into the vidscreen. Serenity and authority mixed with assuredness is what she attempted to project.

The flotilla commandant appeared in the screen. He was older, bald, with rejuvenated skin. He had chubby cheeks like a freakish baby. He rode aboard the Kant, an Aristotle-class dreadnaught.

Static caused his image to waver. Ganymede was in the fierce Jovian magnetosphere, a flattened area or belt that included Io and Europa. Of the Galilean moons, Ganymede was the only one that had its own magnetosphere, which carved a small cavity inside Jupiter’s vast magnetic field. Jupiter also acted like a pulsar, a radio-emitting star. Those radio waves often interfered with Jovian communications the closer one approached the gas giant.

As the commandant spoke, his words were drowned out in the static.

Tan adjusted the controls. The chubby-cheeked image wavered worse than before, but finally stabilized. She raised gain, and shouted, “Could you say that again, Commandant?”

“The Solon has instructed us.” The commandant had a deep voice. Behind him on the vidscreen, an officer floated past. “We are forbidden on pain of death from having further communications with you.”

“If you will check article two of the Warship Code,” Tan said, “you’ll find that the Solon lacks the authority for such a military order.”

The commandant scowled. “We have a war in progress, and—”

“The Solon declared that there is no war.”

“What nonsense is this?” the commandant said.

“I have a file of our three-way conference. Prepare to receive it.”

“Did you not hear me?” the commandant asked. “I am forbidden from doing so.”

Tan gave him a serene stare. “On the possible eve of our destruction, is it rational to follow madness into oblivion?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “But your query has no bearing on the situation.”

“I suggest you apply common sense to our conversation. What harm can occur from listening to my file?”

“The Solon has declared,” the commandant said. “He is the supreme intellect and our guiding light. I dare not disobey him.”

“With such a supreme intellect,” Tan said, “why did he fail to take into account article two of the Warship Code?”

The commandant received a note from someone off screen. He scanned it and then frowned at Tan.

“I suggest you listen to a selected audio file and compare the voice with the one in your ship’s library,” Tan said. “You will discover a disconcerting truth.”

“I don’t have time for this. Quickly, declare your truth. Then I must go. Even now, we are initializing our bombardment sequence.”

Tan wanted to scream. Bombarding the Secessionists was madness. Humanity needed to unite against the cyborgs, not gnaw itself to death like a crazed beast. She attempted to calm her anxieties as she let a faint smile touch her lips. She must project rationality.

“I would rather that you confirm this truth yourself,” she said. “It will then have a primary validity to your subjective view.”

“I am not attempting a dialogue,” the commandant said hastily.

“You are wise,” Tan said. “Now prepare to receive my audio file.”

The commandant glanced off-screen. After a moment, he nodded at her.

Tan moved a toggle, sending the selected portion across the void. The commandant received, listened, ran his file-check to confirm the speaker and then looked at her with raised eyebrows. For him, a governor noted for his imperturbability, it was a gross gesture of surprise.

“The Solon’s unraveling is a tragedy,” said Tan. “But the proof is undeniable. He has become unhinged.”

“So it would appear. The implications… the complications…. What am I supposed to do?”

“I suggest you hold his order in abeyance until you’ve listened to my logic. Today, you must trust your reason, employing it to its fullest. The survival of our system is at stake, perhaps every human life here. Much now rests upon your choice. Trust the Dictates, your training and your intellect.”

The commandant stared at her. He appeared wan, and he chewed his lower lip, before saying, “You are the new Chief Strategist.”

“I am the only Strategist of the War Council still alive and still human. Thus, I am elevated to the War Council in persona. The chain of command is direct and unequivocal. Particularly in military matters and warship movement, my authority exceeds the Solon’s, as his authority is two steps removed through executive channels.”

“I’m listening, Chief Strategist.”

Tan dipped her head the tiniest bit as she strove for serenity. To persuade, she must achieve apparent disinterest and a seemingly didactic arrogance.

“Callisto faces massive damage,” she said. “Pre-battle analysis indicates a world-ending strike. That, of course, presupposes that the cyborgs have added new functions to the existing missiles. Their secret endeavors and the core reality of their existence—the heightened technology that allows their being—indicates cyborgs possess such refinements.”

“This world-ending strike,” the commandant said, as he continued to chew his lower lip, “it is only for one face of Callisto that we have plotted the course of the projectiles. Therefore, in a worst case scenario, the other side survives.”

“Computer analysis indicates massive quake damage on the Jupiter-facing side, and high levels of radiation poisoning.”

“Jupiter and Io already send large doses of radiation into—”

“The missile strikes will likely increase the radiation dosage by an entire factor,” Tan said. “That is a debilitating amount.”

The commandant’s cubby cheeks sagged as he whispered, “Continue.”

“The cyborgs are obviously attempting a decapitating strike,” Tan said. “Logically, the Guardian Fleet should combine with the Secessionists to face the greater threat.”

The commandant straightened. “There is no one I know of designated as ‘Secessionist’. Now there are terrorists—”

“I am not here to quibble about semantics, Commandant. Extinction threatens. Therefore, put aside your prejudices and let reason guide your actions. At this juncture in time, you are being called to make a monumental decision. Rise to the occasion as a true son of the Dictates.”

“Insults are unbecoming in a Chief Strategist,” the commandant said. “As a controlling governor in the Guardian Fleet, I have by increasing degrees and training shed all prejudices.”

“Come, come, Commandant, speak the truth through reason. Do not quote me governing ideals. Remember this as well, that hard and often unpleasant truths are not insults.”

The commandant’s features stiffened as he leaned toward her vidscreen. “Vocalize your logic.”

Tan paused. She could have said that better, yet she had been logical and she’d spoken truth. She now strove for convincing serenity as she said, “The cyborg fleet outnumbers ours by a critical margin. We need the Secessionists to defeat the machine assault.”

“I considered your logic earlier, I must confess,” the commandant said. “I soon reached a bitter conclusion. Even with the Secessionists, we lack the warships to face the cyborgs. Therefore, the Solon’s order—”

“Victory is achieved one step at a time,” Tan said. “Logic, reason, selfishness, all point to a united effort in an attempt to thwart our certain destruction.”

“…I concur,” he said softly.

“Have you read article two of the Warship Code?”

“Earlier, as you may have noted, an officer handed me the section. I read it.”

“You understand then that I am correct concerning my military authority,” Tan said.

The commandant hesitated, but finally admitted, “I do.”

“As the Strategic War Council in persona, I hereby order you to ignore the Solon’s order. Further, I order you to ignore any further communications with him concerning military maneuvers.”

“You are taking over fleet command?” the commandant asked.

Tan focused on idyllic serenity as she said, “I am.”

The commandant bent his smooth face at an angle, seemingly staring at deckplates. He nodded slowly and faced her. “What are your orders?”

“There will be an immediate cessation of hostilities with all Jovians, including those signified as secessionists or terrorists. You will hail the Secessionists and inform them of your new orders. You will also seek to engage their highest authority. Then you will coordinate with me. I will board your dreadnaught in….” Tan checked her computer. “In another few days.”

“I acknowledge. Is there anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Tan. “Give me a dedicated laser-link and access to your dreadnaught’s main computer. I have computations and analysis to run.”

“May I ask what it concerns?” he said.

“Victory against the cyborgs,” Tan said.

“I have acknowledged your authority and will obey your commands. I feel that I must point out, however, that the cyborgs outnumber us by a too large of a margin to hope for success.”

“That is why I must use the main computer,” Tan said, “as I search for a way to change the odds. We must go to work, Commandant.”

As Tan began her computations, Chief Controller Su-Shan began a radical shakeup of command-personnel in the orbital laser stations and down at the anti-missile rocket installations on the surface.

At the same time, the Solon made a Callisto-wide proclamation that left many rulers and philosophers uneasy. A full third raced to the deep shelters on the Jupiter-facing side of the planetary body. A handful sped into space in their private yachts or booked passage on outgoing liners. The rest composed themselves, deciding to reject fate by penning a new treatise, beginning an ode to reason or selecting choice wines to sample on the day of doom.

All the while, the Voltaire Missiles increased velocity, a technological pack of raving machines bent on annihilation. Except for one, each had reached the halfway point. The missile that aborted its progress self-destructed, its crystalline AI following its bitter programming. Its fusion core had failed, and the AI saw it in self-recriminating terms, as a lack of virtue. The thermonuclear explosion appeared on a hundred watching thermal scanners and on as many teleoptic scopes observing the so-called supply vessels. Spectrum-analysis brought a grim conclusion: the incoming projectiles were genocidal weapons.

In the last day of flight, the Voltaire Missiles rapidly closed, traveling the majority of the distance in a burst of acceleration. The velocity gave them several military advantages. They were in the Orbital Defense laser-range for only a short duration. Their velocity would add kinetic energy to any impacts, and the crystalline AIs had less time to dwell on their coming demise. For some, that anticipated demise might debilitate computing power. The crystalline-AI creators hadn’t had time to expunge that bug from the system.

In another two hours, several AIs had psychological seizures induced by their fear of imminent death. One AI turned its defensive weaponry on its nearest neighbors. Those hit by the surprise attack retaliated savagely, and soon another Voltaire Missile exploded its massive payload.

As that missile had already dropped behind too far to affect the others, the rest of the titanic missiles bore relentlessly toward the fourth Galilean moon. Behind them and traveling more slowly was the second wave strike: a dreadnaught, a meteor-ship and the troopship packed with cyborg-converted Jovians, plus several patrol boats.

Waiting in her laser satellite in low-Callisto orbit, Chief Controller Su-Shan stood in a governing pit. A blue glow bathed her as monitors ran though their sequence codes. Charging electrons passed through Su-Shan, heightening her awareness and reflexes. Her arms were sheathed in VR-sleeves and gloves and with VR-goggles over her eyes. Her armored laser-satellite was the same as the others orbiting Callisto. It was a torus with asteroid-rock shielding and a large focusing system. The generators were online, with the satellite’s fusion core surging at full power.

Twenty-three other satellites ringed Callisto. Many had used the past day to clump closer together, allowing them to beam in concert. Below on the surface were countless blooms: launching anti-missile rockets. In minutes, the rockets zoomed past the satellites as they hurried to do battle with the approaching Voltaires.

Su-Shan watched through her VR-goggles. Her satellite’s ECM struggled valiantly against pirated Onoshi Electronics. Even if the Jovians possessed superior philosophies, those of Neptune made better decoys, sensor-buffers and shear-plates.

“Lock-on, I need lock-on,” Su-Shan muttered.

There was no one to hear her plea. Su-Shan stood alone in the governing pit, making all command decisions and observations. Technicians waited in the outer shell, ready to affect any needed repairs. Otherwise, they were useless.

Baffled by their failed lock-on attempts, several nearby laser operators beamed their powerful rays at the enemy. Perhaps they’d concluded that would upset the Onoshi equipment, or maybe they’d simply become tired of waiting.

The anti-missile rockets speeding on near-intercept courses concerned the lead AIs more than the lasers did. Nuclear near-explosions and x-ray and gamma ray beams could upset the primary mission. Therefore, the lead AIs opened their point-defense cannons and fired their first flock of anti-missiles.

The launching of the anti-missiles, however, helped the Callisto ECM. At that point, several laser-satellites achieved lock-on.

In her governing pit, Su-Shan grinned with manic delight. She hadn’t sleep for thirty-seven hours, and she had ingested too many stimulants with too little food. She was jittery, hated the prospect of death and despised the cyborgs for endangering her. She found it hard to accept that she was going to die, and that made her even jitterier and affected her normally calm demeanor.

With her manic grin came something that might have sounded like a bitter laugh. Her fingers twitched in her twitch-gloves, and she swung her sheathed arms into position.

The laser on her satellite adjusted. The magnitude of power rose. She beamed. The beam sped through space, covering 300,000 kilometers per second. Her laser struck a Voltaire’s nosecone.

The sensation caused the missile’s AI to engage sub-thrusters. The missile moved to a slightly different heading. The laser beamed harmlessly past it.

In the governing pit, Su-Shan adjusted. Her motions and decisions were aided by a battle-computer that did the molecular-level, precision targeting. She attacked the same missile, heating the shielded nosecone. Again, the AI veered.

The contest took nine point five-thee minutes to complete. In that time, the pack of Voltaire Missiles entered into the point-defense cannons’ range. Su-Shan’s targeted missile exploded a hull section and jinked constantly. At the end of the nine point five-three minutes, however, the AI poked out targeting rods and committed seppuku.

Seppuku was ritual suicide predicated on the ancient codes of Bushido, the warrior ethos of the Japanese Samurai. When an ancient samurai lost honor or face, he often went to the one who had offended him, knelt, took out his knife and slit open his belly. Often, a second stood behind him, ready to chop off his head if the pain overwhelmed the proud warrior. In this way and according to Bushido, the warrior regained his honor.

The Voltaire’s crystal AI, grown and programmed with a Bushido-like code, ignited its massive payload. As it slit itself through annihilation, it used the nuclear energy to pour x-rays and gamma rays at the offensive laser-station that had caused its life to end approximately eight minutes too soon.

The rays traveled at the speed of light, hitting the shielded torus, chewing through the asteroid-rock and murdering countless systems. In the governing pit, Su-Shan writhed. The x-rays burnt her bones and the gamma rays took away her speech centers.

It was at that point that Chief Strategist Tan broke through the communication system with override command authority. She used the laser lightguide system of the Kant and she used the dreadnaught’s recognition codes.

Tan’s voice was scratchy and distant-seeming, but it was recognizable to her dying cousin. “Listen to me, Su-Shan. You have little time left. Callisto is doomed. There is no saving it. What you must save is the future. Retarget and attack the following dreadnaught—I’m sending you the coordinates. Everyone in the satellites, you must retarget and attack the enemy warships in the second wave. Kill them for us. This is a priority one message from the War Council.” The proper emergency sequences followed.

Chief Controller Su-Shan listened to the message. It was the last thing she heard. The gamma rays that had stolen her speech now cooked her brain. She died, having killed a missile. But she failed in her mission to protect Callisto from thermonuclear disaster.

Other armored satellites also went offline, their operators slain, the fusion cores burnt or the focusing system melted into slag. They had taken a bitter toll, however, destroying fifty-seven percent of the Voltaire Missiles. The anti-missile rockets killed or caused to detonate prematurely fifteen percent of the cyborg-controlled missiles. Together, the primary orbital defensive systems took out seventy-two percent of the cyborg surprise attack.

Now, in this short operational window left, the remaining laser satellites retargeted, aiming at the approaching cyborg dreadnaught.

Seven orbital stations lanced their powerful beams at the dreadnaught, what had a short month ago been a Guardian Fleet vessel.

Massive lasers beamed and struck on target, chewing into thick, asteroid-rock protection. The dreadnaught’s particle shield absorbed the hellish heat as rock slagged and dust bloomed. Across the hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the lasers relentlessly bore deeper and deeper into the particle shielding.

Over five million kilometers away, Gharlane received data of the retargeting. Since light traveled 300,000 kilometers per second, this information was already seventeen seconds old by the time Gharlane observed it. It also took time for Gharlane and the cyborg dreadnaught Force-Leader to realize the number and intensity of the laser attacks. More time passed as Gharlane ingested the meaning of the attack. Then even more seconds ticked away as Gharlane realized he needed to do something drastic to save his precious warships. Finally, even more seconds faded into the past as he ran through options and then the agonizing decision to use the best means at hand to thwart the lasers. He had not anticipated an attack upon the second wave, but a continuing defense against the Voltaires, as they threatened Callisto with greater harm. This switch in targeting, it went against Homo sapien conditioning.

During those minutes of indecision, another two laser satellites joined the assault. These were heavy, orbital lasers, the strongest in the Jovian System. They lacked Doom Star power, but approached that of a main SU Battleship of the Zhukov-class. Such primary lasers chewed through asteroid rock at an incredible rate. As Gharlane transmitted his orders to several selected Voltaire Missiles, more seconds passed as the order sped at 300,000 kilometers per second.

Callisto Orbital Defense lasers now punched through the particle shielding. In four point seven seconds, they punched through the dreadnaught’s hull and bored like sonic drills. Lasers smashed through the bulkheads into crew quarters, melting seven cyborgs. The red beams cut into the ship’s galley, its gymnasium, the computer core, coils three through nine and directly smashed through the bridge, killing the force-leader, originally a native of Neptune. Then beams burned into the fusion core, and they ignited nuclear-tipped cruise missiles meant to destroy Callisto’s Jupiter-facing cities. The combination of hot, slicing lasers and nuclear detonations caused sections of the dreadnaught to slide away in chunks and other sections to explode outwardly. Ninety-seven percent of the cyborg-crew died immediately. There was a three percent probability the others would survive the coming hour.

At this point, the Voltaire Missiles Gharlane had selected exploded. They used x-ray and gamma rays to attack the last laser satellites. Those final satellites had retargeted, aiming now at the second cyborg vessel, a meteor-ship.

It was a deadly contest that demanded perfect decisions. Gharlane had to count the number of remaining missiles, decide on how many he could spare and how important fleet superiority would be in the coming days and battles. Finally, he had to decide how many missiles he needed to destroy Callisto as a military installation. Because Jupiter spewed such heavy radiation, seventy percent of Callisto’s population lived on the targeted face. That meant Gharlane possessed a rich field of targets, if he could breach the defenses. He would never face such a powerful concentration of lasers again, as Callisto’s orbital defense was the core of Confederation strength.

The cyborg-controlled meteor-ship died. As satellite sensors and interferometers discovered this, the laser stations retargeted, aiming at the cyborg troopship. Then exploding Voltaire Missiles beamed hot radiation and killed the last satellites.

Only the Callisto point-defense cannons on the surface now stood between life and death. Each installation was composed of a massive fero-concrete shell. A magnetic rail-gun poked out of the opening, aiming its tube into space. Targeting satellites normally supplied the needed coordinates. Those were dead. Therefore, surface-based installations provided the data. This resulted in a fifty-three percent decrease in effectiveness.

The rail-guns chugged, lofting nuclear-tipped canisters, which exploded and created a defensive zone of shrapnel and sand. Other canisters sped farther and attempted to kill Voltaires through EMP surges and heat.

The remaining Voltaire Missiles used their last point-defense volleys to obliterate EMP canisters before they ignited.

Then the mighty, Voltaire Missiles smashed through the shrapnel belt, and more of them died. Only eleven percent of the launched strike survived the journey—seven gargantuan missiles. In those fateful nanoseconds as they zoomed at Callisto, seven titanic nosecones opened. Each missile contained five independent payloads of many hundreds of megatons. Thus, thirty-five nuclear bombs exploded within a nine-second window. Missile casings, shells and other assorted mass also struck Callisto at devastating velocities. Together, the united explosions rocked the surface and annihilated millions in the domed cities and down in the deep shelters.

Thirty-five towering mushroom clouds of radioactive dust, dirt and rock rose upward. The columns rose to dizzying heights, expelling matter into low-orbit.

A full third of the population died by the heat and blasts. A fourth perished in the next ten minutes from the vacuum of space, their cities or dwellings ruptured beyond repair. In the coming days, radiation poisoning would slay more. Lack of water, food or sanitation would sweep through the wreckage after that.

Some of Callisto survived, however. The nature of the attack meant that those on the other side had kept their cities, dwelling and point defense installations intact.

As news of the terrible cyborg-strike reached those on the other side—quakes still traveled across the surface like waves—the cyborg-controlled patrol boats and troopship entered far-Callisto orbit.

The agony of Callisto was far from over as the worst horrors were about to descend in the coming hours and days—cyborg drop troops. Gharlane had ordered the genocidal removal of the Jovians of Callisto. Nothing must survive that might jeopardize Jupiter System victory.