Cyborg Assault

-1-

Nadia Pravda chewed on a fingernail as the Occam VII Patrol Boat decelerated. It was the last of the three vessels making up this Aquinas Wing splinter group.

Nadia sat in the back of the pilot’s chamber during a duty-run into possible danger. That was against regulations, but the five-person crew had taken pity on her. They knew she dreaded being alone.

Nadia wore the brown coveralls of a technician and a low-brimmed hat with a sonic screwdriver crest. Black straps crisscrossed her torso, highlighting her breasts. Her magnetic-soled boots were attached to the deckplates. She worried a ragged fingernail, having already chewed it down. Her scrubbed features were clean, if still too pale. Sometimes, she managed a tremulous smile. The others had to call her name occasionally to snap her out of a thousand-meter stare.

Nadia chewed her fingernail, aware that a Highborn warship circled Jupiter. Thinking about that, her stomach had become queasy again. The Highborn were here. Worse, the Praetor commanded the vessel. She knew about him. Everyone in the Sun-Works Factory had traded gossip concerning his evil temper. She’d told the Jovian crew about the Praetor and couldn’t understand their shrugs and disinterest. They worried about cyborgs. Nadia couldn’t conceive of anything more deadly than the nine-foot supermen from the gene labs.

The patrol-boat’s main chamber was larger than her escape pod and longer than it was wide. The pilot and weapons officer sat in front before a small, polarized window. Behind them to the left was the sensor-and-communications operator. She was the woman Nadia had spoken to several weeks ago, Officer Mara. The last two crewmembers were asleep in their quarters. Those living quarters, the boat’s galley, gym and engine rooms made up the rest of the patrol vessel. The boat was rakish in appearance, had anti-missile pods and what amounted to point-defense canons. Because of the extreme distances in the Jupiter System, each patrol boat had larger engines than an Inner Planets vessel of this type would possess and a longer-range capacity. Its crews were also conditioned for yearlong stints.

The various Aquinas Wing Patrol Boats had separated some time ago as they investigated the distant moons of the Carme group. Each ‘moon’ was asteroid-sized, and was mainly comprised of retrograde orbiting bodies. In other words, the moons orbited in the opposite direction as Jupiter spun. The average inclination of these moons was 165 degrees. In this system, an inclination of zero degrees meant that an asteroid or moon orbited Jupiter in its equatorial plane. An inclination of exactly ninety degrees would be a polar orbit, where a moon passed over Jupiter’s north and south poles, while an inclination of exactly 270 degrees would be a polar orbit in the opposite direction.

The three patrols boats decelerated as they approached the main moon of this group, the one it was named after: Carme. Carme was the largest of these asteroid-sized moons, 46 kilometers in diameter. It was roughly twenty-three million kilometers from Jupiter. A comparative distance would be a quarter of the way the Doom Stars had journeyed a year ago between Earth and Mars when the two planets had been 100,000,000 kilometers apart.

An observatory at Aquinas Base had noticed strange occurrences here. The base operators had also noticed peculiar activity at several other asteroid-moons of the Carme group. The orders sending the patrol boats had originated months ago.

“Anything?” asked the boat’s Force-Leader, who also acted as the weapons officer.

“I’m getting fusion reactor readings,” Mara said.

“Do they comply with the outpost’s norms?” the Force-Leader asked.

“I’m checking that now.”

Nadia watched Mara’s thin fingers fly across a monitor-board. According to what the crew had told her, there was a scientific outpost here and a laser-lightguide way-station linked to the Saturn net. Mara read something off the board as she began shaking her head. Mara had a buzz-cut and wore a black quartz hook in her earlobe. Usually, Officer Mara smiled a lot, and often talked with Nadia for hours as they drank coffee. Mara wasn’t smiling now.

“This is strange,” she said.

“Explain,” said the Force-Leader.

“There must be heavy shielding in place. It must be why I failed to detect these readings earlier.”

“Explain,” repeated the Force-Leader.

Nadia’s stomach churned. She didn’t like words like ‘strange’, not when referring to something so close. She removed the finger from her mouth and craned her neck to look.

A dark, irregular blot appeared through the window. There was a single bright mote on the blot, and stars shined on either side of it. Something about that darkness frightened Nadia. She put her finger back near her teeth as she searched her gnawed-down nail for something to nibble. Being here felt wrong—bad. She wanted to beg the others to go elsewhere, but she knew her words wouldn’t matter. Besides, the belief that her words had power had died… maybe halfway to Jupiter.

Nadia switched fingers, and she winced as she bit down on a cuticle. She’d become too passive, and she knew it. She had to learn to live again. Was it truly dangerous out here, or had she become a mouse, jumping at shadows?

The weapons officer swiveled back. He had a round Jovian face and a whisper of a mustache. It made him seem too young, even though the mustache was gray. He blinked watery eyes at Mara.

“The outpost’s normative energy levels shouldn’t have changed,” he said.

“I know that,” Mara whispered.

“What are the readings?”

Mara shook her head.

“The scientific outpost—” the weapons officer began to say.

“Missile!” the pilot shouted.

The weapons officer swiveled back. Mara yelped as she slapped buttons. Then several things happened at once. A sleek missile burned hotly as it streaked around Carme and sped at the lead patrol boat. What appeared as tracer-rounds shot from that patrol boat’s canons. The projectiles smashed into the missile, and the missile exploded silently, an orange ball of energy. Unfortunately for the patrol boat, a second missile had already appeared.

“Brace yourselves!” shouted the pilot, slapping a button that threw them into computer-automated evasive action.

Whimpering, Nadia gripped her restraining straps.

A third missile appeared, zooming around the curvature of Carme. More tracer-like rounds sped at the second missile. The missile jinked as the tracers shot past it. Then the missile hit, and the lead patrol boat exploded.

The Occam VII veered wildly.

“Who’s firing at us?” the weapons officer shouted. He shoved his left hand into a twitch-glove as he jammed purple-lensed goggles over his eyes.

“By Plato’s Bones,” Mara whispered.

Nadia’s hands hurt as she gripped her restraining straps.

“There!” the weapons officer shouted. His gloved fingers fluttered, and the patrol boat shuttered as ripping sounds came from the front of their vessel, the sound of shells entering the cannons.

“A dreadnaught,” Mara whispered. “It was hiding behind Carme.”

“What? What?” shouted the weapons officer.

“A dreadnaught is here,” Mara said, pointing at her screen, at the vast, spherical shape on it.

The radio crackled with life as the other patrol boat exploded at the corner of the polarized window.

I’m going to die, Nadia told herself. I don’t want to die, not now.

“I don’t understand this,” Mara said.

“Speak to me,” the weapons officer said in a strained voice.

“You have to get us out of here!” Mara shouted. “I have to radio my information to the authorities!”

“What are you talking about?” the weapons officer shouted.

“There’s something on the surface!” Mara shouted back. “It’s big. The fusion readings—they’re coming from there. I don’t understand these readings. They’re off the scale for what should be here.”

“Another missile!” the weapons officer shouted. His fingers fluttered wildly and the ripping sounds of loading shells increased.

Tears flowed from Nadia’s eyes. She wanted to live. She knew there was only one way now. She’d fought her way out of doom once before and maybe could do it again. That had been a lifetime ago, however, and with a different Nadia Pravda. Still, the old stubborn Nadia of the past still lived somewhere inside her.

As the patrol-boat veered one way and then another Nadia unhooked her straps. With her magnetized boots at full power, she clanked across the deckplates and for the hatch.

“We have to beam this information to Athena Station,” Mara said.

“Not there,” the pilot said. “Don’t you remember? The cyborgs launched a missile attack from there.”

“Right,” said Mara. “I’m flashing this… to Ganymede Central.” She pressed a transmit button. The patrol boat’s readings concerning Carme, the massive fusion core—someone needed to know about this.

As Mara beamed the information, as the pilot jinked and as the weapons officer fired the boat’s canons, Nadia made it out of the pilot chamber, through a cramped corridor and into a closest-sized ejection chamber. She was thrown one way and then another by the violent maneuvering. She donned a vacc-suit and crawled into a minuscule pod.

Nadia kicked the hatch shut with a clang, clicked her straps into place and yanked the ejection lever. There was a bump and a heavy clanking sound as the pod was loaded into a chamber like a cartridge. Nadia sucked down air. Then acceleration slammed her against the padded couch. Her ejection pod flew out of the patrol boat’s side.

The Occam VII fled Carme. Missiles no longer launched from the huge dreadnaught. Now point-defense canons fired. They were blisters of light against the mighty warship. Seconds later, the patrol boat died, shredded into metallic parts and smears of bio-matter.

The jet on Nadia’s pod burned for several more seconds. It must have registered on the dreadnaught’s sensors. A flit-boat launched from a bay, heading toward her.

Nadia knew nothing about that. She hugged herself, moaning in misery. She was alone again, lost. It was a horrible feeling. What she wouldn’t give for company—I need company, she thought to herself. Anyone would do.

Nadia wasn’t aware that fate would grant her the wish, but grant it with a terrible twist.

-2-

As the information from Patrol Boat Occam VII of the Aquinas Wing entered the main computer of Ganymede Central, Chief Strategist Tan boarded the Kant.

Outgoing messages from Callisto had ended forty-nine hours ago. Long before that, images of attacking cyborgs had shattered the Confederation. Nothing should move so fast or kill so effortlessly. Cameras caught cyborgs bounding across the surface, shooting anything that moved. The worst shot, played repeatedly on a million screens, showed a young woman with her baby cradled in her arms. The space-suited woman ran for a sealed rover as she hurdled a block of fero-concrete. A chasing cyborg fired a Gyroc pistol. The .75 caliber rocket ignited and blew the head off the young woman, causing her to fling her arms. The baby sailed and thudded against the rover. A microsecond later, another Gyroc shell from the same cyborg obliterated the infant and most of the rover’s top.

Videos also caught machine-swift bipeds lunging through bunker corridors, using vibroknives to slaughter the survivors of the Voltaire strike. The herding of naked prisoners was awful to witness. Every news site on the web transmitted the image. The metallic indifference of the cyborgs burned into every heart that watched.

Callisto died, the victim to a thousand calamities. Nuclear-tipped cruise missiles flew nap-of-the-moon onto the Jupiter-facing side, hitting untouched domes. Gigantic mushroom clouds blossomed and radiation spread like a killer blanket. From low-orbit, cyborg-controlled patrol boats inserted gravity bombs.

The worst scenes were always the individual cyborgs moving too fast, too far and with killer precision. They combed the ruins: hunting, herding and annihilating the former Confederation stronghold.

The rule of the philosopher-kings was just a passing memory now, if still a recent one. The survivors in their space yachts and on the liners were too shocked to insist on their former prerogatives. They fled to Io or began the long journey to the Himalia group moons.

Because of the successful cyborg strike, Ganymede became the premier moon. The highest ranked there had already begun jockeying for power. Only a few terrified people openly considered Gharlane’s surrender terms. He came online, presenting the first recorded cyborg transmission in the Jupiter System. It was fitting that he issued an ultimatum. Most people suggested Gharlane’s message was a ploy to shock them or to cause greater confusion through divided councils. Some of those jockeying for power radioed the Descartes and asked Representative Kluge’s opinion concerning Gharlane’s terms.

“It’s a fight to the death,” Marten told them via vidscreen. “Once they’ve stripped you of your defenses, you’ll enter a converter, soon becoming one of the cyborgs yourself.”

“The cyborgs are behaving differently here than they did during the Mars Campaign,” one Ganymede Secessionist leader pointed out. “Perhaps they realize they need allies.”

Marten laughed at the man. “No. It’s only to gain time.”

“Time to do what?” the stung leader asked.

“Time to subjugate the entire Solar System,” Marten said.

Strategist Tan argued along similar lines. She now controlled the warships parked in low-Ganymede orbit. When asked by Secessionist leaders to accept a Ganymede commander, she said:

“I have the ships, the bombs and the missiles to dictate terms, not you.”

“With Callisto’s passing, your advantage is only momentary,” the Ganymede Advisor said.

“Possibly true,” said Tan. “Until that time ends, however, I shall direct my ships as I judge proper. Given that reality, I suggest you order your dreadnaught at Europa to join me. We must build up strength faster than the cyborgs build theirs. Then we must engage them and attempt an annihilating victory. We must drive them from our system.”

“Ship ratios are still in their favor,” the Advisor said.

“That isn’t completely accurate,” said Tan. “We presently have a superior concentration of warships. And it is a truism in war that such a superiority can bring strategic benefits if properly exploited. Therefore, let us quibble about political power later. Now is the moment to strike if we’re to save ourselves.”

The debate still raged between Tan and the Ganymede leaders, although the Secessionist dreadnaught had left Europa. It presently burned hard for Ganymede.

The Descartes meanwhile had matched velocity with the Thebes, a first class liner of the Pythagoras Cruise-Line. It was a huge vessel, bigger than a dreadnaught but without particle shields. It had escaped Callisto’s destruction. Now, under Article Seventeen of the Dictates, guardian personnel had commandeered it. The liner carried an abundance of ship-guardians and critical supplies, and it had been ordered to rendezvous with the meteor-ship.

Mechanics in zero-G worksuits and small repair-bots attached docking lines to the Descartes. Like some exotic species of space-ant, suited workers exited various bays. Hydrogen spray expelled from their packs as they moved huge crates and circular pods. Other mechanics repaired ship-damage or they took the badly wounded to the Thebes’s spacious medical chambers. Lastly, technicians replaced torn bulkheads and failing ship’s systems. Everyone worked feverishly, including Marten, Osadar and Omi.

Ten hours before detaching, orders arrived via laser lightguide from Strategist Tan. The Secessionist Council confirmed her commands. Equipment worthy of a shock-trooper piled into the cargo bays. Meanwhile, another meteor-ship limped in and matched velocities.

“Something is up,” Marten told Omi.

They were in an outer corridor, standing beside tall crates piled to the ceiling. One crate was open, with an armored spacesuit lying on the floor.

The suit was composed of articulated metal and ceramic-plate armor. A rigid, biphase carbide-ceramic corselet protected the torso, while articulated plates of BPC covered the arms and legs. The helmet had a Heads up Display, and a thruster-pack gave motive power. It was reminiscent of the shock trooper armor they’d worn while storming aboard the Bangladesh.

“Why are they filling our ship with these?” asked Omi.

“Take one guess,” Marten said.

“You and me?” asked Omi. “We’re going on the offensive for these people?”

“There’s something someone wants taken out by shock troopers.”

“What thing?” Omi asked suspiciously.

“I have no idea,” Marten said. “But I think we’ll find out soon enough.”

“I hope there not thinking we’re going to tackle cyborgs for them.”

“Who else would we tackle, the Praetor?”

“I’m not sure I care for that, either.”

Marten kicked the corselet with his armored boot. It had a nice metallic ring, and it proved that the armor-suit was heavy. It was too bad it lacked exoskeleton power. On whatever surface they fought, they’d have to utilize their own muscled power. “These are nothing compared to battleoids,” Marten said.

“When did that stop anyone from feeding canon-fodder into the shredder?” Omi asked in a bitter tone.

“Never.”

Omi glanced at Marten. “So what are we going to do?”

Marten shrugged moodily.

“We still have Osadar,” Omi said.

Marten frowned as he counted crates. There were a lot, and plenty of new ship-guardians had boarded. They reminded him of the guardians who had helped them kill Octagon’s two myrmidons. What they needed were more of those genetic killers. But maybe myrmidons were too elemental to fight well in spacesuits.

“Can these Jovians beat the cyborgs?” Omi asked.

“The time for running is over,” Marten said quietly.

A hard frown appeared on Omi’s normally expressionless face. “I don’t think you heard me before. We still have Osadar.”

“Yeah, I heard you. But I don’t like the idea of killing Yakov’s crew just so we can run away again.”

“I don’t like certain death either,” Omi said. “You’ve watched the videos from Callisto. I don’t think even Highborn could face cyborgs one-on-one, let alone us.”

Marten took a deep breath. “We don’t know that’s what the higher-ups are planning.”

“Come-on,” Omi said. “We know it here.” He tapped his heart. “Before, everyone figured they could use us. Why would these Jovians be any different?”

“The Jovians are our friends.”

“Balls,” said Omi. “They’re people in a tight spot who will grab anything they can to stay alive. What I want to know is how come it’s always you and me that have to do the dirty fighting?”

“Maybe because we always win,” Marten said.

“You think we won on the Bangladesh?”

“We didn’t lose.”

Omi shook his head, and he turned, giving the suit a kick. “This is crap, whatever they have planned for us. We’ve done our time. Now it’s someone else’s turn.”

“No,” Marten said. “Now we’re going to teach others how to do it.”

“Like we did on Mars?” asked Omi.

“Better than we did there.”

Omi studied Marten. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Marten took another deep breath. Then, in a quiet voice, he told Omi his thoughts about standing for once and fighting or dying instead of just endlessly running away.

“Dying is easy,” Omi said. “Running keeps us alive.”

“Dying isn’t easy for us two,” Marten said. “Let’s find Yakov. He’ll tell us what’s going on.”

They found Yakov in his wardroom. The silver-haired Jovian was grim-faced. His elbows were on his computer desk as he massaged his temples. He stared at Marten before looking away.

“Why all the armored spacesuits?” asked Marten.

“Close the door,” Yakov said.

Marten and Omi piled into the tiny room. Yakov motioned them nearer. The two of them sat as the Force-Leader straightened. There was a tightness around his mouth, bunched up muscles like little hard balls. He adjusted the desk controls.

“Chief Strategist Tan personally sent me this,” Yakov said. “The leaders on Ganymede are still debating what it means.”

Marten watched the video-feed from the Occam VII of the last Aquinas Wing Patrol. He witnessed the missiles, the destruction of the first two patrol boats and the dreadnaught rising from behind the asteroid-moon.

“This is Carme,” Yakov said. “It’s at the outer limit of Jovian space. This is what I want you to notice.”

A pointer appeared on-screen, showing a large and lighted circular area on the otherwise dark surface.

“What are we looking at?” Marten asked.

“Tan’s people have been running an analysis on the readings,” Yakov said. “The best estimate is a massive exhaust-port, crater-sized, in fact. The indications are that someone has bored vast tunnels into Carme to massive engines inside.”

Marten frowned at the Force-Leader. “That would take years to do.”

“It doesn’t seem to make sense, I know,” Yakov said. “It would indicate the cyborgs slipped into our system long ago and began secret construction there. Maybe they’ve lived like ants down there, hollowing it out, waiting for this moment. The question is why. Then one of Tan’s technicians recalled an intercepted message from the cyborgs.”

Omi muttered obscenities.

Yakov raised an eyebrow, but Omi said nothing more. Yakov readjusted the controls. On the vidscreen, the dark surface leaped closer as the picture became grainy. The pointer now showed what looked like low metal domes, but it was difficult to be definite.

“Tan’s people are of two minds on these,” Yakov said. “Some believe it is the upper part of a vast power-plant. The others think this is where the missiles came from.”

“Tell me about the intercepted message,” Marten said.

Yakov stared at the images. “It took several days to decode. It spoke about a planet-wrecker.”

“Planet, not a moon?” asked Marten.

Yakov looked up as his dark gaze bored into Marten. “That’s a shrewd comment. Do you understand what it means?”

Marten and Omi traded glances.

“I’m beginning to think I do,” Marten said.

Yakov put his hands on the vidscreen as he studied both ex-shock troopers. “Tan’s experts believe the cyborgs plan to move Carme. It would be extremely unwieldy as a warship, but if the experts are right, it will become something much worse.”

“Are you going to tell us what that is?” Omi asked.

“The intercepted message said it all,” Yakov whispered. “A planet-wrecker.”

“Yeah?” asked Omi. “What does that mean?”

The muscles at the corners of Yakov’s mouth tightened even more. “If Tan is right, the cyborgs plan to accelerate Carme and drive it into a moon or a planet.”

Omi shook his bullet-shaped head. “Why would cyborgs crash Carme into Jupiter? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I doubt Jupiter is their goal,” Yakov said. “Tan thinks this is a clever way to attack Mars, Earth or possibly Ganymede.”

“Huh?” asked Omi.

“It would explain why the cyborgs came here,” Yakov said. “The Mars Campaign would indicate they’re at war with the Highborn and that they turned traitor against Social Unity. I’ve had trouble understanding why they would dissipate military strength by sending cyborgs to Jupiter. With two such militarily powerful foes, why add to the number of their enemies? The answer may be because they believe this is the perfect way to attack their primary foes.”

“You’ve lost me,” Omi said.

“It’s basic,” Yakov said. “It is also clever. Maybe more than that, it’s also based on gargantuan mechanics. That’s what makes it difficult to see or conceptualize.”

“See what?” asked Omi. “I’m getting tired of your hinting. Just tell us.”

“If Tan is right, the cyborgs are taking Carme and attempting to turn it into a weapon of planetary destruction. Jupiter has sixty-three moons, more than any other system. Maybe they’ll attach massive engines and power plants to the other moons. If they build up enough velocity circling the gas giant, they could fling the moons at Earth or at Mars perhaps. In time—bam,” Yakov said as he clapped his hands together. “It’s extinction for everyone on that planet.”

Omi blinked rapidly. “A planet-wrecker,” he whispered.

“You need to send out your warships,” Marten said. “Destroy the wrecker before it can begin.”

Yakov shook his head. “It’s not that easy. The cyborgs have shattered the system, murdering nearly half the Jovian population with their strike on Callisto. The massive fortifications there helped guard the other Galilean moons. Obviously, Callisto doesn’t guard them anymore. Athena Station is now the strongest defensive position, and the cyborgs hold it.”

Yakov massaged his forehead. “They’ve slaughtered millions and put us on the brink of extinction, but they’ve lost four capital ships doing it. That means Tan has a slight edge with the remaining Guardian and Secessionist warships. It also turns out that the Pythagoras Cruise-Line can convert several of their tugs into mine-laying ships.”

“That doesn’t stop Carme,” Marten said.

“No,” said Yakov. “But it means that Tan has persuaded the others to send two meteor-ships into the outer system.”

“You just showed us the video,” Marten said. “A dreadnaught guards Carme. Can two meteor-ships fight past it?”

“Theoretically, we can.” Yakov drummed his fingers on the computer-desk. “One has to expect, however, that if the cyborgs have built engines and exhaust-ports large enough to move Carme, that they would have added missiles and laser-bunkers to it.”

“I know what to do,” Omi said.

Yakov looked at him with hope.

“It’s not our problem. Let Earth deal with it.”

Yakov shook his head. “It could be targeted on Ganymede. But even if their eventual plan is to target Earth, we can’t stand by and let the cyborgs win. If Social Unity goes down and if the Highborn lose, that would likely mean the end of humanity. We have a stake in seeing that doesn’t happen.”

“Radio Earth,” Marten said. “Tell them.”

“Tan already has.”

“No,” Omi said. “Social Unity isn’t our friend. Neither are the Highborn.”

“You speak truth,” Yakov muttered. “Both have done us harm. Yet both are still human.”

“That’s all beside the point,” said Marten. “Two meteor-ships might fail to take out a dreadnaught and an armored Carme.”

“The massive exhaust-port shows us that even two meteor-ships might fail to stop the moon,” Yakov said.

“I get it,” Omi said, with a bitter laugh. “You want to land shock troopers onto Carme, hoping they kill every cyborg there. It’s a suicide mission in other words, which means you plan on sending us and other fools to do it.”

“Tan has chosen me to go with you,” Yakov said quietly.

“We should have killed her when we had the chance,” Omi said. “Now she’s taking her revenge. Yeah, I know her kind.”

“The stakes are too high and her rationality too sound for that,” Yakov said.

Omi stared at the Force-Leader. “Don’t bet on it.”

“You’re missing a greater truth,” Yakov said, with a faint scowl. “Chief Strategist Tan is sending us because of you two. No one is better at space-marine fighting. You both know it, and you can both lead—”

“Lead other fools to commit suicide?” Omi asked.

“Perhaps we are all fools,” Yakov said. “Sometimes, however, fools win.”

“Fools luck?” asked Omi. “Marten’s and my luck ran out a long time ago.”

“So did mine,” Yakov said. “Still, in the end, the Secessionists broke free from the Dictates.”

Omi stared at the vidscreen, studying Carme and the bright mote on it. He whirled on Marten. “Aren’t you going to tell him this is crazy?”

Marten moistened his lips. “It is crazy. The cyborgs are crazy. Breaking a moon out of its orbit, even a small asteroid-moon, and sending it across space to hit a planet—that’s lunacy. It tells me this is a war of annihilation, either theirs or ours.” Marten flexed his hands. “I told you before, I’m finished running away. It’s time to slug it out. Maybe that means you and I are supposed to lead an attack onto that rock. I don’t know.”

“We’ll be facing cyborgs,” Omi said.

“Yeah,” Marten whispered. Cyborgs—he remembered Olympus Mons. A handful of cyborgs had handled them with ease. If Osadar hadn’t shown up, Omi and he would likely be cyborgs now. This was a suicide mission. Damn, he hated cyborgs.

Marten scowled. Hadn’t he already killed cyborgs here? He’d helped destroy a dreadnaught full of them. It’s also likely his action had given the Jovians whatever chance they had of surviving this stealth attack from Neptune. Marten stood very still then. Had he arrived in the Jupiter System for a reason?

A queasy feeling filled Marten’s stomach. What did he stand for? Did the cyborgs really plan to make planet-wreckers and send them at Earth? Could he stand by and watch them do it, knowing he could have done something but that fear had caused him to run to Saturn or Uranus for safety? How long could he run in a Solar System ruled by cyborgs?

“Tell Yakov he’s full of crap,” Omi said.

Marten swallowed a lump in his throat. “Maybe this is crazy,” he told Omi. “But we have to do it.”

“Why? We’ve done our time.”

“We survived Japan,” Marten said. “But Stick and Turbo died there. We survived the Bangladesh. Vip, Lance and Kang become sterile motes in space. We survived Mars, but Chavez and the others are radioactive dust. Maybe this is why we lived. We’re meant to help stop humanity’s extinction.”

Omi folded his arms across his chest. After a moment, he said, “Osadar is right. Life is rigged.”

“All men die,” Marten said. “Maybe it’s time to make our existence worth something.” He faced Yakov. “I’m in.”

Yakov checked a chronometer. “We leave in eleven hours. In that time, I want you to choose which ship-guardians to take along.”

“Come again?” asked Omi.

“We had planned to take the Thebes with us,” Yakov said. “Now we’ve discovered severe engine damage.”

“What?” Omi asked.

“There was sabotage aboard the Thebes,” Yakov admitted.

Omi laughed bitterly.

“Now we must select the best ship-guardians,” Yakov said, ignoring the laugh. “You two must teach them what you can in the time remaining. Then you will lead them to victory once we reach Carme.”

It was Marten’s turn to laugh. He stared into space as if recalling a grim memory. “We have to choose the best. Yeah, I know what to do. Omi?”

Omi’s face had become blank. He gave the barest of nods. Marten clapped him on the back, and that made Omi scowl.

“This is crap,” Omi said.

“When isn’t it?”

Omi thought about that, and said, “Yeah.”

-3-

“Are you sure you want to do it this way?” Omi whispered.

Marten wore a black uniform with silver stripes and tabs. Omi was similarly dressed. They stood in the spacious promenade deck of the Thebes, a first class pleasure liner of the Pythagoras Corporation. It had a rotating torus shell, giving pseudo-gravity to this area of the ship.

“No,” Marten whispered. “I’m not sure. If you know of a better way of choosing space marines, let me know now.”

Grim-faced ship-guardians standing at attention and in their blue uniforms, complete with medals and battle ribbons, filled the promenade deck. There were too many ship-guardians to take in the two meteor-ships. The guardian-class Jovians stood ready, awaiting inspection.

“I know of a better way,” Osadar said.

She stood behind them, the focus of many staring eyes, as the three of them stood before the crowd of ship-guardians.

Marten and Omi turned to her.

“Check their records,” she said.

“They’re peacetime soldiers,” Omi said with distain.

“Do peacetime records lie?” the cyborg asked.

“It isn’t that,” Marten said. “During war, officers look for fighters. During peace, they look for yes-men, for those who don’t make waves. We want fighters. We want soldiers who will stick it out when cyborgs swarm them.”

“Sift carefully through their records,” Osadar said.

“We don’t have time for that,” Marten said.

“Is that why you have lined them up?” Osadar asked. “Can shock troopers tell a fighter at a glance?”

“No,” Marten said, “not at a glance.”

“Then why have you staged this?” she asked.

“You didn’t tell her?” Omi asked.

“Tell me what?” asked Osadar.

“The Highborn are bastards,” Marten said. “We know that. But they’re also betters soldiers, better fighters. They had a way to find the tough ones, the battlers.”

“What way?” asked Osadar.

Marten cracked his knuckles as he stared at the ranks of ship-guardians. “We know the ones we choose are going to be fodder for the cyborgs. That’s the truth of this war. It will be a quick trip to Carme, two or three weeks. There isn’t much I can teach them in that time. But I can make sure I take the tough ones along. I can increase our odds a few percentages. Why is it then that I feel like such a bastard doing this?”

“The answer’s simple,” Omi said. “You’re choosing those who are going to die.”

“Yeah,” said Marten. He set his features. “You tell her what’s going on, okay?”

“Sure,” Omi said.

“Tell me what?” asked Osadar.

“Okay,” said Marten. “Here we go.” He left them and strode alone toward the ranks of waiting ship-guardians. Those who had been staring at Osadar now looked at him. It was an animal response to glance at things that moved.

Marten adjusted his collar as he halted before them. He switched on an amplifier there, which would help project his voice.

“So you’re the sorry rejects they’re giving me to destroy the cyborgs,” Marten said, letting contempt fill his voice.

Ship-guardians blinked at him. Many scowled. More than a few stirred.

Marten shook his head. “I fought in the Inner System, both on Earth and in space, capturing an experimental beamship near Mercury. Highborn trained me because they discovered I have an innate ability to kill. I also survive where others die, and I accomplish the missions given me.” He pointed at Omi. “We’re shock troopers, which means we’re the best soldiers in the Solar System, at least the best among humans. You ship-guardians—” Marten laughed with contempt.

More angry scowls appeared in the ranks.

“Some of you are going to have a chance to prove your worth,” Marten said. “You’re going to prove if Jovian space training is anything like Highborn training. I doubt it, frankly, but you’ll have the chance to show me.”

“Yeah!” a blue-uniformed guardian shouted. “And who the heck are you anyway?”

Marten stared at the guardian, a blocky individual. “I’m going to choose who goes and dies and who stays to live under the coming cyborg domination.”

“Are all shock troopers arrogant pricks like you?” the guardian asked.

“Ask me an hour from now,” Marten said.

“I’m asking you now!” the angry guardian shouted.

Marten drew his needler and fired, making crackling sounds. Guardians shouted in surprise. Many hit the deck. A few screamed as the bulky guardian flopped onto the floor.

“Stay where you are!” shouted Marten.

Pelias from the Descartes appeared, the tight-faced woman with black lipstick. She and three other guardians had drawn hammer-guns, aiming them at the crowd.

“I shot him with drugged ice-needles,” Marten said. “He’s still alive, but his mouth isn’t flapping anymore. And that’s my first lesson. I know many of you were expecting me to challenge him to a fistfight, to prove how superior my fighting technique was against his. A shock trooper uses overwhelming force when it’s at his disposal. You’ll do the same, or you’ll die to the cyborgs.”

Many guardians glared at him. Others stared at the fallen man.

“I will begin the interviews in three minutes,” Marten said. “Guardian Pelias will now instruct you.”

As Pelias stepped forward and began to shout orders, Marten moved to where Omi and Osadar watched. Omi had been whispering to Osadar.

“Are you ready?” Marten asked her.

“I will interview all of them?” she asked.

“Can you do it?” Marten said.

Osadar raised a reinforced hand and then slowly nodded.

The first guardian entered the room. He was a short man with scarred features and a watery left eye. He stopped at seeing Osadar sitting behind a small table. He glanced around at the otherwise empty room.

“Where’s the shock trooper?” he asked.

Marten stood in the next room, watching the proceedings with Omi. They watched on a vidscreen.

“It’s different this way,” Omi muttered.

Marten nodded.

On the screen, Osadar arose without a word. She came around the table, approaching the short guardian.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Osadar slapped him across the face, whipping his head to one side.

Marten winced. “She isn’t supposed to main him.”

“I told her,” Omi said.

The short guardian clutched his face, backing away from Osadar. “Why did you do that?” he whined.

Osadar stared at him. Cowed, the man looked down. Osadar turned her back on him, returning to her chair. The guardian glanced up slyly.

“If he’s going to do anything…” Omi said.

The guardian bit his lip, and he rubbed his cheek. As Osadar regarded him from the table, he looked down once more.

“He’s a five,” Marten said, writing down the number beside the ship-guardian’s name on his computer slate.

Omi pressed a button.

A door opened on the opposite side of the room. Pelias was there, motioning for the slapped man to exit the room.

“I thought I was going to be interviewed,” the man objected. “The cyborg just slapped me.”

“Hurry,” Pelias said. “Come this way.”

Avoiding the table and Osadar seated there, the short guardian slunk for the exit.

“I hope some of them show more guts than that,” Omi said.

Marten recalled the day he’d entered a room like this. A huge Highborn had slapped his face. He’d attack the HB for it and he’d found his hand stamped with a “2”.

The first door opened and another ship-guardian entered the room. Marten readied his computer-stylus. Like Omi, he hoped there were enough Jovians who fought back. They were going to need the tough ones to have any hope of defeating what awaited them on Carme.

-4-

In a low chamber on Athena Station were countless rows of pallets containing twitching bodies. On the seventh pallet in row two, lay Webbie Octagon. Like the other subjects, a synthi-flesh tube had been inserted into the jack at the base of his neck. It surged every seventeen seconds, expanding as if pumping blood. Pseudo-nerve endings were linked in him, sending the Web-Mind monitored impulses.

Like the other humanoids, Octagon wore a black skin-suit. It showed every gaunt limb and the sunken curvature of his stomach. He had lost weight. The skin was slack under his jaw, giving him jowls for the first time in his life. It also showed the rigid state of his sex organ. Drool spilled from his mouth, and every time the synthi-tube expanded in the neck-jack, Octagon gave an obscene moan of pleasure.

During his stay on the pallet, Octagon had undergone massive brain retraining. The Web-Mind reconditioned him, although there was a stubborn core of hatred in Octagon. The hatred pulsed as two words in mind-numbing repetition. Pain sensations, fear, loneliness and erotic pleasure hit against the hatred like feathers against lead. The words made little sense to the Web-Mind. To Webbie Octagon, they were like a holy creed, a litany of promised revenge.

Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge—only the highest dosages of pleasure momentarily thwarted the inner chant.

Because of the stubbornness of the memory-clot, the Web-Mind had chosen Webbie Octagon as the next human to head to the cyborg converter. His pallet had originally been slated for conversion five days from now. Instead, a door slid open, and a cyborg pushed a magnetic gurney into the low-ceilinged chamber. The repulsers caused the gurney to hover. The melded biped with highly-controlled brain functions glanced in short, high-speed jerks of his head from right to left. The red-dotted pupils fixated on pallet seven-two. With the whine of knee-servos, the cyborg headed to Webbie Octagon’s pallet.

The cyborg waited until the synthi-tube pulsed and Octagon moaned. With a deft twist and a slight sucking noise, the cyborg removed the plug.

Octagon’s eyes flashed open. He turned his head, regarding the tall cyborg. Then he cringed as his sex organ began to shrink to normal size. It hurt badly because the organ had been in a rigidly erect state for forty-three hours.

The cyborg slid Octagon’s inert form onto the gurney and efficiently strapped him down. Without a word, and with the quiet ever-present whine of servos, the cyborg turned the hovering gurney and pushed Octagon toward the exit. No other cyborgs entered the chamber. No other twitching humanoids left their pallets. From this bin-room, only Octagon was slated for conversion. Only he possessed the stubborn memory-clot, which had reduced his efficiency as a Webbie.

Octagon’s awareness returned as the cyborg pushed him deeper into Athena Station. He had no idea that he was heading toward the converter deep in the core of the asteroid-moon.

Gharlane stood on the bridge of the Locke, the single dreadnaught of his battle group. He was a thousand kilometers from Athena Station, near the three meteor-ships and a wing of patrol boats that completed his fleet.

Cyborgs had replaced the former crewmembers. Several on the Locke had jacked into the modified controls, while Gharlane used a smaller version of the holographic display deep in Athena Station. He stood among the holo-images, carefully studying data on the Jovians.

Gharlane clicked his hand-component, changing the display. Should he summon the dreadnaught at Carme, enhancing the power of his fleet here?

The superiority of Genus Cyborgus versus Homo sapiens was most apparent on the ground, when individual cyborgs faced humans. Combat in space lessened the differences, although a cyborg taskforce still possessed certain advantages over the humans.

As Gharlane debated strategies, a signal arrived from the Web-Mind. The biomass brain still resided in its original stealth-capsule, parked in a deep hanger on Athena Station.

I have correlated several new factors, the Web-Mind told him in lieu of an introduction.

“Yes?” Gharlane asked.

I have monitored signals and broken several of the Jovian codes. More importantly, I was able to tap into a laser lightguide message.

Gharlane’s head lifted. “Is that possible?”

Through a third phase induction, yes, the Web-Mind said.

“Are there new enemy warships?”

Negative. However, enemy action has led me to reevaluate our strategic concentration.

Gharlane didn’t like the sound of that. It was usually wiser to keep to a single strategic goal instead of switching goals midway through a campaign. “What could be wiser than gathering into a single battle group and annihilating enemy concentrations one at a time? Afterward, nuclear bombardment and cyborg occupation of the major moons will garner us millions of recruits and nearly unlimited raw resources. In time, we can construct a massive strike-force composed of multiple planet-wreckers.”

Time and Saturn-coordination mandates a speed-up of our planetary strike-force.

Gharlane used his hand-component, changing the holo-images and studying the Jovian moons and the various positions of warships, corporation craft and the largest pleasure liners. The Web-Mind retained control of the lightguide lasers linking them to Saturn and to Neptune. Thus, Gharlane had no way to argue the point or know precisely what occurred outside this system.

Prepare to receive data, the Web-Mind told him.

Gharlane stiffened as images and codes flashed into his modified brain. He learned that the conquest of the Saturn System had been swift, brilliant and overwhelming. The Saturn planet-wreckers and accompanying meteor-craft already built up speed, circling the ringed gas giant. The Web-Mind pulsed times, schedules, distances and the orbital positions of Mars, Earth and Venus as compared to the Saturn-launched strike.

We are behind schedule, the Web-Mind said.

“At this point in our campaign, is it wise to change our strategic goals? Ultimately, we have the advantage in ship tonnage and now possess the strongest base: Athena Station.”

Our old strategy was based on unlimited time. The Prime Web-Mind of Neptune has decided to accelerate our schedule. We must complete our planet-wrecker and match the target date of the Saturn-launched strike. Even a twenty percent increase of tonnage from us to the Saturn total will ensure annihilating victory. A ten percent tonnage increase from Jupiter will bring an obliterating enemy defeat ninety-three point six-five percent of the time.

Gharlane changed the holographic sights. An image of Io filled the bridge, as the sulfur volcano-clouds became the center of attention. Strong volcanic eruptions on Io emitted as much as 1000 kilograms of matter into space each second. When holographic Ganymede appeared on the bridge, blue dots indicated the enemy fleet, with the brightest blue indicating the hated dreadnaughts. The Jovians still retained two of them.

Gharlane only half-noticed the images. His mind raced as he absorbed the Web-Mind’s data. He could understand the Prime Web-Mind’s thinking. Several cyborg stealth campaigns were in operation. Once one proved successful, all effort should be funneled to heighten its success. Strategically, one should concentrate effort to any breakthrough in order to achieve even greater victory rather than worrying about the failed or struggling endeavors. They had not failed here. The Saturn Campaign had simply achieved overwhelming success first. Therefore, the Jovian Campaign now became secondary to them and needed to bolster their attack sequence if possible. The question was—what was the best way to shift the strategy here to aid the Saturn-strike?

The Web-Mind broke into his thoughts. I am leaving Athena Station.

Gharlane stiffened.

I am headed to Carme.

“Why there?” asked Gharlane, relieved at this news.

It is our priority planet-wrecker, soon to begin its acceleration. I have recomputed odds, warship tonnage and strategic goals. The present conquest of the Jovian moons no longer takes precedence. Therefore, you will strike the Galilean moons, using nuclear bombardment to obliterate population concentrations. That will fix Homo sapien attention onto the inner moons. To achieve this goal, you are permitted to accept cyborg fleet annihilation.

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to destroy the enemy fleet first?” Gharlane asked.

Obliterate population concentrations and industrial capacities of the Galilean moons. All analysis gives high probabilities that the Jovian warships will insert into moon orbits to halt your genocidal tactics. There you may lay tactical ambushes.

“You are relying on panic factors?”

I rely on probabilities and known Homo sapien reactions. They foretell a fixation on genocidal tactics, your fleet and Athena Station, in that order. During their fixation cycle, we shall complete the planet-wrecker. Then we shall build up velocity as we coordinate with Saturn on an Earth-strike.

“You plan to join the planet-wrecker?”

I will for ninety-eight percent of the journey, the Web-Mind said. Eventually, I will abort and return to the Jovian System as the ruling entity.

“Do your probabilities foresee the cessation of my existence?”

There is an eighty-three percent chance you shall face obliteration in the coming campaign. Yet you must endure in your task. Your faulty six-percent bio-reactions may take comfort in this knowledge: In time, I shall search Jovian space for lingering pieces of your DNA. With it, I will initiate a clone reconstruction of Cyborg Gharlane. You will live again in the eternal process of Web-Mind.

Gharlane’s head twitched. Eighty-three percent chance of obliteration meant a seventeen percent chance of continued existence. He would increase those odds, as he was Gharlane, the prime unit in the cyborg assault of Jupiter.

I will sweep the station for workers and equipment, the Web-Mind informed him. The Jovian planet-wrecker must strike to ensure annihilating victory. Therefore, you must begin to implement your strategic task in the quickest timeframe possible.

“I hear and obey,” Gharlane said, his strange, red pupils fixed on the swiftly changing holo-images around him.

Webbie Octagon’s nostrils twitched as he lay on the magnetic gurney. Harsh chemical odors assault him. The cyborg continued to push him as they entered the main conversion chamber.

Even to Octagon’s altered brain, this was a place of horror. A vast machine stood before him. On it were twenty-four naked humanoids. Some bellowed. A few stared in shocked silence. All were strapped down securely and moving headfirst toward a small chute. Beyond that chute chemicals sprayed as skin-choppers began the hideous task of removing the outer layer of epidermis.

Octagon croaked a sound of protest. That caused the hatred to flare within him. Marten Kluge had caused this horror. Marten Kluge must die. Wait! Marten Kluge must not die, no, no, not die. Marten Kluge must suffer horribly for the wrongs he’d committed. The barbarian—

Octagon cocked his head and blinked. Barbarian… barbarian… that was a difficult concept. The Web-Mind mandated obedience in the new thinking. There wasn’t such a thing as barbarians in Web-Mind terminology. Why then did he concentrate on such a topic?

“Marten Kluge,” Webbie Octagon hissed. He began to squirm as the gurney neared the end of the conveyer. Octagon bitterly realized his fate. He would ride the belt into the choppers as he was transformed into a cyborg. He would become strong. He would no longer possess any of himself. He might even lose his hatred of—

“Marten Kluge!” Octagon screeched.

As titanium-reinforced fingers began to unbuckle him, the cyborg stiffened. It stood motionless as the conveyer belt fed the screaming, protesting humans into the machine. The cyborg remained unmoving until the last human entered the chute.

“Marten Kluge,” Octagon whispered.

The cyborg reattached the buckle. It turned the magnetic gurney and pushed Webbie Octagon toward the entrance. No fleshy human, Webbie or otherwise, had ever gone in that direction. It was unprecedented.

The pushing cyborg had received an emergency message from the Web-Mind. All the cyborgs on Athena Station had. They were to immediately head for the cargo vessels, the destination Carme. Because of the new command, Webbie Octagon inadvertently avoided conversion. He would join the convoy headed for Carme, to add his feeble muscles to the launching of the Jovian planet-wrecker.

-5-

Patrol boats landed on the Descartes’ shell and on the rock of the second Thales-class vessel. The patrol boats lacked the extended acceleration of a meteor-ship, so they would have to ride piggyback. Unfortunately, their added mass would cut into fuel consumption. But it meant the taskforce would have the benefit of maneuverable landing craft.

Marten and Osadar were in the former Arbiter’s quarters. Omi was presently running a squad in heavy calisthenics as they sprinted through the outer corridors.

Marten studied the latest advance in Jovian ground ordnance: the Infantry Missile Launcher or IML. It was a tube with sights and a trigger and it held a single Cognitive missile. The Cognitive missile gave Marten hope. The warhead was red and the electronics in it were better than anything he’d used before. Normally, the Cognitive missile gave a foot soldier the ability to destroy tanks or other heavy vehicles. A soldier aimed, fired and ducked like mad. The missile’s sensors took over after that, guiding the missile to the target. It used secure neutrino receivers and had the added benefit of a passive designator.

Marten lowered the IML. It weighed nine and half pounds with the missile loaded. Each salvo weighed five and a quarter pounds.

Next Marten picked up something called a PD-10. It was a passive designator. It looked like a heavy Gyroc rifle, but with a large dish antennae on the barrel. The user needed to keep the dish on target. Through secure communications, the PD-10 sent targeting coordinates to any nearby IML-launched Cognitive missiles.

“We need to recode these,” Marten said. “Forget about tanks or vehicles, and set them to target cyborgs.”

“I’m not a technician,” Osadar said.

“I don’t mean you have to do it. But what do you think of the idea?”

Osadar glanced at the IML and at the PD-10 before shrugging.

“Technicians will reset the Cognitive missiles,” Marten said, “using you as the prospective target. With you, I can also show the troops the capabilities of cyborgs and hopefully find some weak points to exploit.”

“They still hate me for slapping their faces.”

Marten grunted. He’d chosen his space marines, calling them that now instead of ship-guardians. He’d taken the ones, twos and threes. Most of them were doomed to a quick death. He was probably doomed, too. But he’d chosen them. Now he was trying to figure out ways to keep them alive once they reached Carme. IMLs, patrol boats to land them on the surface, what else could he do? The knowledge that he led these space marines to almost certain death was beginning to weigh on him.

“How fast does Carme accelerate?” Marten asked Yakov in his wardroom.

“My information says at one-quarter G.”

Marten nodded. The Bangladesh had accelerated at a much greater rate. He wanted his space marines ready for that possibility. There was only one good way to get them ready.

“I need to take my space marines outside,” Marten said.

“We’re accelerating,” Yakov said. “No one goes outside the ship during acceleration.”

“That’s why I need to take them out,” Marten said.

“You might lose men.”

“I might lose space marines on Carme,” Marten said. “But I’m still headed there.”

Yakov drummed his fingers on the computer-desk. At last, he nodded.

The next day began the high-G training. Marten and Omi went out with each squad. It was grueling work. Everyone checked his or her vacc-suit twice. They lacked the spikes of shock trooper suits. Instead, they had hammer-jacks, pitons and block and tackle gear. Marten led the way.

He shot a piton into the meteor-rock and attached his line to it. Slowly, he crawled forward. Piton by piton he neared the curvature of the ship. The G-forces began to tear at him. It caused his mouth to become dry.

Stars and meteor-rock filled his vision. His harsh breathing was all he heard. Then he opened his com-link and instructed those following him.

Slowly, with Omi at the end, the squad crawled across the backside of the Descartes. Terrible G-forces tried to tear them off. More than one space marine shouted curses. Others hissed with fear. Some just silently followed.

It was the fifth time across that the accident occurred. Marten was exhausted. He might have forgotten to give his warnings. There was a scream in his helmet.

“Pelias!” someone roared.

There was a sharp yank on the line. Then there was nothing. Marten’s stomach curled tight. While clutching the gear, he twisted his helmeted head. The sight sickened him.

A space marine tumbled away from the meteor-shell. Her arms flailed as she quickly dwindled.

“Pelias,” Marten whispered.

“Please,” she moaned. “Help me. Send help. I don’t want to die.”

Her flailing form quickly became too small to see. The Descartes and the following meteor-ship burned hard for Carme. They couldn’t afford to halt just to pick her up.

“Pelias,” Marten said, recalling her black lipstick, the way she’d walked. She would last for hours out there, knowing that she was soon going to run out of air.

As Marten clung to the rock with the others behind him, he recalled the awful image of shock troopers dwindling into the blackness, those that had fallen off the Bangladesh’s particle shields.

“What are we going to do?” a space marine asked.

Marten squinted into the starry distance.

“Group-Leader Kluge?” someone asked.

Marten gathered his resolve. Why had Pelias been the one? He shook his head. Then he chinned on his line. He was the shock trooper. He was the hard case.

“This isn’t a game,” he told them. “This is life or death. Pelias forgot that.” He didn’t know if that was true. But he had to use this to train the others.

He heard someone call him a bastard.

Marten shook his head. He had space marines to toughen. He had to do whatever he could so a few might survive the cyborgs. Probably, they were all doomed to die horribly. Or worse, they would enter a cyborg converter.

“Keep moving, people,” Marten heard himself say. “Don’t make Pelias’s mistake. You have to keep your focus at all times.” Then he began to move again, crawling across the surface of the meteor-ship.

Pelias’s boyfriend went berserk the next day. He attacked Marten with a blade, trying to stab him in the back in the recreation room where they drilled. A shout from Omi gave Marten enough time to whirl, dodge and chop his stiffened fingers into the attacker’s throat. The boyfriend writhed on a mat, clutching his throat.

Afterward, Marten went to his chamber. He broke out a bottle of Yakov’s whiskey, sipping once. It burned going down. He shook his head. He hated this. He hated the Highborn and he damn well hated the cyborgs. What had humanity ever done to receive these twin fates?

Marten took another sip before corking the bottle. He had to keep pushing. Destroying the planet-wrecker—he might be saving Earth or Mars. Either way, billions of lives might be resting on what he did. He couldn’t go soft now. He had to push.

The door opened and Osadar entered. The cyborg stopped, and she looked at him.

He gave her a tired glance before getting up, going to the desk and turning on the computer. He felt a growing need to do everything he could to make sure some of these cannon fodder space marine would survive the battle. He knew they were going to need every advantage they could find, or they were all going to die uselessly.

-6-

The debates raged on Ganymede and in the Combined Fleet stationed in mid-orbit there. Chief Strategist Tan held nominal command of the fleet, but that power was slipping.

The warships near Athena Station waited. There was a meteor-ship heading toward them. The assumption was they were cyborg-controlled. They answered radio calls with human officers, citing ridiculous excuses as to why they remained there. But it was obvious they were cyborg ships now. All civilian and commercial spaceships stayed far away from Athena Station. Counting the approaching meteor-ship, the cyborg fleet there contained one dreadnaught, three meteor-ships and many patrol boats.

The terrible meaning of the genocidal destruction of Callisto finally began to seep into the warship-personnel of the Guardian Fleet. Callisto had contained nearly half the Jovian population and well over half the system’s manufacturing capacity. Political, intellectual and monetary power had emanated from the fourth Galilean moon. Now it was gone. That left a gaping hole where the heart of the system used to lie. Worse for the warship-personnel, it had stolen their homes, their wives and children and their base, their reason for being. In a myriad of ways, they had been set adrift. They were like souls without bodies, without a political, spiritual or material anchor.

The two Secessionist warships had matched orbits with them, and a few more patrol boats had straggled in. That gave the new Combined Fleet two dreadnaughts, three meteor-ships and three wings worth of patrol boats.

The Force-Leaders, Arbiters and Governors in the Guardian Fleet-warships realized that no base existed for them. Ganymede had declared itself a sovereign state, as had Europa. The corporate mining-executives on Io were already sending delegates to both moons, seeking protection treaties. The Guardian Fleet had formerly existed to protect the Confederation, but that Confederation had vanished into the splintered sovereign states. Smaller, asteroid-sized moons were already talking about defensive alliances with each other.

Astute politicians on Ganymede and on Europa sensed the opportunities. They’d begun sending open and secret delegates to the various warships, trying to win them over to their particular sovereign state.

Chief Strategist Tan recognized the problem. She had daily briefings with the warship commanders. She also sent orders to various outposts, trying to convince them to hold their positions and monitor the cyborgs. The trouble, however, was that everyone wanted to survive the war. Without the might of Callisto threatening them, and with the crumbling of the Confederation, men and women thinking about their future forget their duty. At least, Tan viewed it that way.

She used half her energy trying to hold the fleet together. The other half she saved for deep thought, trying to pierce the cyborg strategy.

Finally, the warships near Athena Station began a burn that would take them to Io. It had every Jovian in an uproar. Many wanted to intercept the cyborgs and protect the mining properties on Io. Ganymede’s political leaders had other ideas, namely, that the Combined Fleet remain at the third Galilean moon, protecting them from possible bombardment. Soon, the political leaders on Europa clamored for warships. They wanted to know what would happen if the cyborgs headed for their moon.

A meteor-ship with a Europa-born crew planned on heading for home. It was hard to blame their hearts, even if their strategic insight was faulty.

Tan paced down a long corridor on the Kant. Su-Shan was dead. Callisto was a radioactive ruin. Who lived by the Dictates anymore? Could such a philosophically splendid system die that quickly? Was everything she’d learned, everything she’d known, now meaningless? Was mere existence worth all this misery?

Tan slid the sliver ring on her right middle finger back and forth. It had a philosopher-king’s lion symbol on the signet. Sometimes, it felt as if she was the living embodiment of the Dictates. When she felt this way, it was easier. She knew what to do then. First, she must defeat the cyborgs. Then she must return the Jovian System to the pristine state it had so laboriously achieved through the decades. Something as wonderful as reason, logic and meaning—

Tan groaned as she recalled the horrible images from Callisto. Who had ever created such a horror as cyborgs? What had the creators been thinking? What had been the real purpose behind machine-like men? Perhaps the creators had been mad. That seemed like the easiest explanation, or perhaps their dreams had been infested with mad hopes.

Had scientists in the Neptune System observed the massive, military build-up in Inner Planets? Were the cyborgs a response to the Highborn? What had ever prompted the rulers of Social Unity to gene-warp such fierce super-soldiers? Why construct Doom Stars when they’d possessed the SU battlewagons? Well… that was easier to understand. The allied fleets of Mars and Jupiter had defeated a fleet of SU battleships. It had taken Doom Stars to shatter the allied fleet thirteen years ago. Clearly, the rulers of Social Unity had desired Solar-wide conquest. Then again, with such a sprawling political system there must have been and likely still were vast bureaucracies within the structure of Social Unity that fought at cross-purposes against each other. Perhaps one department had created the Highborn and a different department with different insights and goals had built the Doom Stars.

Tan shook her head as she stared out of a viewing port. Mighty, banded Jupiter slowly rotated, and the Red Spot swirled with activity. That Red Spot was a hurricane in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. It had been blowing and swirling for over five hundred years, changing its deepness of color and speed over the long decades. There was no land inside Jupiter to break apart a hurricane as happened on Earth. There, hurricanes rose from the oceans and they broke apart over the landmasses.

Tan sighed. Social Unity didn’t matter now. Highborn, Doom Stars—the cyborg fleet burned for Io. Should she attempt to intercept the fleet? The problem was that compared to the rest of the Jovian moons, the Galilean moons moved in near proximity to each other. What if she accelerated for the cyborg fleet or for Io, and then the enemy made a dash for Europa or even worse, for Ganymede? They could not afford to lose any more Galilean moons or industrial centers. If the cyborgs bombarded Europa or Ganymede—she must defend those two moons at all costs. Io on the other hand….

Tan stared at the great gas giant with its Red Spot. Three Earths could fit into that single ancient storm. Maybe the cyborgs would bypass Io and attempt to destroy the processing centers that floated in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Did the cyborgs need the helium-3 isotopes? No. She doubted the cyborgs would pin themselves so near the massive gravity-well. Going down to Io or to the processing plants was easy. Climbing back up the gravity-well took hard burns.

She let go of her ring, the one she’d been rotating around her finger. She looked back the way she’d come. The corridor curved slowly. She had already walked the outer-corridor circumference of the dreadnaught. Her heart rate quickened then as she considered a critical problem.

Fleet morale had sunk to abysmal levels. The very idea of the Guardian Fleet was nearly dead. Callisto glowed with radiation and everyone else jockeyed for an unknown future. The rulers of Europa and Ganymede played political games when they needed to concentrate on defeating the cyborgs. She needed to cement her fleet role as supreme commander. This move toward Io by the cyborgs—a cunning mind moved that fleet. A cunning mind had sent the missile strike into the heart of the Jovian System.

Tan whirled around and broke into an unseemly trot. She had to use the move against Io to her advantage. She had to wield these new politicians, using them to create a new Confederation. If she was to win the battle against the cyborgs, they had to give her command authority. As it was, they chipped away at her power.

As she trotted, Tan began to breathe hard. She wasn’t used to running and her legs were too short. It was time to speak with the Advisor of Ganymede—the moon’s chief politician—and with the Controller of Europa. She had a good idea about what was going to happen next. Io was doomed to nuclear bombardment. That was the horrible truth. The Advisor and the Controller would never agree to let the Combined Fleet head to Io to avert disaster. Therefore, she had to use her foreknowledge and her gift at strategy, both military and political, to break their confidence in themselves. She had to show them that only she could save the Jupiter System. It was time to have another three-way. It was time to join the political games, using her strategic insights to win the power she needed to annihilate the cyborg menace.

The three-way conference between Chief Strategist Tan of the Guardian Fleet, the Advisor of Ganymede and the Controller of Europa. Subjective time: twenty days after the cyborg missile strike of Callisto. Held via a dedicated laser lightguide-link.

TAN: Gentlemen, I’m glad you agreed to meet with me. The situation has become dire. The cyborgs have gathered an appreciable concentration of warships and presently move on a hard intercept course for Io. We cannot afford to lose the mining colonies there.

ADVISOR: I dearly hope this is not another attempt to move the Combined Fleet out of its excellent, defensive position. I’ve already informed you of Ganymede’s total rejection of such thinking.

CONTROLLER: Before we speak about that, let us be clear on one critical certainty. The cyborgs are cunning. We have learned this to our eternal disadvantage. Callisto—it is too difficult to put into words the horrors that occurred there.

TAN: We are the leaders of the Jovian System. If you cannot put the situation into words, I suggest the governors of Europa find someone who can.

CONTROLLER: Have a care, Chief Strategist. There are no more arbiters or philosopher-run spy agencies on Europa. We are thus free to think, do and speak as our hearts wish.

TAN: Perhaps that is so. My question for you is. For how much longer will you enjoy these freedoms if you ignore the cyborgs?

CONTROLLER: The Dictates died with Callisto and this isn’t a dialogue of the old school. You will not cajole or intimidate me. Know, that I agreed to this meeting for one reason only. I demand that the new, Combined Fleet protect Europa as strongly as it protects Ganymede.

ADVISOR: (sneeringly) How do you suggest this occur?

CONTROLLER: We must split the fleet into equal parts, with one half stationed at Europa and the other at Ganymede.

TAN: That still leaves Io open to bombardment.

CONTROLLER: Such an occurrence would be a terrible tragedy, and I would grieve deeply. All Europa would grieve. However, reality demands that we defend the key, strategic posts. Using population levels and industrial capacity as the rubric, Europa and Ganymede are clearly the critical locations.

ADVISOR: You have a point concerning strategic targets, Controller. Still, your thinking is faulty on two counts. One, Ganymede has four times Europa’s population and five times its industrial capacity. That mandates our moon as the primary defensive establishment. Two, splintering our fleet in the face of the enemy is military suicide. I’m sure the Chief Strategist would agree with me on that.

CONTROLLER: (with his voice rising) I demand equal protection.

ADVISOR: To what end do you make these demands? Is it in the interest of Jovian Civilization? Or do you make these demands through a selfish desire for personal safety?

CONTROLLER: I make the demand for the same reason you do.

ADVISOR: Surely you jest.

CONTROLLER: Eighty-five percent of the Jovian System’s water originates on Europa. Can you survive without water?

ADVISOR: I abhor the thought of the loss of your moon. That is understood, and we obviously need water.

CONTROLLER: Then send us half the fleet. Guard Europa and guard the water supply.

ADVISOR: There is a flaw in your reasoning. In the unfortunate circumstance that the cyborgs bombard Europa and destroy you, tankers will still eventually be able to land there and mine the ice.

CONTROLLER: Irradiated ice? Is that what you wish to drink?

ADVISOR: The water companies will use distillation systems to purify the liquid.

CONTROLLER: I deem your thinking as unreasonable and Ganymede-centric.

ADVISOR: (laughs) There are no philosopher-boards to hear your complaints. Ganymede is the supreme moon, and we control the fleet. You would do better to adjust yourself to the new realities. Instead of berating me, you should try to cajole me. What can you offer Ganymede? Come, Controller, what is your continued existence worth? If Europa decided to become our largest fiefdom—

CONTROLLER: Are you mad? We have just won our freedom from Callisto.

ADVISOR: You have won nothing. This freedom was granted you through the cyborg missile strike.

CONTROLLER: The same holds true for Ganymede.

ADVISOR: That is completely false. Ganymede citizen-guardians within the fleet boldly took charge of their vessels and—

CONTROLLER: (shouting) We won’t crawl on our knees to you! Send us warships! Without Europa and with irradiated water you will all die!

ADVISOR: Calm yourself, sir. Your tirade is unseemly, and it suggests to me that you’re unhinged.

TAN: Gentlemen, please—

CONTROLLER: I warn you both. Europa controls a meteor-ship, and—

ADVISOR: (scoffing) One meteor-ship—you are the weak sister.

CONTROLLER: We wondered if this day would occur. We had hoped we were wrong, but we’ve long distrusted you.

ADVISOR: Insults are unadvisable, and in your situation, highly dangerous.

CONTROLLER: (laughs harshly) Do you believe so? Then let me inform you both that patriots of Europa have planted secret bombs in the warships.

ADVISOR: This is madness you spout, the fantasies of a deranged mind. You cannot be serious.

CONTROLLER: Doubt me at your peril, Advisor. We long suspected your trustworthiness. Therefore, we decided to create insurance, giving you good reason to treat us in a civilized manner.

ADVISOR: How do I know that your statement is true?

CONTROLLER: Twice you have impugned my good name. I am the Controller of Europa, a governor of tested integrity. You know this to be true because I have spoken and I am an honest man. More insults will result in—

ADVISOR: No, no, this is a dire thing, you say. A cunning man could make your claims, acting the part of an honest broker. In this, you must confirm your statement.

CONTROLLER: You mocked me earlier. Now I begin to question your reason. What you ask, I cannot verify it for a simple reason. By its nature, a confirmation invalidates the threat of a secretly-placed explosive. You will have to accept this on faith or face the destruction of your fleet.

Three seconds of silence ensues.

CONTROLLER: I repeat my demand. Send half the fleet to Europa.

ADVISOR: I can understand your desire. You are a true guardian, a valiant servant of your state. However, I would beg you to reconsider. From a purely strategic standpoint, Jovian Civilization can afford to lose Europa. Naturally, we would all deeply regret it. And I hope you did not take my small joke earlier to heart.

CONTROLLER: That Europa became Ganymede’s prized fiefdom?

ADVISOR: Hearing you repeat the joke causes me to wince. My humor was definitely ill-advised. Now that I’ve admitted that, I ask you to reconsider your ‘demand’. We must examine strategy in light of future Jovian Civilization. Our system cannot afford to lose Ganymede, to lose its highly-trained population and nearly sole heavy industrial basin. Therefore, to protect the system, we must ensure Ganymede’s survival. Then we must carefully husband our strength to defeat the cyborgs when and where they attempt another decapitating strike. That means, naturally, that the fleet will do everything in its power to protect Europa.

CONTROLLER: Yes, by parking warships in mid-Europa orbit.

TAN: Gentlemen, if I could intervene in your argument.

ADVISOR: I’m not sure your interruption is warranted, Chief Strategist. The Controller and I are politically chosen representatives of our sovereign moons. You are a cipher in the antiquated Guardian Fleet. You must obey the new political authorities. While it is true the Controller and I have disagreed on some minor points just now, we do so in a legal and ethical manner. Your intrusion into grand strategy—no, it is unwarranted.

TAN: Speak to the cyborgs about ethics.

ADVISOR: Is that a threat?

TAN: The cyborgs will soon attack Io. Knowing this, the strategically sound move that protects both Europa and Ganymede is clear. We must send the entire fleet on an intercept course and live or die by that battle.

ADVISOR: That is sheer hysteria.

CONTROLLER: I don’t agree. Her proposal interests me.

ADVISOR: My dear sir, surely you see her trickery. She cares nothing about Ganymede or Europa, but wishes to cement her place at the head of the fleet. Then she will blackmail us both into a subservient position.

TAN: Perhaps I wish to defeat the enemy.

ADVISOR: Do you take us for fools? Do you think we lack the understanding of basic deception?

TAN: If you would listen—

ADVISOR: It is clear that the cyborgs are ruthlessly cunning. They use their fleet to lunge at Io, attempting to lure our fleet out of position. Once that occurs, they shall burn at a harder acceleration than any human could endure. Oh, I’ve studied their last attack in detail. I know beyond doubt that they desire a nuclear bombardment of Ganymede. They hope to finish the war with one more strike.

CONTROLLER: I have a counter-proposal.

ADVISOR: My dear sir, we must unite on strategy so the Chief Strategist doesn’t divide and then exploit us through Dictate-derived guile.

CONTROLLER: First, let me remind each of you that secret obliteration devices reside in the warships.

ADVISOR: I feel driven to point out that activating the devices will leave Europa at the mercy of the cyborgs.

CONTROLLER: I understand. But I refuse to passively stand by and watch Europa’s destruction. If the second Galilean moon dies, the fleet perishes.

ADVISOR: Forgive me for saying this, but that strikes me as a selfish attitude.

CONSTROLLER: Nevertheless, it is my attitude. However, I no more desire death than you do. Therefore, if you refuse to split the Combined Fleet into equal parts, then I demand that you move the fleet into a position halfway between Europa and Ganymede. In this way, if the cyborgs lunge at either moon, the Combined Fleet will rush in to protect that target.

ADVISOR: In no way do I wish to disparage your intelligence. Yet a simple understanding of space mechanics will show you the folly of such a proposal. A fleet needs a gravity-well to help it accelerate and slingshot at its targeted destination. Since the Combined Fleet already rests at the—at a primary defensive post, it should logically remain here. If the fleet were already at Europa, I would suggest the same thing.

CONTROLLER: Your statement is questionable.

ADVISOR: I am unused to anyone calling me a liar, even someone as noble as you are, sir.

TAN: Gentlemen, please, this bickering is useless. The cyborgs are on the verge of destroying us, of bombarding Europa and Ganymede.

ADVISOR: Our fleet stands in their path.

TAN: Gentlemen, let me outline the cyborg strategy.

ADVISOR: (scoffing) You claim to understand them?

TAN: I understand how I would act given their situation.

ADVISOR: If your highly vaunted insight reigns so supreme, why didn’t you foresee the strike against Callisto?

TAN: The cyborgs are trying to annihilate important, strategic targets in turn, hoping to paralyze us into inactivity. If we let them bombard Io, we are that much closer to the abyss of extinction. We must meet their fleet, risking life or death. Otherwise, we give them the strategic initiative.

CONTROLLER: Could you explain that, please?

ADVISOR: She speaks Dictate-style gibberish in an attempt to confuse us. I advise against listening to her.

CONTROLLER: No. I would hear her insight. After all, she was a Chief Strategist under the old rule.

ADVISOR: Don’t let her deceive you. She was a junior strategist elevated to the highest rank through the simplest expedient of being the sole survivor of the War Council.

CONTROLLER: Nevertheless, she was trained in war theory and execution.

ADVISOR: That means she is highly cunning and deceitful.

CONTROLLER: Then let us use her deceitful practices to deceive the cyborgs.

ADVISOR: That is mere sophistry, sir, which I had thought died with Callisto’s passing.

CONTROLLER: (his voice hardening) I insist on hearing her insights, sir.

ADVISOR: Bah! It is a waste of our precious time. However, to show you that I am capable of bending over backward to please an ally, I will submit to her diatribe.

TAN: (serenely) This is no diatribe, gentlemen, but an assessment of the strategic situation. The cyborgs threaten us with the horns of a dilemma, thereby hoping to pin our mobile elements into static non-movement.

ADVISOR: You’re speaking strategic gibberish to blind us to your political goals.

TAN: In my first days at the Academy, we read an ancient book called Strategy. B.H. Liddell Hart wrote it.

ADVISOR: I am unaware of the author and suspect you are deviating from the true topic of our three-way.

TAN: Strategy is a treasure trove of military insights. What I find interesting is that the cyborgs seem to be applying the strategy of an ancient soldier named General Sherman. He termed the phase, ‘on the horns of a dilemma,’ which I just elucidated. In his ‘March to the Sea’ through a place called Georgia, General Sherman always took a line of advance that left his enemies in doubt of his destination. Would he march on Macon or Augusta next, or later on Augusta or Savannah? He forced his enemies to defend multiple places. The place left open, he destroyed. In this way, he annihilated the productive areas in a land called ‘The South.’

Now, the question for us is this. Do we park our fleet in a single place, waiting? Do we allow the cyborgs to burn through the Jovian System as General Sherman burned his way through Georgia? If we answer in the negative, if we hope to thwart our fate, we must strike boldly. We must use everything we possess to smash the enemy and regain the initiative.

CONTROLLER: The risks are great, and perhaps you are wrong. Do the cyborgs truly wish to destroy Io? If they attempt it, it will put their warships deep in Jupiter’s gravity-well.

ADVISOR: I believe the cyborgs hope to lure our fleet out of position. I find that I agree with the Controller. We must wait.

TAN: Haven’t you been listening? Io isn’t the target, but a possibility. The cyborgs have put us on the horns of a dilemma. We cannot possibly defend everything. Therefore, we must risk the fleet and our moons to attack instead of waiting to die piece by piece.

ADVISOR: Controller, your words have convinced me. We must wait. We must hold and defend. Unfortunately, I lack complete authority regarding the Combined Fleet. My vote, however, is to place the fleet in far-Ganymede orbit, thereby putting it closer to Europa, ready to dash to your moon in its savage defense.

CONTROLLER: A mid-point between our moons would be better.

ADVISOR: I believe if you confer with your space tacticians, you will find that an inadvisable proposal.

CONTROLLER: …I will confer with them.

TAN: Gentlemen, the cyborgs will destroy Io if we do nothing. Then they might well send patrol boats into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and bombard the floaters. They might also strike the inner group, the processing moons, blowing up the storage facilities there. Several year’s-worth of helium-3 and deuterium are at risk.

ADVISOR: You cannot know these things with such certainty. They are illusions built to suit your political aspirations.

TAN: My words are recorded, gentlemen. I will stand by them. Then all will see that I could have saved Io and whatever else we shall lose, while you two dithered, too filled with fear to make the bold move.

CONTROLLER: Your insults leave me cold, Chief Strategist. Advisor, I must confer with my tacticians concerning these space mechanics you mentioned.

ADVISOR: Yes, excellent. I must also depart and relate this meeting to our Quorum. Chief Strategist, if you will excuse me, and Controller, if I have your leave.

CONTROLLER: You do, for now. But I will expect an elevation of Europan fleet personnel into command positions. This must have occurred by our next meeting. If you find that unacceptable, then a substantial number of warships must be en route to our moon. Otherwise, the destruct codes will be activated. I suggest you both think carefully on that.

ADVISOR: You are a bold man, Controller. I welcome you as my ally in these harrowing days.

TAN: Unless you gentlemen agree to my strategy, our extinction is a real probability.

ADVISOR: Your days are numbered, Chief Strategist.

TAN: No more than yours, Advisor.

CONTROLLER: (a static line).

The end of the three-way.

-7-

On Carme, Nadia Pravda crawled through a claustrophobically tight tunnel. She wore a rebreather with tank and a pressurized slick-suit. A headlamp washed over asteroid-rock with sharp points and dust on the uneven floor.

Nadia stapled a thick power cable into place. Her arms ached from lugging the stapler and her body throbbed with fatigue and desperate lack of sleep.

Out of an original bin of sixty unmodified humans, Nadia was one out of few to have survived this long. Haulers brought in more captured humans, along with needed equipment. The humans withered like leaves. They withered from overwork, undernourishment and despair.

Nadia’s breathing was harsh. Through the rebreather’s ballistic glass mask, there were dark circles around her eyes and a strange, haunted quality. A cyborg had shaved her head and sprayed her with burning chemicals. She had survived this long because she practiced several vile expedients.

She crawled on her elbows, carefully searching the floor and then the tight walls around her. She’d found dead workers before, their slick-suits torn by rock. The slightest cut could kill, allowing vacuum to finish her.

Nadia pressed the stapler against the cable and pulled the trigger. The unit trembled, and it pushed sharply against her hands as it drove a staple over the power-cable and into the rock. She dragged herself another few feet and repeated the process. She’d been in this tunnel for over sixteen hours. She had another eight to go. The cyborgs worked people in twenty-four hour cycles, with a four-hour sleep and eating period.

Nadia had survived because she stole nutrients from the dazed, the dispirited and the dying. When she found a dead worker, she slept for twenty or thirty minute periods. Then she claimed whatever work the dead had accomplished as her own. She did this because the cyborgs killed anyone who failed to reach their work-quota.

Nadia had been here since the Occam patrol boats died. She refused to quit. She’d beaten Hansen, the Highborn and Ervil and now she was going to beat the cyborgs. It was an act of futility. She understood that. She wondered if Marten Kluge had influenced her with something of his essential nature.

As she pressed the stapler against the cable and pulled the trigger—her hands lifted upward—she frowned. That pained her eyes. They burned all the time, and it hurt to blink. The sound of her breathing—she scraped her armored elbows across the gritty rock floor. She dragged herself over the cable and as she brushed up against the rock walls.

Nadia froze then, and slowly backed up. With blurring eyes, she stared at a sharp, rocky protrusion. Her stomach tightened as she checked her slick-suit. There was a line where the rock had pressed against it. But the suit hadn’t torn—she almost wept in relief.

She realized in a foggy way that she’d almost killed herself. Slowly, she lowered herself onto the floor. She needed to think. She had to collect herself. The cable made it impossible to relax, but she needed a few seconds of peace.

A new thought… it seemed profound as it welled into life. In the escape-pod traveling to Jupiter, she’d given up. Listlessness had been her constant companion. Here, on this hellish surface and with nightmarish overlords, she struggled to live. That didn’t make sense. It was a hundred times more painful here. She ached to sleep. She was hungry all the time. Instant death, it plagued her every move in these horrible tunnels.

This tunnel snaked endlessly into the darkness. She was alone down here, and she could possibly wedge herself at any turn. Here she fought on through mind-numbing horrors. Why hadn’t she fought on with similar courage against the loneliness of the escape-pod?

Her mind was too blurred to understand. With a groan, she forced herself up. She had to keep working or she might fail quota. If that occurred, a cyborg would simply rip off her mask and pitch her quivering body aside. She’d seen cyborgs do it over a hundred times to other unmodified humans.

Why—?

Nadia wondered then if she had the answer to her question. The escape-pod had been bitter loneliness and emptiness. There had not been anything to latch onto. There had been nothing to fight but for nothingness. Here, she saw her demons. She felt the tortures. It was something to endure. Maybe it was easier to endure hateful torture than to endure silence, stillness and aching loneliness and nothingness. That seemed strange.

Nadia listened to her harsh breathing and she squeezed her burning eyes. She wanted to sleep, but she’d have to wait another eight hours for that. Carefully, she slid past the sharp rock. Then she pressed the stapler against the black cable—it also disappeared into the tunnel that seemed to go on forever.

Nadia pressed the trigger. Her hands lifted, and another staple appeared around the power cable. She helped the cyborgs build their planet-wrecker, but Nadia didn’t know that. She endured for endurance sake, a human rat struggling in an alien sewer. If there was one thing life had taught her, it was that things changed. Nothing remained the same forever. On that small truth, she placed every hope, every drive to survive this endless ordeal.

-8-

After a year of desperate travel and weeks of hard deceleration, the Thutmosis III was docked beside a built-up asteroid-moon. The tiny moon was part of the Carme group and known as Demeter. Heavy docking girders were locked onto the big vessel, with lamprey-like tubes attached to the ship’s airlocks.

Demeter was a Guardian Fleet outpost, a munitions depot housing several patrol boats. Silvery domes and towers dotted the seven-kilometer moon. Large bots were attached to the Thutmosis III. They glowed with bright, arcing light, effecting repairs. Another multi-armed bot presently left a hanger, its jet a stab of flame. It headed for the docked warship, for one of the weapons pods.

After the missile strike on Callisto, the base personnel had fled Demeter, taking most of the patrol boats. The Praetor had captured one boat. Its sole occupant had been the base’s former Force-Leader. Her interrogation had revealed Demeter, the base’s proximity and function.

At the moment, the Praetor marched through a munitions chamber deep in Demeter. He wore his battleoid-armor, with its heavy hand-cannon mounts. Around him, huge missiles lay in storage. Within his armor-suit, the Praetor grinned as he viewed the lettering on a missile’s nosecone: Voltaire Missile, AE 1133, Article Seven-Twelve.

Since saving his ship, the Praetor had lost weight, and the glow to his pink eyes had grown even stranger. Radiation poisoning had done the damage, but he was functional again, regaining strength by the hour and sustained by stimulants. With an exoskeleton-powered gauntlet, he gripped a metallic leash. It glittered whenever his headlamps washed over the former commander of Demeter Outpost. The woman’s left eye had puffed shut. She was missing teeth, and by the wincing way she spoke, it was obvious it hurt her to talk.

The Praetor mentally shrugged. The Force-Leader could have saved herself the permanent scarring and the brutalization. But she was a preman, a subhuman. It meant she could only learn through her own mistakes. That was the problem with possessing limited humanity. A Highborn learned through other people’s mistakes, not just his own. A preman was too stupid to use such elementary logic.

The Praetor tugged the leash, making her stumble after him. The empty base now belonged to the Highborn. Soldiers effected repairs and restocked the missile-ship with inferior Zeno drones.

The Praetor jerked the leash. The small Force-Leader bumped up against his armor. Servos whined as he peered down at her. In order to heighten her fear, the Praetor lifted one of his battleoid arms. He put his gauntleted fingers around the top of her head.

“With the twitch of my fingers,” he boomed through the suit’s speakers, “I can crush your skull.”

She whimpered. She was a broken reed, her entire body fleshed with purple and yellow bruises. There hadn’t been time for refinement as speed was critical.

“Show me the secret locations,” he boomed.

He allowed her to look up. She was such a child compared to him. Ah, this was living. This was why he’d been born—born into the world, not hatched from a test-tube as the hateful Social Unity propagandists claimed.

He shook her head. “Show me.”

“I’ve shown you everything,” she whispered.

“I’ve studied the outpost’s specs,” he told her.

She frowned.

He laughed. “My mental acuity is ten times yours. What takes you days to read, I can scan in an hour. Either you erased sections of your outpost’s logs before you left, or your overlords possessed a smattering of cunning and failed to add them to the specs. Now show me the secret locations or I shall squeeze your skull until blood runs out your nostrils.”

She stared up at him. Her eyes—

The Praetor stiffened at what he read in her, and he nodded. So… she attempted deceit.

“I will show you,” she whispered, with a quaver in her voice. “If you will follow me….”

He gave her play with the leash. She shuffled ahead of him, past the nosecone of a giant Voltaire Missile. With his chin, he lowered the helmet’s receivers. He didn’t want to burst his eardrums with what he was about to do.

His helmet and chest lamps washed over various control mechanisms. Yes, he understood now. It made him grin ferociously.

The woman said something. He couldn’t hear the precise words, because his gain was way down. He recognized her pointing into the darkness, however. Then she lurched toward a hatch.

“Is that the secret way?” he boomed.

The Force-Leader hunched her battered shoulders before nodding.

“Show me,” the Praetor said.

She shuffled toward the hatch. With a shaking finger, she reached for a control board. He let her hand get to within an inch of it. Then, with savage strength, he yanked the leash. She lifted off her feet, yelping in animal surprise and pain, and then possibly screaming with terror. He didn’t give her time to attempt anything else. Gripping her head, he twisted with exoskeleton strength.

He twisted her head, ripping the flesh and breaking the neck-bones, tearing the head from the torso. Blood jetted everywhere, spraying in gouts. Disgusted, the Praetor pitched her torso aside. It hadn’t been fear that made him use his battleoid-suit at full power, but a desire to protect the Voltaire Missiles from even the slightest harm.

The former Force-Leader had just tried to explode a hidden bomb. Perhaps this control-board contained the base destruction switch. He had seen the subtle change in her. He had been so certain, too, that she’d been broken.

“Praetor!” Canus said over the suit’s radio-link.

“I am here.”

“We have established a laser-link with Earth. Do you wish to speak with the Grand Admiral?”

“Soon,” the Praetor said. They had lost radio contact with Highborn High Command many long months ago. Had the Grand Admiral believed him dead? Was news of the missile-ship’s survival a rude shock to that cunning old soldier? The Praetor concentrated on the here and now, and told Canus, “Before I speak to Cassius, we must first make contact with the Confederation ruler.”

“The chief representative of the Confederation has been asking to talk with you for some time.”

The Praetor studied the headless Force-Leader. Blood oozed from the torn neck and pooled on the floor. Could he have underestimated these premen? No. That seemed unlikely. A wild impulse must have reignited the woman’s training. Perhaps he should have—

“No,” he said.

“Praetor?” asked Canus.

“I’m coming back up,” he said. “Then I shall speak with their leader. What was his name again?”

“Not a man, lord, but a woman.”

The Praetor grunted with contempt. “That seems fitting, a woman to rule them. What was her name again? It’s hard remembering these subhuman names.”

“Chief Strategist Tan, lord.”

“A grandiose title for a preman, don’t you think?”

“They love to give themselves gaudy titles,” Canus said.

“It is a flaw in their makeup,” the Praetor said. Then he began giving Canus instructions regarding the dead Force-Leader and the deadliness of this underground chamber.

The Praetor sat in his command chair on the Thutmosis III. It had been a long time since he’d worn his dress uniform. It was black, with a stiff white collar and a blue Nova Sunburst on the right pectoral. He wore his black beret with a red skull pinned to the front, indicating that he belonged to the Death’s Head Battalion. The unit had originated in the Youth Barracks. It had contained the toughest among them, only joined by those who had either killed on the practice mats or so badly injured another that the instructors had ordered medics to drag the wounded to the infirmary.

Even as a boy, he had been dangerous, a lion among his fellows. In turn among subhumans, he was a T-Rex, a legendry creature that all must fear.

The Praetor smiled and his pink eyes shined. “Open the channel,” he said.

“Opening… now,” Canus said.

Before him appeared a holographic image of Chief Strategist Tan. There was more than twenty million kilometers separating them. It meant there was a seven-second time delay between each transmission.

The holographic image showed him a soft woman, a small preman with a peculiar cant to her head and a bizarre… manner. He wondered if she were a cretin, if this was an arrogant, preman joke, played on him by someone who loved using proxies. She almost smiled like an idiot without a thought.

The Praetor’s eyes narrowed. Canus offered a comment then. Perhaps the soldier had been watching him, maybe a little too closely.

“I’ve just a found a file on her,” Canus said. “She follows the Dictates, which is a heightened, philosophical code.”

The Praetor grunted with annoyance.

“According to their philosophical beliefs,” Canus said, “each attempts to practice serenity.”

“What?”

Canus pointed at a holographic image.

The Praetor saw the image of a bald, bearded man who wore a toga.

“This is their base image,” Canus said. “It is their model, the one they attempt to pattern themselves after. He is their Socrates.”

“Ah,” the Praetor said. The Socrates shown here had the same buffoonish smile as the woman portrayed. It was an affected idiocy, a philosopher’s trick. She attempted to mock him in an effort to anger him into revealing something critical.

The Praetor settled back into his command chair. Instead of a predator’s smile, he would show her solid indifference, playing the part of a soldier’s soldier. If it were possible, he would attempt to appear simple. He would have to throttle back on the speed of his analytic abilities, lest he give away his surpassing superiority. He recalled reading or hearing somewhere that philosophers were the blindest of people, observing reality through the prism of their foolish creed.

The holographic image of this puny woman opened its mouth. It began to speak. “I welcome you to our system, Commander. It is unfortunate that we have this communication under such dire stress. The cyborgs have arrived at Jupiter just as they arrived in the Mars System a year ago. We know they fought together at Mars with the fanatics of Social Unity. Together with the usurping Social Unitarians, the cyborgs inflicted unheard of damage against your Grand Admiral. Yes, they destroyed a Doom Star and nearly annihilated a second. Therefore, I do not need to underscore the deadliness of these mechanically-created aliens.”

She paused then, no doubt deciding to let him utter a greeting. The seven-second delay made a conversation odd—for those who weren’t used to long-distance talk. As a ship commander, he was more than used to it.

The Praetor clamped down on his irritation. To liken the Highborn Fleet with Jovian foolishness, surprised by the cyborgs and losing ships to stealth attacks—He breathed deeply. What he needed now was information.

The Praetor inclined his head. “The days are dark as the cyborgs advance with their customary ruthlessness. Highborn High Command has pledged itself to their destruction. Even though these are evil times, I am pleased to have arrived at this critical juncture. I am formally placing my ship at the disposal of the Jovian Confederation. The implication of your greeting leads me to believe that we can work in tandem.”

The words came hard, but the Praetor maintained his pose. It was ludicrous to think that Highborn could harness themselves with subhumans. Could even a philosopher believe such an absurdity? Well, she was a preman. Therefore, he could easily lead the conversation. He needed her to request his ship to travel deeper into the gravity-well to join the Jovian forces. Then he could maneuver onto a Galilean moon. Once his Highborn reached a planetary body—then he could implement his Pizarro strategy to its fullest scope.

After a short delay, she began to speak again. “Your words give me hope, Commander. We are in dire need of alliance. That you’ve reached Demeter at this time—could it be Dictate-derived intervention?”

Did she believe in divine beings? Ha! That made her even simpler, practically a stooge in intelligence. Conquering the Jovian System might actually prove easier than he’d expected. The cyborgs would prove the challenge. He would have to gain leadership of these Jovians fast. Could this preman understand the hope he brought with his vessel? Sometimes, these subhumans were inordinately proud. If she desired victory, logically, she should immediately offer him supreme command. Should he hint to that effect? It was probably too soon. No. He would mask himself for a little while longer. He needed to gain the Jovian levers of power before he revealed his true nature.

“Let me repeat my offer, Chief Strategist. The Thutmosis III has been restocked with armaments. Likely, it is the most powerful warship in the system. By its addition, the Confederation will gain immensely. We are soon ready to depart and could reach Ganymede in one hundred hours.”

Time passed. Then she said, “Your offer is generous, Commander. I accept. I wonder… could you place me in communication with the base personnel of Demeter. There seems to have been a com failure, as we haven’t been able to speak with guardian personnel there for some time.”

According to the former Force-Leader, the Jovians had fled Demeter in secret. The Praetor pondered that. He smiled inwardly. Then he began to speak.

“Our nearness activated a secret stealth attack. We landed as cyborg-converted Jovians finished the butchery of their former comrades. The bloodshed was hideous. We avenged your follow soldiers and obliterated the cyborgs, never fear on that score. Unfortunately, we must have inadvertently activated secret destruct codes. Perhaps you could send us the deactivation sequences so we could keep the base from further damage.”

The transmission took seven seconds one way, seven seconds the other, in addition to the time needed for the Chief Strategist to digest the words and form her reply. The Praetor almost frowned. What was taking her so long? Could she suspect duplicity on his part? That seemed inconceivable. He had woven the perfect cover story, and he understood how those under siege grasped at straws. Her need should smooth over any suspicions she might have. Perhaps he’d stumbled onto one of those paranoid preman. The best way to deal with those was with a bullet through the brain.

“Another tragedy has occurred,” Tan finally said. “Since you have uncovered another of their stealth attacks, you can more readily understand how deadly their secrecy is.”

No, the Praetor wished to tell her. I now understood how gullible you are. Instead, he replied, “The cyborgs are a virus, one we must ruthlessly purge. Having witnessed their savagery, I now pledge myself to their eradication from the Jovian System.”

“Your words give me relief,” said Tan.

The Praetor shifted in his command chair, holding back braying laughter. How pitifully easy it was to lull premen! Only their vast, teeming numbers and large industrial base gave the subhumans a lingering ability to resist the Highborn.

“I suspect that my relief will also be your relief,” Tan said, “for we have uncovered a diabolical plan.” She went on to describe the Carme planet-wrecker, the desperate Jovian taskforce heading toward it and the likely cyborg targets of Mars, Earth or Venus.

A cold feeling entered the Praetor’s stomach. His baleful features stiffened and his weird eyes gained a crazed look. As he sat in his command chair, the cyborg strategy seemed to unfold before him. Seemly attempting to conquer the planets of the Jovian System, rather they were here to create planet-wreckers from the many stray asteroids. These errant rocks and moons would orbit around Jupiter, building up velocity. Then they would hurl the planet-wreckers at the Inner Planets. It was brilliant, vast in scope and a scheme of genocidal ruthlessness. It awed him, and despite his growing hatred of the cyborgs, the Praetor found himself admiring them.

“Commander,” Tan said, “fate seems to have given you the prime task of halting the planet-wrecker. Our main fleet must remain among the Galilean moons or we shall face extinction. We have sent a taskforce, but now you have arrived. I ask you, Commander, what could be more important than your ship heading to Carme and obliterating the grave threat?”

The Praetor tapped the arm of his chair. The cyborgs surely would heavily defend this planet-wrecker. The Thutmosis III was a raid ship, best employed with long-range stealth tactics. To race toward the planet-wrecker like a Doom Star was folly. The preman wanted him to do their dirty work. The idea was enraging.

“I will speak to Highborn High Command and relay your critical information,” he said. “We are presently repairing ship damage. Could you transmit to me all pertinent information regarding this planet-wrecker and the strategic situation between the Confederation and the cyborgs?”

“You are wise, Commander,” Tan said. “If you are prepared, I will transmit the information now. I urge you to make a speedy decision, however. Whatever we do, we must do quickly.”

The Praetor seethed. How dare she urge a Highborn to move with speed? None could act more decisively or more boldly than Highborn. Despite his anger, he nodded and ended the conversation with a salutation of seeming equality and a promise to act soon.

Afterward, he realized that he would have to speak with the Grand Admiral and relay the terrible news. The Inner Planets war had just broadened to include Jupiter.

-9-

Gharlane stood in a viewing port of the Locke. He stared down at Io with its strange land patterns. Io looked like a rotten orange, with a dozen intermixing colors.

The planetoid was the most geologically active body in the Solar System, possessing over four hundred active volcanoes. Many spewed sulfur dioxide. Some of the sulfur blew more than five hundred kilometers high, drifting into space. The sulfur added to Jupiter’s magnetosphere and it created the Io plasma torus. The torus was a belt of intense radiation. It was a doughnut-shaped ring of ionized sulfur, oxygen, sodium, and chlorine, created when the neutral atoms in the ‘cloud’ surrounding Io were ionized and carried along by the Jovian magnetosphere.

Io’s largest volcanoes were over ten kilometers high. The spewed sulfur created huge umbrella-shaped, yellow plumes in the atmosphere. Pele, one of the biggest volcanoes, was named after an ancient Hawaiian goddess.

As he stood in the viewing port, Gharlane shifted his stance. He saw white streaks, meaning that patrol boats entered the slight atmosphere.

Today, the boats had two critical tasks to perform. The first was unloading cyborgs troops. Io was a harsh moon, rich in ores but deadly to life. Most of the habitats were near the hot sulfur lakes created by the constant volcanism. Company workers mined the lakes. They endured while working in heavy radiation-suits and they lived under lead shielding. Many roved over the lakes on crystal platforms, specially treated to withstand the lava-like sulfur.

The cyborgs in the descending patrol boats planned to swarm each habitat, killing any who resisted. Gharlane allowed himself the stimulation of a pleasure center, the cyborg equivalent of a smile. He would also kill those who surrendered. The Web-Mind had ordered him to eradicate all life on Io. Since the Web-Mind hadn’t told him the exact method of death, Gharlane used his initiative. He would kill using cyborg troops. In this way, he would save missiles and bombs. He would need those later against Europa and Ganymede. Athena Station was too far away to re-supply now.

Each patrol boat had a second task, and it was related to Athena Station’s distant location. The landing cyborgs had been ordered to collect radioactive material and fuel.

Gharlane shifted his head, scanning the moon. He’d taken a risk coming to Io. But it was a calculated risk. To reach the inner Galilean moon, the fleet had traveled deep into Jupiter’s gravity-well. Now the warships would have to burn hard to escape up it. The enemy position in the well could give the Jovians possible advantages. Against all reason, however, the main Jovian Fleet remained at Ganymede.

Soothing chemicals kept Gharlane’s thinking level, eliminating the need to emote. He wanted Ionian radioactive material for a tactical reason. The humans reacted badly to terror attacks. If their fleet continued to sit at a single location, then it was time to teach the Jovians another lesson elsewhere.

Gharlane’s head swiveled sharply as his eyes locked onto another white streak. The streak was minuscule compared to the moon’s surface. It showed Gharlane that another squadron of patrol boats entered the atmosphere.

Using patrol boats like this would damage some. Io’s atmosphere was weak, but it was still an atmosphere. The patrol boats were space vehicles, with a limited ability to maneuver anywhere but in vacuum.

Gharlane’s servos whined as he shrugged.

He saved his missiles for the battle with the main Jovian fleet. This would cost him the use of some patrol boats. However, he had a surprise for the Jovians that should negate the negatives here. If the main Jovian fleet remained static for another week—

Gharlane lurched closer toward the viewing port. His plasti-flesh eyebrows contorted as a flash appeared on the moon’s surface.

Gharlane turned to a scope and clicked his hand-unit. A second passed as the scope caused an image to leap into view. It showed a mushroom cloud rising from Io’s surface.

Gharlane stepped to the scope’s board and typed fast, keying information. The nuclear explosion came from Pele Platform Three. The company habitat had a Callisto Corporation number. Ah, it was the Diana-Bacchus Company, and it was first on the cyborg itinerary. Two patrol boats should have landed there.

Gharlane’s eyebrow-contortion smoothed out. It would appear the humans had used a nuclear device. Perhaps one of them had gone insane. That would mean—

Another explosion occurred elsewhere. Probability factors shifted Gharlane’s thinking. One nuclear device indicated a crazed individual. Two explosions indicated a prearranged plan.

Gharlane raised his hand-unit and chattered in high-speed binary.

In a second, he told his communications Web-team: “Abort the landings and order all patrol boats to accelerate for space. I repeat, abort all platform landings. The Ionians are defending with suicidal desperation. Probability factors indicate that they are waiting until the boats disgorge troops. Then they are igniting nuclear devices to annihilate cyborg personnel. Emergency sequencing is ordered. I repeat, abort all landings and return to low orbit.”

As Gharlane chattered at high-speed, another explosion occurred on the moon’s surface. He would have to expend missiles and gravity bombs after all. He would rain destruction from space and obliterate the humans. Then he would reorder select patrol boats down to the surface, there to hunt for survivors. The enemy had finally entered the tertiary mode of the campaign, practicing kamikaze tactics. He should have foreseen the possibility.

More chemicals entered his brainpan, soothing his unease. Without the radioactive materials….

Gharlane turned from the viewing port. He would have to adjust his strategy. On all counts, he must continue to fix the enemy’s attention on the Galilean moons. He must give the Web-Mind time to complete the planet-wrecker and gain the needed velocity. The Web-Mind needed to launch for the Inner Planets in tandem with the Saturn-strike. Nothing must be allowed to delay the master plan.

-10-

Io’s nuclear ambushes stimulated the Web-Mind to a feverish state. Orders went out and on Carme, the activity increased. Time passed as the accelerated teams worked around the cycles. The endless labor worked to death the hardiest Jovians as they stapled power cables, lugged coils and welded lines to the blast-pans.

Then the Web-Mind’s Athena Station convoy landed. Its large, black-matted stealth-capsule entered a tunnel. Carefully, the Web-Mind maneuvered the capsule into an armored chamber specially constructed for survival. Cyborgs had built these tunnels and chambers long ago, as they’d worked in secret for years. At the beginning of the stealth assault, the cyborgs had boiled onto the surface, capturing the Jovians here and attempting to complete the massive task.

The rest of the convoy vessels spilled their cargoes of cyborgs, Webbies, equipment and missiles.

Octagon found himself panting as sweat soaked the inside of his vacc-suit. In a domed chamber seething with motion, he heaved coils into place. Later, he inserted screws with a sonic drill and afterward, he loaded lifters with boxes of point-defense ammunition.

Ten hours after the convoy’s landing, the fateful hour arrived. Every patrol boat entered a hanger as everyone hurried to his or her position.

With other Webbies, Octagon strapped himself onto a long couch. The clicks of their buckles filled the room. The insertion of Web-jacks was a softer sound. It caused many to slump and twitch as they entered a pleasure state.

Elsewhere, with a dozen other labor-survivors, Nadia Pravda lay on a slat. She waited in a metal shed that had been built on a protrusion of rock. It was exposed to any stray meteor or high-speed dust-mote that happened along.

Silver-dome clusters abounded on the uneven surface with its rocks, craters and low hills. Towers arose among them, some with antennas and others with dishes and even more with waiting anti-missiles. Point-defense guns ringed the small planetoid. The massive exhaust-ports dwarfed everything else.

As Carme continued its monotonous orbit, a pulse of plasma blew out of an exhaust-port. Another pulse flowed out of a different port. In a nanosecond, hell erupted, changing everything. The generators poured power through the fusion engines deep in the moon. Blue plasma now spewed from the multiple exhaust-ports. The generators increased output as other engines came online. For several minutes, Carme shivered as if hit with the longest quake in history. Then the generators revved up the scale to maximum output. Massive amounts of power surged through hundreds of cables. A blue brilliant glow of plasma stretched thirty kilometers behind Carme. Slowly, the Jovian moon increased orbital speed as it increased velocity.

The first Jovian planet-wrecker had begun its acceleration. There were no cheers, however, no backslapping cyborgs. The melded bipeds lay on their couches, emotionless and expressionless. They awaited orders from the Web-Mind. The few that possessed minuscule anomalies processed their stray thoughts. Those thoughts did not prevent their full functioning, however.

Among the jacked-in Webbies lying on the long couches, a few frowned. Two laughed and one seethed. Octagon was one of the latter.

Pressed against his couch, Octagon remembered the time in the pod as he’d headed to the Rousseau. Marten Kluge had done that to him. Marten Kluge—Webbie Octagon grinded his molars together. It was a vile sound. Despite his new way of examining reality and his plugging into the Web-Mind, he yearned for revenge. He yearned to hurt Marten Kluge. If only he could cut Marten’s flesh. If only he could reach in and pull out the kidneys and then the liver and finally the heart as it pumped hot blood all over his hands.

For the first time in ages, Octagon smiled. It was a twisted thing, perverse and perverted. Marten Kluge’s blood, he would bathe in it as the barbarian died. Nothing could feel as good. Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge… Marten Kluge must die a hideous and painful death.

Elsewhere, in a shed on a low hill, Nadia groaned. The massive engines caused Carme to accelerate. Her spine ached as it pressed against the metal sheet and her heart beat faster.

Am I having a heart attack?

Breathing hurt and she arched as a spasm made her scream. Then her beating heart slowed to its normal rhythm. Nadia panted as sweat poured from her heated skin. After a time the sensation passed. She slumped on her sheet. Within a minute, she slept.

Nadia dreamed of suffocation, which was horrible. But for the first time in weeks, she slept for more than a four-hour stint.

Nadia woke once in the darkness, feeling Carme tremble with its new life. Maybe the worst horrors were over. She smiled at the thought and fell back asleep.

-11-

Marten stood beside Yakov in an otherwise empty patrol boat. The Force-Leader sat at the controls as the craft lifted off the Descartes’ meteor-shell.

Marten swayed as the patrol boat lurched, able to shift his weight as needed.

Yakov gave him a sidelong glance, but otherwise made no comment on his standing.

Lines of strain showed on Marten’s angular face. This morning, he’d found his first gray hair. He’d plucked it, staring at the offensive sight. Then he’d thrown the hair into the chemical sink before shaving.

Yakov’s small hands played across the controls. The patrol boat lurched again, changing heading.

Marten shifted his weight without being aware of it. He glanced out of the polarized window. From here, Jupiter appeared as the brightest star by several magnitudes. The Descartes was already out of sight as the patrol boat headed toward the taskforce’s second meteor-ship. Yakov wanted to inspect it before they began the hard deceleration for Carme.

“I asked you to join me for a reason,” Yakov said.

Something in the Force-Leader’s voice warned Marten. “Should I sit down first?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Yakov turned on a vidscreen. He pressed another key, and the wide face of the Praetor appeared.

Marten lifted an eyebrow.

“The Highborn in our system have been in communication with Tan,” Yakov said.

“I’d expected that.”

“Tan believes the Highborn stormed onto the Demeter Depot, killing everyone there, allowing them to restock their missile-ship.”

“That sounds like the Highborn,” Marten said.

Yakov gave him another sidelong glance. “Tan’s tactical team thinks the missile-ship was badly damaged during the Battle for Mars. It must have headed out of the Solar System and barely turned around to reach Jupiter.”

“If the ship was so badly damaged, how did it fight its way onto Demeter?”

“I asked the same thing. Tan believes the Demeter Force-Leader foolishly attempted to lure the Highborn there in an attempt to capture the vessel.”

Marten laughed harshly. “The Praetor is a bastard’s bastard.”

“Maybe. He has agreed to help us storm Carme.”

Marten’s gut hardened.

“We definitely need the help,” Yakov said, as he pressed another computer key.

A grainy shot of an asteroid appeared with the name Carme written underneath it. It had a long, blue plasma tail. Yakov used a unit, clicking it. A white arrowhead appeared on the screen. The arrow moved to a dot a little above the asteroid’s horizon.

“This was taken several hours ago,” Yakov said, “by interferometers on Pasachoff.”

“Where?”

“Pasachoff is another moon of the Carme group.”

Marten nodded.

Yakov pointed at it. “Tan thought the cyborgs might move the dreadnaught toward the Galilean moons. As you can see, it still guards Carme.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Marten said.

Yakov took his time responding. “Two meteor-ships will have a difficult time defeating a dreadnaught with such a defensive position.”

“Difficult or not, you must do it so we can land.”

“Can space marines defeat cyborg troops?”

“If we can’t,” Marten asked, “why are we out here?”

“Highborn battleoids will assist us.”

Marten’s features tightened. “I’m surprised the Praetor is willing to risk it.”

“Tan believes the Praetor spoke with their Grand Admiral on Earth. The Grand Admiral likely instructed the Praetor to destroy the planet-wrecker. What makes that interesting is that Tan is sure the Praetor would rather head in-system.”

“What does any of that have to do with our attack on Carme?”

Yakov sat back in the pilot’s chair. “Thirteen years ago in the Mars System, many in the guardian class lost family to the Highborn.”

“Okay,” Marten said, waiting.

“For his help, the Praetor demanded command of the Carme assault.”

Marten blinked, digesting that. “So what did Tan tell him?”

“She agreed,” Yakov said. “She agreed because we need his ship and battleoids.”

“We’re really going to take orders from the Praetor?” Marten asked, starting to become angry.

“We are, for at least long enough to fight our way onto Carme.”

“What about afterward?”

Yakov gave him a level gaze. “If we defeat the cyborgs, a doubtful possibility, then we must escape Demeter’s fate.”

Marten pressed a key, bringing back the Praetor’s image. The Highborn were in the Jovian System, and now the bastard who’d wanted to castrate him led the assault. He was actually going to take orders from a Highborn again. They had excellent memories. He had no doubt the Praetor would remember his face.

Marten tapped his fingers on the console.

“What are your thoughts?” Yakov asked.

“I need something to pull my space marines together, to help them forget about getting slapped, and to forget about Pelias and her boyfriend.”

“You mean to use the Praetor for that?” Yakov asked.

Marten tapped a finger on the Praetor’s forehead. “This bastard is finally going to do me his first good deed. If we beat the cyborgs, the trick will be staying alive long enough to appreciate our victory.”

-12-

The Praetor seethed as he rechecked his battleoid-armor. Time conspired against him. The Grand Admiral, this puny Chief Strategist and the hateful cyborgs—

The Praetor roared an oath as he slammed his fist against a bulkhead, denting metal. He began to pace like a caged beast.

The missile-ship was under one-G acceleration. The Thutmosis III left Demeter behind. The tactical game against the planet-wrecker and its shepherding dreadnaught had begun. Soon, he would give the critical orders.

The Praetor whirled around, and he stalked back to the ten-foot battleoid-suit. It was a marvel of engineering, a thing of deadly beauty with a titanium shell of exoskeleton strength. On Earth, battleoid-armored Highborn leaped one hundred meters, sometimes assisted by Dinlon jetpacks. Hi-powered slugthrowers, lasers, plasma rifles and tiny tactical nukes gave the battleoids massive firepower.

The Praetor found it difficult to believe that battleoid-Highborn had failed to stop attacking cyborgs on the Hannibal Barca. He’d learned that the Grand Admiral had lost a Doom Star at Mars. Another had taken critical damage.

The Highborn Fleet was weaker today than at any other time. Three Doom Stars held Earth, Venus and Mercury. Social Unity regrouped at Mars, gathering its last warships. On Earth, Social Unity fought like crazed beasts, successfully resisting in South America. Now the cyborgs attempted to launch a planet-wrecker from Jupiter.

The Praetor pressed his palms together in front of his face. He breathed deeply as he lowered his pressed palms to his stomach. He practiced a calming technique, taught him in the Youth Barracks.

Time conspired against him. If he’d reached the Jovian System even two months earlier, he could have already reached Jupiter’s inner system. Then he would be among the Galilean moons, able to lead the overawed Jovians against the cyborgs.

The Praetor picked up an electro-analyzer and carefully began checking his armor. It beeped by the right elbow-joint. He adjusted, frowning at the tiny screen. It flashed red and showed the words: photonic coupling.

The Praetor set aside the analyzer and opened his battleoid-kit. Like all Highborn, he could take apart and rebuild any weapon. The same held true for a battleoid-suit. He set to work, immersing himself in the task, momentarily forgetting his rage.

Later, he clicked each tool back into its foamed indention. Then he took up the electro-analyzer and continued to sweep it over the armor.

Short by two months—time conspired against him. Worse, Grand Admiral Cassius continued his sly tricks.

The Praetor showed his horse-sized teeth in a feral grin. It lacked all humor and lacked any warmth. He—the Praetor—had won the Battle for Mars with his missiles. He had risked his life later to bring the High Fleet critical intelligence concerning the enemy. Because of his courage, the Thutmosis III had almost left the Solar System forever. Only through cunning, relentless fervor and an indomitable will had he saved his ship and crew.

Now the Grand Admiral dashed his dream of Jovian conquest. He must throw away the Thutmosis III on a mad attack against a heavily fortified moon. Meanwhile, in the inner system, the cyborgs outmaneuvered the foolish Jovians. The premen had already lost Callisto and Io. Now the cyborgs lunged at Europa as the Jovian fleet vainly waited at Ganymede.

The Praetor shook his head. Social Unity possessed several clever tacticians. It appeared the Jovians didn’t even have those.

He cracked his knuckles and flexed his big fingers. He was tempted to disregard the Grand Admiral’s orders. The old man was cunning, however. During the lightguide transmission, the Grand Admiral had sat among the High Command, and their accompanying vote had been unanimous. To disregard the order would now mean acting against the unified will of the High Command.

The Praetor squinted at his battleoid-suit. He must use what he had. He must twist fate and time into his service. If the cyborgs won here because the premen lacked even basic tactical skills, it still meant he could fight gloriously.

An insightful preman, General George S. Patton, had once said: As a man thinketh, so is he. The fixed determination to acquire the warrior soul and, having acquired it, to conquer or perish with honor is the secret of success in war.

The Praetor made a fist. He’d been born with a warrior’s soul. Since then, his determination had become legendary.

The cyborgs accelerated Carme. But an asteroid-moon, even a small one, had immense mass, much more than the combined Doom Stars and the Highborn orbital stations of Venus and Earth. It would take the cyborgs time to build-up velocity, giving him time enough to configure his attack.

The Jovian’s original plan to storm Carme had been suicidal folly. With his ship and genius, victory became a possibility.

“Conquer or perish,” the Praetor rumbled. His chest swelled. “I will conquer, and I will set my foot on the Jovians and on the cyborgs. Then—”

The Praetor smote his chest. “Then I will return to Earth and deal with you, Cassius. On that, I vow the essence of my warrior soul.”

-13-

Marten paced in the Descartes’ rec-room. Mechanics had dragged out the exercise mats and set up rows of folding chairs.

Osadar waited by the main door. She wore combat-armor, hiding her cyborg body and limbs. With her greater height, her plasti-flesh head almost reached the ceiling.

Omi opened the door. He wore a Gauss needler and a stern expression. Behind him were the squad-leaders. They filed into the room, filling up the back rows first.

The meteor-ship was under half-a-G of deceleration. After the meeting, Yakov would increase the Gs, slowing the ship even more. The taskforce already followed the Praetor’s instructions. The decisive moment was fast drawing near.

Earlier, Marten had stood to the side, out of camera range, as the Praetor had given Yakov his orders. The voice had sent a chill of loathing down Marten’s spine. The Praetor was the same arrogant prick from the Sun-Works Factory. Nothing had changed about the lordly Highborn. Hearing the Praetor’s voice had confirmed Marten’s decision that he’d remained hidden.

In the rec-room, the last space marine sat down. Most stared blankly. A few scowled. A few gave him a deathly stare. Their muscles showed as they shifted in their seats, tightening the fabric of their tunics.

With his hands behind his back, Marten stared at the assembled squad-leaders. It caused him to recall Training Master Lycon, the day of the briefing of the Bangladesh assault. That seemed like a lifetime ago. He’d been in the Mercury System then, now he was in the Jupiter System. Now he was a free man, a commander of shock troopers. Well, they weren’t shock troopers, but they were space marines. They were about to engage in the greatest assault of the war, stopping a planet-wrecker. It was too bad most of them were going to die. Maybe they were all going to die. Who could defeat cyborgs on the ground?

Marten stood at attention and he snapped off the crispest salute of his life.

Squad-leaders stirred, and there was a murmur of whispering among them.

He backed beside the screen on the wall and touched a button. A grainy shot of Carme appeared with its long plasma tail.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” he began, “this is our objective. As you know, the cyborgs accelerate one of your Jovian moons. They call it a planet-wrecker. If Carme builds up enough velocity, it will be able to break Jupiter’s gravitational grip and leave its orbit. The name suggests the cyborg tactic: to ram Carme into a large moon or a terrestrial planet. The outcome of such a collision is obvious: total extinction for the humans and animals on the target world.”

Many eyes narrowed.

“Imagine for a moment what it means if a planet-wrecker smashes into Earth,” Marten said. “Imagine what it means if everything on Earth dies. No event in human history will have ever wiped out more people. It would be an unparalleled catastrophe.

“It may be that we’re the only hope for billions of humans. Our task isn’t to defeat the guarding dreadnaught, but to slip past it in the patrol boats. We’ll land on the surface and we’ll fight our way into Carme’s engine rooms. Once there, we’ll destroy everything.”

“What about the cyborgs?” a man in back asked sharply. “Everyone knows that one cyborg is worth ten men? How are we supposed to defeat them?”

“Stand up!” Marten said.

The man hesitated. Then he shot to his feet. He was shorter than average and had larger ears that stuck outward.

“Squad-Leader Tass,” Marten said. “Do you care to expand on that?”

“How can we win?” Tass asked belligerently.

“It’s true that cyborgs normally butcher men,” Marten said slowly. “I knew that truth and still accepted the responsibility of taking out the planet-wrecker. I accepted for a critical reason. Omi and I stormed onto the Beamship Bangladesh. You’ve studied our tactics. You know we’re shock troopers and that we know more about infantry space-combat than anyone else in the Jovian System does. I also had Osadar slap each of you across the face. I closely studied your reactions, looking for the fighters among you.”

More than a few space marines scowled.

“I needed first class soldiers,” Marten said. “During our trip, I’ve tried to teach you critical skills. Space walking under hard Gs led to Pelias’s death. That death might have seemed pointless, but it wasn’t. You know more today than you did at the start of the journey. Does that mean you can defeat cyborgs?” Marten shrugged. “I doubt the shock troopers fired at the Bangladesh could take out cyborgs.”

“Then why are we doing this?” Tass shouted.

“If we don’t try,” Marten said, “the cyborgs win. If we do try, there’s always a possibility that a miracle occurs.”

“By Plato’s Bones!” swore Tass. “Miracles are myths. Everyone knows Brand’s Axiom proving that.”

“Maybe,” Marten said. He had no idea who this Brand was or his axiom. He didn’t care.

“So you’re saying that this entire attack is hopeless?” Tass asked.

Marten touched the wall-switch. The grainy shot disappeared, replaced by the Praetor’s face.

“Is that a Highborn?”

“His name is the Praetor,” Marten said. “He also happens to be our new commander.”

“What?” several squad-leaders asked at once.

“Chief Strategist Tan has bargained with him,” Marten said. “To gain the aid of his ship and his battleoids, she agreed to give him tactical command. We’re following his plan, and he’s using us ruthlessly.”

“You mean he plans to kill us?” Tass asked, outraged.

“He’s Highborn,” Marten said. “He believes we’re subhumans. Of course, he plans to kill us. He wants the prize for himself.”

“And we’re just going to lie down and die for him?” Tass asked.

“Those bastards killed my father and uncles at Mars thirteen years ago,” a squad-leader hissed.

“I’ll never fight for a Highborn,” another squad-leader yelled.

“Attention!” Marten shouted.

Reflexively, the squad-leaders shot to their feet.

“Sit down,” Marten said coldly, using his training voice.

The squad-leaders sat. A few looked confused. Some seemed abashed. Tass was still angry.

“This is war,” Marten said. He clicked the grainy Carme shot back onto the screen. “That is a planet-wrecker. We must destroy it. If that means we all die doing it, then we die.”

“Just like our fathers died in the Mars System?” Tass growled.

“First we destroy the planet-wrecker,” Marten said. “Then we stay alive, and maybe, just maybe, we kill some Highborn.”

The squad-leaders stared at him.

Marten clicked the Praetor back onto the screen. “This Highborn wanted to castrate all the shock troopers under his command in order to turn us into Neutraloids. The only thing that stopped him was the surprise attack by the Bangladesh. Perhaps you can understand then that there is no love in my heart for him.”

A few squad-leaders grinned.

“The Praetor and his battleoids are killers,” Marten said. “His cunning might help us win the fight. Then again, it might not. Remember, cyborgs are even deadlier than Highborn.”

“What chance do we have then?” a squad-leader asked.

This was the point Marten had been waiting for. He took three steps toward them as he hunched his shoulders. In detail, he told them the story of the Bangladesh. He told them how he’d escaped off the beamship with Omi and how Lycon had picked them up in the shuttle. Then he told them how he’d spaced the three Highborn and gained control of the Mayflower.

“Bluntly stated,” Marten said, “your chance is me. I’ve outsmarted Highborn before and killed them. I’ve trained you, and you know my ways. Your one chance, my one chance, is that you now learn to obey me because you want to, not just because of duty.”

Slowly, short Tass stood up.

“Yes,” Marten said.

Tass glanced at his fellow squad-leaders. “Marten Kluge is a….” Tass licked his lips. “He’s a killer, and so are the Highborn. So are the cyborgs. But Marten Kluge is our killer. He’s a man just like us. I’m going to follow him onto Carme, and I’m going to obey his orders so we can win, so we can survive.”

Another squad-leader stood up. “I agree with Tass. I didn’t like getting my face slapped. But I can see now why he ordered it.”

Marten glanced at his chronometer. “Carme is rushing near and A-hour is almost here. Good luck, and Godspeed. We’re all going to need it.”

-14-

As the Thutmosis III decelerated hard, the Battle for Carme began with a barrage from Demeter. Four Voltaire Missiles left the lifeless rock, igniting and quickly accelerating for the asteroid-moon.

The Praetor had planned the attack, using lessons learned from the Third Battle of Mars and from lessons learned by studying Hernan Cortez, the greatest conquistador of them all.

He was the Praetor, Fourth-ranked in the ultra-competitive world of the Highborn. He would risk everything to win everlasting glory. Besides, his ship lacked particle shielding. The Thutmosis III had been designed for a precise mission in the greatest battle of the war. Given time, he could have employed the ship using its stealth-sheathing. First, he’d first burned hard to catch up with Carme, and now he decelerated hard so he could land on the surface. The cyborgs had detected their approach. The Praetor knew because Canus reported sensor lock-on.

Wearing battleoid-armor, the Praetor sat in his command chair. The other Highborn on the bridge were also encased in their battleoid-suits.

“Why haven’t you told me about our lock-on?” the Praetor boomed.

“We see them with teleoptics,” Canus said. “But their ECM is still too good for us.”

“It’s better than Highborn tech?” the Praetor asked.

“Yes,” Canus admitted.

The Praetor leaned forward. Damn the cyborgs. The Thutmosis III decelerated hard enough that the ship likely appeared as a nova star on enemy screens.

“The dreadnaught is slipping behind Carme,” Canus said.

The Praetor nodded. It was the obvious move.

“I’m detecting—missiles are lifting off from Carme,” Canus said.

“Fire everything,” the Praetor whispered.

Canus and com-officer turned toward him.

“It’s too soon,” Canus dared say.

“No one challenges me on my bridge!” the Praetor roared. “Fire everything and then heat up the laser.”

“Yes, lord,” said Canus. “But it is still too soon.”

“We’ll hit them with a mass barrage,” the Praetor said coldly. “We’ll inundate them as we attempt to land on the moon. Everything is timed with the Jovians.”

“Carme can obviously absorb our drones and lasers,” Canus said.

The Praetor rose to his feet. Amplified, exoskeleton strength gave him the ability in the high Gs. He began clanking toward Canus.

The Highborn officer concentrated on his weapons board as he began launching the Zenos they’d stolen from Demeter.

Soon, the Praetor loomed behind Canus’s armored back.

Canus activated the ship’s lone laser. Without turning around, he said, “As per your orders, I’m saving the rail-guns as a last surprise, lord.”

While docked at Demeter, they’d welded weapons pods to the ship.

The Praetor studied Canus’s board. One after another, Zenos left the tubes.

“Shut down the engines,” the Praetor whispered. “Begin deploying the defensive fields.”

Canus’s armored fingers roved fast, his reactions startling quick. Outside the ship, masses of prismatic crystals chugged out of various pods. Shielding gels sprayed out in turn.

The mighty engines stopped, bringing weightlessness to the ship.

“Enemy lasers—” Canus shouted.

The Praetor grinned tightly. He’d studied the cyborgs. They were melded creatures, governed by computer-like logic parameters. It had seemed obvious to him when they would begin firing at his ship. What he hadn’t counted on was the laser’s strength. The Praetor had expected stolen Jovian technology, not the laser long ago built inside the hollowed tunnels.

Carme’s main laser now stabbed at the triple-hulled missile-ship. It burned through the gel cloud and the prismatic crystal field. In seconds, the laser burst through the hull, chewing through the ablative foam sandwiched between hulls. It hit the second hull, heating the alloy, stabbing through the foam behind it. Seconds ticked away as more crystals and gels sprayed from the ship. Before they drifted into place, the laser burned through the last hull. Then the heavy laser burned coils, sliced through inter-ship bulkheads, burst through empty wardrooms, empty rec-rooms and hit the number three fusion-shield.

“Lord!” Canus shouted. “We have an emergency.”

The Praetor had been reading a damage control board, and his decision was instantaneous. “Foam the number three engine room.”

Canus moved fast.

Deep in the Thutmosis III, ablative foam poured from wide-gage nozzles, filling the number three fusion engine. Before an explosion could destroy the ship, the ablative foam first absorbed the laser fire that burned through the fusion-shield. Secondly, the ablative foam damped the fusion reaction. By that time, Carme’s laser no longer cut through the ship. The prismatic crystals floating in space protected them. The heavy laser burned crystals, slagging many and causing others to melt and vaporize. As that occurred, the sparkling, mirror-like crystals redirected laser light and thereby weakened the beam’s power.

All the while, more crystals and gels sprayed from the Thutmosis III’s tanks, building a thicker protection. It was a battle between the amount of crystals the ship held against the laser’s energy requirements and possible overheating. Eventually, however, the contest always went to the laser, given that the laser continued to beam. There were only so many prismatic crystals that any ship could hold.

“Estimate time of the second burn-through?” the Praetor said.

“Eighteen minutes,” Canus said.

The Praetor turned away. With the crystals and gels in place and pumping to replace losses, their own laser was useless. The cyborgs had emplaced at least one heavy laser on the moon. That was going to make things difficult. Missiles launched from Carme sped toward them in the meantime. They would arrive in less than an hour.

“We’re going to need the rail-guns sooner than expected,” the Praetor said.

“Lord?” asked Canus.

“In seventeen minutes, the rail-guns, the lasers and the activated Zenos will attack in conjunction,” the Praetor said.

“We can’t storm our way onto the moon,” Canus said. “They’ve clearly decided that we’re the primary threat. Now if we had a SU battlewagon with heavy particle shielding—”

“If we had a Doom Star, we would be the lords of Jupiter,” the Praetor said in a scathing tone. “Instead, we have the Thutmosis III. It’s still a crippled ship.” He grinned like a wounded tiger. “And we have eighteen Highborn. It’s a pitiful number compared to the likely masses of cyborgs. But we have more than enough pods and a dozen patrol boats to get us onto the moon’s surface.”

“Where we shall die,” Canus said.

The Praetor disliked Canus’s pessimism. He would have enjoyed throttling him, but he needed every officer he had.

“Did we survive this past year and finally decelerate here to die as a useless gesture?” Canus asked, scowling. It caused his burn-scar to turn even redder than normal. “Highborn should always fight to win.”

“We will win,” the Praetor said.

“After another—” Canus checked his board— “sixteen more minutes, the Thutmosis III will die to the heavy laser.”

“Have you rerouted the ship’s controls to the shuttle?”

“If it matters, I have.”

The Praetor clunked a gauntleted hand on Canus’s armored shoulder. “We defeated our despair at the edge of the Solar System. Let us defeat our despair once more and win through to victory.”

Still scowling, Canus glanced up. “Lord, your self-confidence borders on insanity.”

“That’s what others must have told Pizarro.”

“Lord?” asked Canus.

“We have fifteen minutes left,” the Praetor said. “So make sure you do everything right the first time, because we won’t have a second chance.”

-15-

As the Thutmosis III made its death-ride to glory or hapless oblivion, the Descartes and its fellow meteor-ship closed in on Carme as they decelerated. Compared to the missile-ship, the Jovian taskforce came from a ninety-degree angle, bearing down on the rogue moon. The Descartes led the assault, with the second ship following, using the Descartes as a shield.

Carme continued to accelerate, with the cyborg dreadnaught still hiding behind the moon. The main laser still attempted a burn-through on the Thutmosis III’s prismatic crystal field.

The Descartes looked much as it had the first day Marten saw it. The meteor-shell still looked like a junkyard with hosts of pods, girders, dishes, missiles, cubes and patrol boats seemingly magnetized to it. Today there was a singular difference. Marten viewed the meteor-ship from its surface.

He sat in the front of a patrol boat, beside Osadar. She was in the pilot’s chair, making last minute checks on her control board.

Marten wore his combat armor, presently minus his helmet. An IML was beside him and a Gyroc rifle. He had grenades, a vibroblade and an upset stomach.

Marten twisted back. Omi inspected the two squads piled into the patrol boat with them. There was heavy breathing, the clatter of equipment and the noisy sound of someone vomiting. The smell of sweat and fear was strong. Many of the space marines had thousand meter stares. Others glared. A few looked terrified. More than one trembled.

Marten found that his spit had vanished, making it hard to swallow. He hated pre-battle jitters. He hated the tingle in his arms and the roiling in his gut. He supposed it must have been like this thousands of years ago when David had tested his sling before racing out to challenge Goliath. That had been his favorite Bible story, his mother reading it to him as she sat on the edge of his bed. It was strange that he should think of her. Did that mean he was going to die?

Under his breath, Marten cursed softly. Then he shook his head, and he stared out of the polarized window. The surface of the meteor-shell was filled with junk and with other waiting patrol boats. Each of them contained its two-squad complement of space marines.

Marten dug in a pocket, producing a stick of gum. He opened it and popped the gum into his mouth, beginning to chew, beginning to produce spit so he could swallow.

Why did this feel like entering the torpedoes he’d ridden onto the Bangladesh?

“I’m ready,” Osadar said.

Marten blinked several times before her words made sense. Then he stared out of the window again, searching for signs of Carme. He’d see its long, comet-like tail first as Yakov had shown him the runaway planetoid via teleoptics.

The radio crackled and Yakov’s calm features appeared on the screen. For some reason, that reminded Marten of the Rousseau, how the screen had stayed blank that day.

“The cyborg laser has achieved a burn-through,” Yakov said.

Marten scowled. Why couldn’t he focus on what was going on? What was wrong with him?

“Now the cyborgs are hitting the Highborn ship,” Yakov said.

“Right,” Marten said. In way, he was relived. He’d never liked the idea of fighting with Highborn, certainly not with the Praetor.

Yakov laughed savagely. The laugh unnerved Marten. He’d come to appreciate the Jovian’s calmness, to appreciate the Force-Leader’s deadly seriousness.

“Shuttles are launching from the missile-ship,” Yakov said. “They’re maneuvering behind it, or behind what will soon be the ship’s wreckage. Wait, Rhea is telling me—oh, this is good.”

“What?” Marten asked.

“The Highborn ship accelerates onto a collision course with Carme. The Praetor seems to be using his ship as a shield. I wonder how many Highborn he’s sacrificing. The entire crew can’t fit into those few shuttles, can they?”

“I’m picking up Voltaire Missile signals,” Rhea said in Yakov’s background.

“This is it,” Yakov said. The Force-Leader stared out of the screen at Marten. “We’re in range of Carme, Representative Kluge.”

“Good luck, Yakov.”

The silver-haired Force-Leader nodded brusquely. “It’s time to pull the ring,” he said in a dead-calm tone.

‘Pull the ring’, was a hussade term. Marten knew that much.

“Enemy sensors have locked onto us,” Yakov said. “It’s time for you to lift-off.”

Marten tried to say a last word, but Osadar snapped off the link. Then she ignited the patrol boat’s engine, causing the craft to vibrate.

“Hang on!” Marten shouted to the men.

As the last syllable left his mouth, Osadar blasted off the meteor-shell, heading for Carme.

-16-

Carme trembled from its violent acceleration. The gargantuan ports spewed blue plasma. The generators hummed as power surged through coils. Deeper in the rock, mighty fusion engines separated atoms, creating nuclear energy. The combination meant that Carme’s rocky hills shook. Ancient stardust stirred on the cratered floors. The gleaming towers quivered as dishes rotated, as antennae collected thermal, mass and neutrino data on the approaching enemies. Missiles poked upward, ready to launch. The main laser spewed a torrent of focused light, cutting, slicing and separating the black-matted, Highborn ship. From low barracks, stubby point-defense cannons swiveled back and forth, ready to chug their depleted uranium shells at incoming enemy. Tac-lasers warmed up and several magnetic-guns shined with inner flashes of blue light.

There were five clusters of towers, buildings, barracks and underground entrances on Carme. Each had a separate defense grid, each powered by one of the mighty engines. Many tens of kilometers separated them, and there were more than enough suited cyborgs at each cluster to repeal any foolish space-drops.

The Web-Mind computed all this in a matter of seconds, as a paranoia program insisted on a quick probability check. It had seemed senseless then, and the numbers indicated the Web-Mind had been correct. However, there were some trifling possibilities that caused the Web-Mind a moment of unease.

The future master of the Jupiter System waited like a mechanical spider deep in its armored bunker. The greatest technological marvel of the 24th Century was built into its stealth-capsule. That capsule was parked in the dark, with hundreds of radio-links and communication and power cables attached to it.

The Web-Mind processed all the incoming information that its sensory stations on the moon’s surface collected. In seconds, it ran through hundreds of military scenarios. It had cyborgs on the ground, guns, missiles and laser stations and a roving dreadnaught ready to rise into view and attack the enemy ships and missiles. It could not lose. No, that wasn’t completely accurate. A five percent probability existed that the Highborn or Jovians possessed a secret weapon that could grant them victory.

Billions of neurons fired in the hundreds of kilos of brain-mass that composed the core of the Web-Mind.

A five percent probability of defeat was minuscule. That gave it a ninety-five percent probability of total victory. If Gharlane and the fleet had accelerated here instead of heading in-system to Io—

No, the probability of harm increased under those conditions. Whether Gharlane won or lost among the Galilean moons, the critical factor was the launching of the planet-wrecker. There were several smaller wreckers under construction in the outermost Jovian System. Carme-wrecker, however, was the only one able to launch in the window of the coming Saturn System attack.

A powerful confidence-boosting program now surged forward. The Web-Mind shrugged off the five percent probability, as it was too small to deflect the confidence program. With renewed zeal, the Web-Mind inspected near, mid and far space relative to Carme.

The wreckage of the Highborn ship burst through its weakened crystal-gel fields. There were twenty-three clumps spread over a kilometer. Those clumps contained thousands of smaller pieces.

A warning surged though the Web-Mind. Like a meteor shower, the wreckage was on an intercept course for Carme. A quick calculation showed that none of the pieces would hit building clusters one through five. Even so, the kinetic energy of the multiple strikes could cause quake damage. That might harm the coil linkages, always the weakest connection between fusion cores and lasers.

A subordinate function of the Web-Mind continued to fire the heavy laser. After the missile-ship’s destruction, it used priority targeting. Zenos first, rail-gun canisters second, cannon shells third and—

Warning beacons fired through the Web-Mind’s biomass brain. What the Web-Mind had believed to be more missiles traveling behind the Thutmosis III’s wreckage was now—the Web-Mind rechecked the readings to be sure. There were life-support systems hard at work on what it had conceived as missiles. The Web-Mind ran configuration checks. Those were Highborn shuttles!

Had Highborn survived their ship’s destruction? Why would the military creatures continue to head here then? Why didn’t they accept defeat and attempt flight and continued existence?

The Web-Mind yearned to run a re-analysis on Highborn psychology. This wasn’t the time, however. With the approaching shuttles—the Web-Mind ran through a fast executing probability script.

An annoyance factor seethed through the Web-Mind. As incredible as it seemed, the shuttles added a percentage point to the odds of enemy success. There was now a six percent chance of defeat.

Angered, the Web-Mind launched more missiles, and it sent a flash-message to the dreadnaught’s commander. If Highborn landed on Carme’s surface, the chance of defeat rose to an amazing eight percent.

In Carme’s deepest bunker, behind the stealth coating of its capsule, the Web-Mind computed, rechecked data and widened its sensory checks. Then it sent a pulse to other bunkers, bringing many cyborgs to active status. If the Highborn landed on Carme, they would die.

The Web-Mind contemplated a new possibility. If Highborn landed, the cyborgs could capture several. Then it could use the captives as test subjects, running thousands of experiments and learning everything there was to know about the highly aggressive subspecies. That would also give it something to do during the long journey in-system. The Web-Mind almost purred with delight. Fresh data for thousands of hours, it would enjoy that.

The experiments could also determine the provocative question concerning Highborn. Were they an entirely new genus? Or were the Highborn merely a larger subspecies of Homo sapiens?

The inquisitive aspect of the Web-Mind, the curiosity, actually hoped that a shuttle-full of Highborn made it onto the surface. It might almost be worth the negative percentage points to let them land. No, the landing would give the enemy that eight percent chance of victory. Those were unacceptable odds.

The approaching Highborn must die, just as the attacking Jovians were about to face obliteration.

-17-

Force-Leader Yakov was thrown hard to the left by his maneuvering ship. Only the restraining straps of his chair held him in place. The main screen was a blizzard of images as Carme hove into sight.

The rogue planetoid still accelerated, the spewing gases from its exhaust-ports attempting to propel millions of metric tons of rock and trace metals. Bright dots of light appeared on Carme’s surface. Those could be launched missiles or batteries of point-defense cannons. Both possibilities filled Yakov with dread. The laser-beam stabbed elsewhere for the moment. If that beam swerved to focus on the Descartes….

Yakov blinked. There was hoarse shouting. The ship’s fusion-engine whined. Then came the sound of sharp whistling, indicating a breach somewhere.

“Incoming shells!” Rhea shouted.

“Attempting sensor shear!” the ECM officer screamed.

“Decks five and six are off-line, Force-Leader! I think they’ve been breached. I’m initiating emergency bulkheads.”

Seconds later, loud booms sounded from within the ship.

The pilot was pale with fear as he held up his hands. “I’m putting the ship on emergency auto-sequencing!”

“No,” Yakov ordered.

Because of the strain of G-forces, Yakov had to use a motorized control as he spun toward the pilot’s module. Now that the back of his chair was no longer resisting the Gs, Yakov was thrown laterally against his restraining straps.

“Maintain heading,” Yakov said. Although he didn’t shout or scream, his voice cut through the bedlam. The pilot stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Force-Leader—” the man began objecting.

“Take us in,” Yakov said.

“It’s death to—”

“You took an oath,” Yakov said, his voice harsh. “You swore to defend the Jovian System. Today, we earn our berths.”

Before the pilot could argue, Yakov’s chair purred and once again, he faced the main screen. Years of training, of endless drill, study and late nights perfecting his art allowed him to read the bewildering screen. There were dots, triangles, cones of probability, dotted lines indicating flight paths—it was a plethora of information. The increasingly tightening space between Carme and the attacking vessels was dense with multiple forms of death.

EMP surges washed over armor-sheathed electronics. Nuclear explosions added x-rays and gamma rays as well as deadly heat radiation. Shredding pellets, shards of metal and even particles of sand slashed through the vacuum at hi-speeds.

Both meteor-ships had launched every Zeno drone they carried. The point-defense cannons barked endlessly. Rail-guns projected canisters that exploded killing shrapnel ahead of it. Ninety degrees from them the hurdling pieces of the former Thutmosis III headed for the surface. Carme’s laser had melted many of the largest pieces and deflected others. What was left of the prismatic and gel shields drifted at a constant velocity toward Carme. Following behind the fields were the missile-ship’s Zenos, the shuttles and farther behind, but coming on fast, were the four deadly Voltaire Missiles.

The tactic was simple and obvious. Zeno drones led the way. The ships followed. Behind came the shuttles and patrol boats, using everything before them as shields. With the countless explosions, shells, missiles and sand zones it seemed that nothing should survive unscathed. But even here, the volume of space was vast, the individual masses tiny in comparison.

Now Zenos began to ignite their thermonuclear warheads, using x-rays and gamma rays to attack the sensor installations and bunkers of point-defense cannons on Carme.

In return, the Descartes shuddered as an enemy Zeno blasted seven hundreds meters to starboard. X-rays traveled at light speed, flooding the starboard side of the ship, killing personnel and destroying delicate equipment. Behind it followed depleted uranium shrapnel. The impact caused the shuddering, and it created three massive cracks that splintered around the meteor-shell.

As that occurred, the dreadnaught rose from behind Carme. Its particle shielding protected it except for five-meter slits. From those slits poured point-defense shells, anti-missiles and laser-beams.

The cyborg-controlled warship was like an SU battlewagon. It was meant for long-range fights, using lasers as its primary weapon. The meteor-ships were even more unsuited for this intense barrage, built as raid vessels. The dreadnaught possessed the particle shielding, and that was a critical advantage. It would turn the battle decisively for the cyborgs.

“Force-Leader!” Rhea screamed.

Somehow, among the clangs, the sounds of more bulkheads slamming into place, the shouts from other officers, Yakov heard her.

“There’s a message from the Praetor!” Rhea screamed. “I’m patching it through to your chair.”

Yakov moved a toggle. On the armrest’s tiny screen and through heavy static appeared the Praetor’s wide features. The Highborn looked strained, his skin taut. His eyes were like burning pits of madness.

“They’ve destroyed half the Voltaire Missiles,” the Praetor said in his deep voice. “I’m not sure the others will make it through to the dreadnaught.”

Mute, Yakov nodded.

Maybe because of EMP blasts or enemy ECM, the static increased. It was now impossible to hear the Praetor’s next words.

Yakov raised his head. “Rhea—”

Rhea worked feverishly on her board. She stabbed buttons and twisted a dial. “Try it now!” she shouted.

Yakov clicked a toggle and the static appeared to lessen. He could barely make out the Praetor. He leaned closer to the chair’s speakers.

“You have to take out the dreadnaught,” the Praetor said. The static became too much again. But it didn’t matter now. Yakov understood. If the dreadnaught survived, they had lost the battle.

The Force-Leader calmly flipped an emergency cover on his armrest. He pressed the red button there. It gave him override authority over the ship’s functions. Yakov savagely wiped his eyes. They were dry, but they burned with fatigue. He didn’t want to die. Ganymede had finally gained its independence from Callisto. Everything had begun for him long ago at Ganymede U when he’d won the hussade trophy. Now he was here, fighting a losing battle against the impossible cyborgs. How could men defeat such evil creations?

Yakov shook his head. He didn’t know how. He knew, however, that he had to try. He had to ram this attack down the cyborgs’ throat. He had to give the Praetor and his Highborn a chance for victory. He had to help stubborn Marten Kluge. Yes. The Earthman showed the way. Kluge fought even when the odds were impossible. He went in and tried, hoping a miracle would occur.

“Force-Leader!” Rhea shouted. “We’ve lost ship functions. We’re headed on an intercept course for the dreadnaught.”

Yakov ignored her. He controlled the Descartes now.

“They have sensor lock-on!”

“All hail Ganymede U,” Yakov whispered.

Lasers from the dreadnaught struck the meteor-ship, slagging rock. Point-defense shells followed and missiles attempted to race the gauntlet between the fast-closing vessels.

The shouting in the command room lessened.

“He’s taking us into the dreadnaught,” Rhea said, as she clutched her choker. “We’re the missile now.”

That brought silence as officers in their modules stared at Yakov.

The silver-haired Force-Leader snapped a crisp salute. Then he watched the main screen as the firing dreadnaught began to fill his world.

-18-

“Yakov, you fool,” Marten whispered.

On her screen, Osadar pointed at the crippled Descartes. Then she switched cameras as the patrol boat continued its wild, jinking, twisting ride toward Carme.

Marten was lurched this way and that. Behind him, space marines shouted as their armor clattered and clanked. Outside through the polarized window, weird colors flashed everywhere. Zipping, and often glowing shapes, burned past like planetary meteors.

During the hell-ride, Carme constantly became bigger. Now surface features were visible. There were silver domes and tall towers. They were clustered together in what seemed like a mechanized village at the end of a valley.

Marten leaned toward the window, peering upward, straining. He saw the dreadnaught, its lasers stabbing, burning into the Descartes. Yakov piloted it now. Weeks ago, Yakov had rescued him from the sealed pod and had saved him from Arbiter Octagon.

“No,” Marten whispered. He’d lost too many friends these past few years. Marten banged a fist against the window. Social Unity, Highborn, cyborgs and now pontificating philosophers—

Was there no end to it?

The meteor-ship Descartes, the splintering vessel, smashed head-on against the larger cyborg-controlled dreadnaught. Particle shielding and meteor-shell burst apart, sending rock and pulverized dust in an expanding ball of debris. The massive destruction unleashed tons of kinetic energy. Dreadnaught lasers quit firing, and like an interstellar billiard ball, the dreadnaught caromed leftward, away from Carme.

“Here we go,” Osadar said.

The patrol boat sank with sickening speed. Marten lost sight of the dreadnaught. Yakov, the mad fool, the insanely brave Force-Leader of Ganymede, he was dead. The calm guardian was likely a jellied mass. It hurt to know that. It brought—

It brought sadness, but then Marten had new troubles to occupy his thoughts. Osadar madly maneuvered the patrol boat as the vessel’s computer fired the boat’s cannons. The ripping sounds occasionally timed together with a white blossom to their left, their right and then directly in front of them.

“Seal your helmets!” Marten roared. He checked his, and he heard radios click online in his receivers.

The patrol boat violently shuddered. There was howling, and Marten felt a fierce tug on his straps as if he might fly upward. He craned his head. A large, jagged rip in the ceiling let him view the stars. Patrol-boat debris shot out of it. Something had torn off the vessel’s sheeting, releasing the precious atmosphere.

A Jovian screamed in Marten’s headphones.

“The moon!” another Jovian roared. It sounded like Tass.

Marten felt faint as Carme’s surface rushed toward them. Carme was huge. Craggy-spiked mountains loomed. A crater skimmed below them.

“Now!” said Osadar.

Marten was slammed forward as the final retros fired. Gleaming silver towers rapidly drew near. A sensor dish—it vanished as something from the heavens crashed against it. Beams washed over the towers, over the domes. The beams quit almost as soon as they began firing.

The hardest, most violent jolt of all caused Marten’s armored chin to smash against his chestplate. There was ringing in his ears and it seemed as if he were a thousand light-years from this place. Vaguely he was aware of terrific jolts and repeatedly slamming against his straps. Then it ended, and there was peace.

“Marten! Marten Kluge!”

Groggily, Marten moved his eyes. That hurt and caused an explosion of pain in his head.

“Marten Kluge?”

“Don’t shake him.” That sounded like Omi.

Omi…. That meant….

“Marten?”

Marten focused and saw Osadar’s worried face before him.

“We’ve landed,” Osadar said through the radio-link. “We’ve landed on the front part.”

Marten raised a feeble hand, trying to release a buckle. It was the front part in relation to the hot plasma expelled from the back at the crater-sized exhaust-ports, giving Carme its one-quarter G.

“Let me do that,” Omi said.

“What happened?” Marten slurred.

“Do you wish to avenge your dead friend?” Osadar asked.

What did that mean? Oh. Yes. Yakov had died to give him, to give the space marines, cover so they could land on Carme. The entire complement of the Descartes’ crew had died, including beautiful Rhea. It was a shame he’d never made friends with her, had never kissed her. He’d seen the crashing meteor-ship. He’d never forget that awful slight.

With a grunt, Marten heaved himself to his feet. Here, Carme’s acceleration gave the surface pseudo-gravity. It was nothing like the Bangladesh, however. Marten turned his head, glancing back. Jovian space marines waited for him.

“It’s time to move,” Osadar said.

Marten nodded. Oh, that hurt his head. With a slap of his hand, he struck a precise spot on his chest. That activated his medkit. He heard a hiss as his suit-hypo shot him with a stim. He chinned his radio to wide-beam.

“Listen up,” Marten said, “and maybe you can help me do some damage to these mother-loving cyborgs.”

He didn’t have time to wait for the stims. Time had run out for all of them. He began barking orders, leading the first wave of space marines onto Carme.

-19-

“Watch your footing,” Marten said over his crackling radio. The static was insane, a constant in his headphones.

Carme’s surface was rocky, with sharp protrusions and plenty of stardust. Every step left a print. Sometimes dust puffed upward.

The stars shined above as nearer, flashing objects glowed and disappeared, some smashing into the moon. Otherwise, it was dark and eerie. Jupiter was the brightest ‘star’ by many magnitudes, brighter even than the Sun.

Marten yearned to reach the towers and domes, to get his men under cover. If an EMP blast went off nearby or a missile exploded, it could kill the lot of them. He also wanted to gather a large number of space marines in one place in order to defeat the enemy in detail, hitting small cyborg parties with as many men as possible. Unfortunately, it was impossible to call down other patrol boats, as the interference was too strong.

“There!” crackled Omi’s voice.

Marten swiveled his head to look back, to see what Omi pointed at. Something flashed at the corner of his eye. He turned forward again and saw an impossibly fast humanoid running toward them. The humanoid had a laser carbine, with a bulky pack on his back. He shot from the hip with flashes of light that stabbed at them, hitting his soldiers.

“Down!” shouted Marten. “Get onto your stomachs!”

“Pericles is hit!” a space marine shouted.

“Kallias—I need help! Kallias has lost his helmet!”

Marten threw himself onto his stomach, hitting rocky ground, making dust puff around him.

The charging cyborg was killing his space marines fast. It was extremely efficient when compared to mere humans.

Marten clawed the IML from his back. He targeted the cyborg even as the beam slashed into more of his space marines. In his HUD, Marten saw a green flash, meaning: target acquired. He jerked the IMLs trigger. It shuddered as the Cognitive missile ignited and zoomed at the cyborg.

The thing was incredible. It threw itself down even as it aimed and fired at the incoming missile. The beam slashed a scant milli-fraction from the warhead because the Cognitive missile swerved then. It poured a final burst of thrust and slammed into the cyborg. There was an explosion and then showering shards of metal and hot plasti-flesh.

A ragged cheer battled the static in Marten’s ears.

“We’ll advance by over-watch teams!” Marten shouted. He wanted to stay calm. Yakov had known how to stay calm in a fight, but the silver-haired Force-Leader was dead. He hated this war. He hated cyborgs.

Marten reloaded the IML. The Cognitive missile tactic had worked. He’d killed a cyborg.

“Six men are dead,” Omi said on the command channel.

The headache that had begun with the crash-landing blossomed with renewed pain. Then something flashed overhead at the edge of Marten’s visor.

“Look,” someone said, “a patrol boat.”

Reinforcements, Marten thought. Good. We need more—

An explosion of bright light ended the thought. Marten had no idea if depleted uranium shells, canisters, wide-area sand-shots or a tac-laser had killed the patrol boat. In the end, it didn’t matter what had killed it. All those reinforcements were dead.

“Here come more cyborgs,” Omi said. “I count seven of them.”

“Spread out!” Marten shouted. Then he remembered an old Highborn maxim: A commander must give concrete, tangible commands. “A-team,” Marten said, “head left. B-team….”

The cyborgs carried lasers. Marten and his space marines used IMLs and Cognitive missiles, with Osadar firing a Gyroc rifle. In the end, they killed the deadly things with saturation fire, but lost half their number doing it.

Armored bodies lay everywhere, with neat little holes burnt through ceramic-metal plates.

“We’ll never win like this,” Tass said over the radio.

Panting, Marten lifted a loaded IML off a corpse. The space marine’s faceplate was slagged ballistic glass, the head inside a horrible glob of protoplasm.

“Wait here,” wheezed Marten. His conditioner-unit hummed, washing his sweaty skin with cool air.

“Sir?” a space marine asked.

“I’m going to scout ahead,” Marten said. “We need to group our forces, hit the cyborgs as one. Omi, Osadar… Tass, follow me.”

“What’s up?” Omi asked on the command channel.

“This looks like a safe spot to leave the others,” Marten said. “We’ll take the risks right now.”

Omi gave a noncommittal grunt.

The four of them advanced across rocky terrain, with someone always crouching behind a boulder, with an aimed missile ready to fly. The cluster of domes and towers slowly grew larger.

“Look,” Osadar said.

Marten glanced back where she pointed. Cyborgs climbed over rocks, heading toward the others.

“Damn,” Marten said. “Let’s go.” Then he tried to warn the others, but the static was too heavy.

The cyborgs moved with twitching, inhuman speed and fired with uncanny laser-accuracy—they were cyclones of death. Marten and others used their Cognitive missiles, hitting the enemy from behind. It killed the last cyborgs, but no space marine left behind survived the firefight.

Gasping for air, with sweat dripping down his chin, Marten knelt, and he shook his head.

That’s when the first piece of good luck occurred. Another boatload of space marines joined them. Well, half the patrol boat’s complement joined them, a squad’s worth. They marched from behind a low hill, waving IMLs to identify themselves. Once they were close, they were able to talk over the worsening static.

Together, they humped over the terrain, soon sliding down a hill as a tower rose before them. A broken dish rotated at the top. The nearest dome was cracked as something visible sheeted out of it.

“Look,” Osadar said.

She was the tallest among them and had stolen a bulky laser pack and carbine from a dead cyborg. Osadar pointed with the tip of her carbine.

Two shuttles glided low over a hill. They could have been twins to the Mayflower. The shuttles floated toward the cluster of towers and domes.

“Idiots,” Omi said.

Stubby barrels poked out of two low barracks. Marten wished he could radio the shuttles. The barrels were point-defense cannons. It surprised him the Highborn were so foolish as to try to land directly among the buildings. He could have used the reinforcements.

Then a huge missile flashed overhead, speeding ahead of Carme. The missile rotated. A beam lanced from the nosecone. The beam hit the first barracks. The point-defense cannons of the second barracks shot depleted uranium shells. Those shredded the lead shuttle. Metal rained onto the surface. Some chunks splattered against the hills like meteors. Then the missile’s beam hit again, and the second barracks was destroyed.

“The Highborn are using a Voltaire Missile,” Osadar said.

In his cooling helmet, Marten raised his eyebrows. The giant missile hung out there like some guardian angel, rotating, firing its engine to pull ahead and then rotating back to fire. No doubt, the Praetor or one of his Highborn lieutenants controlled the Voltaire. Marten recalled how he’d once controlled the Mayflower via his handscanner’s keypad.

From where he stood on a hill’s slope, Marten watched the landing shuttle. He also saw the Voltaire’s beam slag cyborgs spilling out of a low dome.

That did something to Marten’s chest. It took him a moment to understand what. Then he did understand. He had hope again. Battleoid-armored Highborn had arrived, and they had an altered drone to provide covering fire. Maybe there was a way to win, or at least to disable this blasted planet-wrecker. Yakov’s sacrifice had achieved something.

Marten nodded, vowing that his friend’s death would count, even if he had to take some Highborn’s orders for the next hour, even the Praetor’s orders, to achieve it.

“All right,” he said. “We’re going to try to link up with them. But keep a close watch on your sensors. We don’t need any more nasty surprises.”

-20-

The Praetor seethed with pent-up rage, fear, adrenalin and a singular Highborn passion: an exalted need to dominate, to win.

He stood in his battleoid-armor, with a heavy plasma cannon similar to the weapon Marten had used on the cyborgs that had invaded the Mayflower many weeks ago. The shuttle had landed, had made the awful journey through Carme’s killing zone. His single remaining Voltaire was dedicated for his use.

“Kill major weapon systems first and cyborgs second,” the Praetor ordered through his battleoid’s radio.

A lone Highborn would remain aboard the shuttle. He presently sat at a board, controlling the Voltaire.

The Praetor grinned as his pink eyes gleamed with dominating passion. If he died, nothing else mattered. He had predicated his strategy and tactics on that. The first shuttle had been a drone, meant to absorb enemy attacks. The second shuttle held sixteen Highborn. The remaining two of the Thutmosis III’s eighteen Highborn had been badly hurt. Therefore, they’d piloted different shuttles, meant to act as decoys. All fourteen healthy Highborn would join him in the ground assault.

Could fifteen, battleoid-armored Highborn conquer Carme? They had Jovians for fodder and the melded humanoids as enemies. The Praetor laughed. It was a harsh sound. The two greatest conquistadors, Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, had both won through capturing emperors. Both the Aztecs and the Incas had raised theocratic empires, where the emperor was considered a god or the son of the ruling gods.

These last few days, the Praetor had studied everything learned about the cyborgs and all the known data concerning a technological marvel called Web-Mind. Highborn Intelligence on Earth had uncovered interesting aspects from Social Unity sources, while the Mars Planetary Union had supplied some critical facts they’d learned during the Third Battle for Mars.

To the Praetor’s thinking, these Web-Minds seemed like Aztec or Inca emperors. Before the Thutmosis III’s destruction, he had picked up telling signals. Those signals had matched others from the Third Battle for Mars. Those signals had indicated a broadcasting Web-Mind on Carme.

In his time, Hernan Cortes had fought many battles against masses of Aztec warriors. At times, the odds had been one hundred Indians versus one Spaniard. The Mexica warriors as the Aztecs called themselves had ranged each of their bands under a gaudy leader decked out in flower-ornamented, cotton armor. In those battles, Cortez had ordered his handful of iron-armored knights to charge into the Aztec hosts. Those knights had one goal: to wade through the masses and spear the gaudily-clad chieftain. When the chieftain died, his band fled the battlefield. After the horsed knights slaughtered enough chieftains, and after enough Indians had fled, then the knights charged a last time, killing the Aztec Host Commander. Afterward, thousands of cotton-armored Mexicas had littered the gory battlefield.

Today, the strategy was simple. The best strategies always were. Find the Web-Mind, kill it and hope that paralyzed the remaining cyborgs. Including himself, the Praetor had fifteen battleoid-armored Highborn to do it, fifteen horsed knights, as it were.

The Praetor pressed a switch. The main hatch blew outward, throwing the doors thirty meters in either direction. The doors landed hard, sending up a geyser of moon-dust.

Then the Praetor’s exoskeleton-powered suit moved out of the shuttle and onto Carme. The hour of decision had arrived.

-21-

Deep in the cavern of its armored chamber, the Web-Mind collected data. Eighty percent of the Highborn shuttles were destroyed. A Voltaire presently stayed ahead of Carme. The drone used its defensive armaments as weapons platforms to provide covering fire for ground troops.

The Web-Mind ran a configuration program and then ran an analysis on munitions and laser-fire expenditures. It concluded that the thermonuclear warheads had been removed to provide greater munitions-carrying capacity for the Voltaire.

The Web-Mind pulsed retargeting data to select point-defense bunkers and laser stations. It was time to take out the last Voltaire.

Nanoseconds later, the Web-Mind counted the number of patrol boats, those destroyed and those that had landed. Cluster Three had been breached. Cluster Four faced a concentrated attack, while Cluster Five was untouched and Clusters One and Two had received minimal damage and faced a minuscule number of suited Jovians.

Cluster Three was the danger point.

The Web-Mind sent myriad orders, recalling many cyborgs and ordering them to converge on Cluster Three. Then it ran a probability scenario for Cluster Three. A stubborn five percent probability continued to exist of possible danger.

Few Cluster Three cyborgs remained. Others were on the way, however. This was interesting. There was a complement of Webbies in a holding cell on Cluster Three.

Suiting need to action, the Web-Mind pulsed an order to them. Webbies were inefficient battle units, but they could shave off half a percentage point of threat, possibly even a full percentage point. Even better, they might help the reinforcement cyborgs on their way to Cluster Three. They could help the cyborgs capture several Highborn.

A surge of greed boiled in the Web-Mind. It wanted captive Highborn. Yes, it dearly wanted them in order to practice experiments during the long journey to the Inner Planets.

Webbie Octagon was the first on his padded couch to sit up and yank out the plasti-flesh insert in his neck-jack.

Jovian space marines and Highborn battleoids were on Carme, were nearby in the towers and domes. They were to dress, arm and kill the invaders.

Gaunt Octagon slid off the long couch. He was in a large, oval chamber, with various control readings on the nearest wall. More lights flickered on, brightening the chamber. A panel slid open, revealing brown vacc-suits.

Hunger twisted Octagon’s stomach. He felt weak from lack of nutrients and from lack of exercise. His arms were thin and his legs trembled. He staggered toward the vacc-suits, his shoes making clicking noises. Behind him, other Webbies stirred. Some coughed, while a few had the temerity to urinate on the metallic floor. Those were the most emaciated, they had worn their neck-jacks the longest.

The kill-order beat in Octagon’s mind. But it was a pale imitation to the need to find and slay Marten Kluge. The logic was direct. Space marines were on Carme. With a desperate loathing, Octagon hated Marten Kluge. Therefore, he would find Marten among the space marines because the need had become gargantuan.

With shaking fingers, Octagon tore a vacc-suit off the rack and began to unseal it. Others staggered toward him. Octagon sneered at a tall woman with long hair and circles around her eyes. Once, he would have found her naked hips appealing. Now all he wanted was to kill Marten Kluge.

Hurrying, Octagon thrust his arms into the suit, flexed his gloved fingers and began to close the seals. Soon, he jammed a helmet over his head and turned on the air. It was stale. Without waiting, Octagon staggered for a hatch.

The kill-order beat like a pulse, put there by the Web-Mind. He would find weapons in a nearby locker. The combination sequence throbbed in his forebrain.

Octagon hissed, and he rubbed his gloved hands together. Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge—he was finally going to gain vengeance on the hateful barbarian. He was going to hurt the man. He was going to hurt him repeatedly and listen to him scream in agony.

The desire brought small groans of pleasure and moisture to Octagon’s eyes. He forgot about his hunger and forgot about his weakness. To hold a stunner and blast the barbarian, it’s all that mattered.

Octagon panted, forcing himself to hurry.

-22-

Marten’s gut tightened with fear. He led the way, entering a new lane between a cracked dome and a broken tower. The tower cast a deeper shadow, the light shining from Jupiter.

Marten gripped a Gyroc rifle, ready to fire rocket-propelled shells. He had a clip of APEX rounds, Armor-Piercing EXplosive. Each shell had a super-hardened penetrator packet. The loaded IML hung by a strap from his shoulder, clunking against his armor as he slunk a step at a time.

Osadar followed, with Tass behind her, leading the spread-out space marines. Omi brought up the rear.

It was eerie, with the radio static constantly washing over Marten’s headphones. The occasional clicking of his suit’s air-conditioners made him flinch.

Marten tried to scan everywhere. His helmet used short sensor-bursts to find and warn him about hiding cyborgs. Wherever he aimed the dedicated weapon—the Gyroc now—crosshairs appeared on the targeting portion of his visor.

Dust, rocks, a stray piece of cable, a staple-gun and other manmade junk littered the area. This near, the silver structures showed pitting, and there were various entrances or cracks running down them.

Marten’s head throbbed, and he felt himself getting distracted. He gave himself another stim.

“The Highborn entered this place three hundred meters to our left,” Osadar said.

“We should broadcast our position,” Omi said. “We don’t want to surprise each other.”

Each time someone spoke, Marten bent his head, trying to decipher their half-garbled words through the static.

“You do remember Japan,” Omi said over the command channel. “A battleoid was worth more than one of our platoons. Sometimes they were more deadly than a company of men.”

“Do you think we killed all the cyborgs?” Tass asked nervously.

“No,” said Osadar.

Marten flinched again as his suit’s air-conditioner clicked and began to hum with greater power. He was too shaky. Seeing cyborgs slaughter his space marines earlier, this was a hell-world, a rogue moon meant to bring about humanity’s extinction. He hated this place, but they had to destroy the engines, to wreck the wrecker.

“Cyborg!” a space marine screamed.

A red-tipped carbine poked out of a shadowed entrance. A beam slashed. A visor melted as another space marine died.

A half-second later, Gyroc shells burned in flight. Instead of retreating, the cyborg bounded out of the dome and toward them. The APEX shells blew apart the entrance, sending chunks flying.

The laser carbine spat again. Two more space marines died, their visors drilled with deadly little holes.

From where he lay, Marten tracked the cyborg. It moved with uncanny speed and it swiveled its carbine with evil precision. The HUD’s crosshairs centered on it. Marten pulled the trigger three times. The cyborg hit the ground, rolled fast and killed another space marine. Marten’s shells missed the cyborg and pitted the hard surfaces at his feet instead. Pieces of rock sprayed up into the cyborg’s midsection. Then two APEX shells slammed into it. One blew apart an arm, another tore off a leg. One-armed, the cyborg burned another space marine. Three shells struck the torso in rapid succession then, and it died.

Marten swore harshly, surprised that he still lived. The things were impossible to kill, and they spewed murder until the last circuit flickered out.

He ordered Tass to take a headcount.

“To our right,” Omi said. “That’s where the Highborn beam slaughtered cyborgs before. We’d better be careful. Some of those things might have lost legs, but many will still continue killing.”

Marten raised himself up onto an armored knee as he lifted the Gyroc. His arms trembled, but the stim was steadying him, and his headache receded. He felt that something was out there. Someone watched. He moved the Gyroc to the left.

“Lower your weapon or you die, preman.”

Through his headphones, Marten recognized the commanding voice of a Highborn. It sent a chill of remembrance through him. Then a ten-foot tall battleoid stepped from behind the dome. Another Highborn rose into view on the dome’s cracked surface. Both battleoids aimed plasma rifles, heavy weapons by anyone’s standard.

Marten lowered his Gyroc. It would likely take two or three APEX shells in one spot to penetrate battleoid-armor.

“We hunted that cyborg,” a Highborn said. “It is the last one here.”

“No,” the other Highborn said. “Look. Another cyborg. It must have captured these premen, using them to lure us.”

“Wait!” Marten shouted. “The cyborg is with us. She’s broken her programming.”

Anything might have happened as the battleoids aimed their rifles and as Osadar raised her laser.

“What does ‘broken her programming’ mean?” a Highborn asked.

“We sent the Praetor information about her,” Marten said. “Didn’t he pass it onto you?”

“You’re no Jovian,” the nearest Highborn said. “Your voice patterns are wrong.” The battleoid approached, its plasma rifle minutely switching from target to target. The Highborn on the dome remained where he was.

Highborn were quick to pick up nuances. Marten knew he should have remembered that and tried to mask his Earth accent. “I was at Mars during the battle,” he told them.

“The Third Battle of Mars?” asked the towering Highborn. The battleoid bristled with weaponry, with an auto-cannon on the left arm, a missile launcher on the back and a large vibroblade sheathed on its armored hip. An antenna sprouted from a shoulder. Here on Carme, the suited Highborn was like a legendary giant.

“Sure,” Marten said, trying not to feel intimidated.

“He is truculent,” the second Highborn said. His tone implied that such a one should be punished.

“Where are the rest of your space marines?” the nearest Highborn asked.

“We’re it,” Marten said. He had eight men left. “We’ve run into several parties of cyborgs.”

“You premen killed them?”

“We’re still standing,” Marten said, hating the smugness of the question, hating to have to explain anything again to a Highborn. He’d had his fill of them on the Sun-Works Factory. Being in the presence of the so-called Master Race intensified the old feelings about them.

“They are fodder,” the Highborn on the dome said.

“Yes,” said the nearer one. “You will follow me.” Without waiting for confirmation, the intimidating battleoid turned around and began trudging in the direction it had first appeared.

As Marten hurried to keep pace and then to catch up, he had to tell himself that cyborgs were worse than Highborn. Cyborgs were inhuman, a death-plague. Highborn were insufferably arrogant, scary-strong and capable, but still human after a fashion. In the best of worlds, the two would murder each other and leave the Solar System to mere humanity. It was a nice wish, but would likely take years of heartache and fierce combat to achieve—if it was even possible.

The Highborn led Marten and his space marines into another cracked dome. Smashed machinery and broken panels littered the floors. One mirror-like shard glittered as Marten kicked it and it skittered across the tile-plates.

There was a large airlock ahead. Everyone entered, with the battleoid dwarfing them. It reminded Marten of exiting the Deep Core Mine in Greater Sydney. It was the day he’d first met Highborn.

Air pressure pushed against his armor. The airlock’s other end opened and they entered another large room, this one with a low ceiling. The chamber held over a dozen battleoids. That wasn’t what tightened Marten’s gut, however.

He saw the Praetor, who was in the act of removing his helmet. He stood before a processing machine with various lights and readings running on it. The huge Highborn stood with his gauntleted hands on his battleoid hips. The Highborn had the same strange, fur-like pelt of hair that Marten remembered. The Praetor turned then, and the intensely weird eyes chilled Marten. Here was a psychotic killer, a mass-murderer.

The Praetor indicated that Marten should remove his helmet.

Marten complied. What choice did he have? He had eight men against almost twice that number of Highborn. He opened the seals, twisted and lifted the heavy thing. The chamber’s cold air washed against him. A strange taint stung his nostrils. But the air was breathable, if filled with alien odors. Was it wise taking off your helmet in a battle zone?

The Praetor scowled down at him. “You are familiar to me. Tell me how that is possible.”

Part of Marten wanted to spit. He wanted to lift his Gyroc and blow the smug bastard away. He would die in turn, however. Every man here would die. Another part of him wanted to sneer and tell the Praetor what he thought about gelding men. That part wanted to boast to the Praetor about what he’d done to Lycon. There was a third part, fortunately, a saner portion of his mind. It had seen Yakov die heroically for a noble cause. That helped Marten remember how to play the role of the subservient preman. He did it for a higher cause: the continuation of the human race.

“I am uncertain, lord,” Marten said, as he lowered his eyes before one of the supreme race.

A harsh laugh was his reward. “Yes. I know you, preman. You are Shock-Trooper Marten Kluge. I recall your voice as well as your face. I am unique among Highborn in that I can recall various features among the lower races. To most Highborn, premen look the same, or nearly the same. There are some obvious variations in skin pigmentation, but that is inconsequential.”

Marten looked up into those intense eyes. Despite his resolve, Marten grinned insolently.

The Praetor’s already taut features tightened, making it seem that his skin might tear. “During your flight to the Bangladesh, I heard your traitorous words. You had sworn an oath to us. That oath you broke, making you foresworn.”

“You were going to castrate us.”

“A trifling matter,” the Praetor said.

“Not to me,” Marten said.

“What happened to Lycon? He went to rescue shock troopers. How is it that you are here in the Jovian System?”

The old rage returned as hard words spilled out of Marten. “I killed Lycon.”

The Praetor’s eyebrows rose. “You, a preman?”

“I spaced three Highborn, took their shuttle and headed here.”

The Praetor’s terrible eyes seemed to shine, and an even weirder smile stretched his lips. “The Training Master and his crew were inferior Lot Sixers. And it seems you are a throwback.”

Marten shook his head, not understanding the reference.

“During prehistoric days, bestial premen must have been savage hunters. How otherwise could they have survived those times? You are like them, a natural killer. I despised the weak Training Master. Thus, I grant you life in ridding me of him. But for daring to spill Highborn blood—a terrible crime for a preman—I will personally geld you after I destroy the Web-Mind. Then I shall keep you as an example to show Grand Admiral Cassius.”

Behind Marten, seals snapped open. He heard metal sliding in grooves, and there was a faint popping sound. Before him, the Praetor’s head swayed back as the Highborn’s lips twisted in loathing.

Marten looked back. Osadar had taken off her helmet.

“Cyborg,” the Praetor whispered.

“She’s broken her programming,” Marten said.

The Praetor’s head twitched, which might have indicated curiosity or perhaps it was another manifestation of loathing.

“So,” the Praetor whispered, “this is the infamous Osadar Di. I’ve read her specs, and I’d hoped she had survived.”

“Why threaten Marten with gelding?” Osadar asked. “It is unreasonable.”

The Praetor stared at Osadar, glanced once at Marten and then continued to study her.

“Lord,” one of the Highborn said, using the battleoid’s speakers, “Marcus has detected cyborgs. They’re racing here from another cluster, and should arrive in… approximately eleven minutes.”

The Praetor’s nostrils expanded. He pointed at Osadar. “I’ve detected a Web-Mind, and I mean to destroy it. I believe that its destruction will render Carme inoperable.” The Praetor put a huge, armored gauntlet on the humming machine. “Can you use this broadcasting unit to pinpoint the Web-Mind’s location?”

Osadar stepped toward the Praetor and toward the large machine. He was bigger, bulkier and radiated intensity. She was cold, moved in a frighteningly quick manner and despite her humanoid shape and features, seemed alien.

Osadar pulled off a glove and twisted her forefinger’s tip, unscrewing it. She plugged the forefinger into a jack. Osadar froze then as her eyes closed. In seconds, her head jerked, her eyes flickered open and she yanked her finger free.

“You know where it is,” the Praetor whispered.

Osadar regarded him. Then she turned to Marten. “Should I tell him?”

“You will speak,” the Praetor said, with menace.

“First rescind your gelding threat,” Osadar said.

Battleoids stirred, everyone one of them lifting their weapons.

“I am in command here,” the Praetor said. “I will rescind nothing.”

“You might as well tell him,” Marten said.

“You once told me—” Osadar began to say.

“Let’s kill this Web-Mind,” Marten said, “and stop the planet-wrecker. Everything else is secondary.”

“You are wise, preman,” the Praetor.

For once, Marten held his tongue, but it was hard to do.

“Give me the Web-Mind’s coordinates,” the Praetor said.

Osadar did so.

-23-

Marten resealed his helmet as the Praetor gave terse orders.

The entrance to the Web-Mind’s underground chamber was in a different dome, but within this cluster of buildings.

They reentered the large airlock and exited the cracked dome. Outside, the stars and Jupiter shined as eerily as ever. The silver buildings cast shadows. Carme’s low hills surrounded them, a sterile wasteland of asteroid rock and ancient dust. Dead space marines littered the area, as did shredded cyborgs. The majority of the melded creatures had perished to Voltaire laser-fire.

The last drone no longer hung in the sky, however. Likely, the cyborgs had destroyed it.

The Praetor had allowed Marten access to the Highborn battle-net. He thus heard the Praetor order eight Highborn along with Tass and the remaining space marines to intercept the approaching cyborgs. The others were to stop the melded humanoids in order to give the Praetor, Marten and the rest time to destroy the Web-Mind underground.

Two cyborgs ambushed them as they approached the dome. Lasers speared out of jagged cracks. The two beams focused on one battleoid.

From behind a rock, Marten snapped off Gyroc rounds, pitting the metallic wall, but failing to enter the jagged cracks, which were at an oblique angle to him. Orange plasma hit, and globs of molten metal dripped off the wall or drifted into the vacuum. Then a cyborg dashed out. Heated plasma killed it, melting its helmet and head. A Gyroc round entered the crack, along with a red beam.

The last cyborg stopped firing.

“Is it dead?” Omi asked.

Marten counted the fallen Highborn. Three battleoids lay prone, with laser holes burnt through the heavy armor. The suits could absorb more punishment than space marine armor, but eventually broke under concentrated laser-fire.

“Shock Troopers Marten and Omi,” the Praetor said, “scout the dome. See if the cyborg still lives.”

“Screw him,” Omi said.

Marten heaved himself from behind his rock and began running. He snapped off three shots. Then a red light flashed on his HUD. Rifle empty. He tore out the clip and slammed in another. By that time, he reached the jagged crack. It was barely wide enough to squeeze through. Breathing hard, his body taut with fear, he poked the barrel in and slid against metal. The cyborg was sprawled inside, a hole in its chest sparking. As he stared, the cyborg’s right hand twitched.

Horror and hatred washed through Marten. He yanked the trigger. Each slamming APEX round made the thing jerk and twist.

“It’s dead!” Omi shouted.

A red, empty light was flashing in Marten’s HUD, and he was still pulling the trigger. He stopped as Omi touched his shoulder.

Wordlessly, Marten switched clips.

“Everything is clear,” Marten heard someone say. Then he realized it was his voice. He had to get a grip. He shot himself with another stim. Too many, and he’d go paranoid. He laughed. It wasn’t a good sound. This was another firefight he had no business being in. Digging out a Web-Mind, they were all mad.

The wall behind them shuddered. Big pieces of metal and masonry flew off. Then a battleoid foot smashed through. A moment later, big gauntlets gripped an edge of wall and created an even bigger opening. Soon, the others joined Marten and Omi in the dome.

“Continue to scout,” the Praetor said.

Omi’s helmet turned toward him. Marten saw Omi’s features, the hollow eyes and the terrible strain etched across his friend’s face.

“Yeah,” Marten said, hefting his Gyroc. He chinned infrared, scanning the place, observing the cracks above, the broken equipment everywhere and the littered floor. Then he started across it.

It might have been smarter switching to his IML, but he was going to save the Cognitive missile for the Praetor. Let the Highborn think him a dog to sniff out trouble. In the end, this dog would bite and finish what he’d started with Sigmir and continued with Lycon.

As Marten scouted through the dome, the Web-Mind awoke to its danger. It had been running a prognostication program. Through it, it divined the Praetor’s plan.

With quick calculation, the Web-Mind assessed its immediate military assets. The Webbies waited with their pathetic stunners. Yes, it must radio the leader. They must scour the deleted cyborgs and confiscate laser carbines. That would give the Webbies enough firepower to kill Highborn. The Web-Mind then began to activate its cyborg protection team. They’d waited in storage, having been interned there in the Neptune System. Unfortunately, thawing them would take time. Lastly, the Web-Mind radioed a distress call. All cyborgs were to converge here to annihilate Jovians and kill or capture Highborn.

The Web-Mind regretted leaving Gharlane with the in-system fleet. Worse, perhaps, with deletion as a possibility, the Web-Mind knew a growing and bitter jealousy. It was wrong that any cyborg should survive his demise. It was an even greater wrong that the troublesome and annoying Gharlane should survive his master.

Before the Web-Mind could dwell on that, however, a pre-inserted optimism program began to run. This would be the last opportunity for the inferior species to harm it. As Web-Mind, it was going to destroy Jovians and capture Highborn. First, it must send the correct pulse to the Webbie commander.

Webbie Octagon’s hatred for Marten Kluge had undergone a transformation in the last ten minutes. He staggered under the heavy load of a laser-pack. He hunched like an old man. It would have been worse if Carme were under greater acceleration. But it was already bad enough.

Octagon cradled the carbine as sweat bathed his body. His brown vacc-suit’s air-conditioner was broken. He wheezed, as he tasted the sour odor. He followed another Webbie as they descended at an angle toward the Web-Mind’s armored chamber. They were supposed to intercept invaders. They were supposed to kill, kill, kill.

Octagon now possessed cunning thoughts. His hatred of Marten Kluge had damaged his Web-conditioning. It had left him with some of his former personality. That personality wanted Marten Kluge to suffer. Now that he—Octagon—suffered miserably, an old emotion surfaced. It was self-preservation, which allowed him to practice the cunning.

That crafty self-preservation had caused Octagon to drag his feet. He had pretended to be weaker than he was. He’d pretended almost without being aware he did so. It meant that he was the last Webbie to enter the slanting tunnel. It also meant that the distance between him and the next Webbie grew with each passing second. Certainly, Octagon still yearned for Marten Kluge to suffer a thousand agonies, but first he’d have to stay alive. He could not rush this.

As Octagon debated plans, the screams began over his headphones. The screams were filled with mortal pain and they caused Octagon to freeze. The killing impulse tried to make him run toward the firefight. He resisted such madness, although he wasn’t completely able to overcome it. Therefore, Webbie Octagon took one slow step at a time toward the fighting.

Marten’s heart raced as he leaned against a tunnel wall. The Praetor and his Highborn had taken point. They pushed deeper and farther into the long tunnel, moving fast. According to Osadar’s data, there were several entrances to the armored chamber.

The Praetor had made a loud sound when Osadar had brought that to his attention. He’d ordered his small force to advance faster.

Marten and Omi were the rearguard now. It was pitch-black down here. Marten could only see a green and red world using his infrared HUD.

Tiny droplets oozed onto his face. No amount of cool air could stop the sweating. It was being underground that made his pours ooze. He knew it shouldn’t matter. He’d fought in worse places. But the fear of being buried alive had begun to claw at him. Maybe it was an atavistic dread, something he couldn’t help. Maybe the Japan Campaign had affected him more than he’d realized.

“I hear more Webbies coming,” Omi said.

The Korean’s voice was clearer than before because the static had almost vanished. It must have been because of the shielding rock.

Marten shifted his grip as he scanned the dead. The HUD read them as humans, which meant half-converted Jovians, Webbies. They wore simple vacc-suits but lugged cyborg laser-packs and carbines. They had been slow, unarmored and suicidal.

“They remind me of the Kamikaze squads in Japan,” Omi said.

“Yeah,” Marten whispered, licking salt off his lips.

Then more Webbies advanced around the corner. The HUD showed them as red, vaguely humanoid objects. Some sprayed laser-fire like a hose, beaming into the ceiling and high on the walls.

With careful, deliberate fire, Marten cut down one Webbie after another. After each shot, he changed positions. The igniting Gyroc shells were like flares, giving him away. Then something clattered in front of him. It showed up hot on his HUD. It must be tunnel-rock, burned off by a laser.

Then, as suddenly as the firefight had stared, it ended.

Marten squeezed his eyes shut. Would the tunnel collapse if enough laser beams hit? No, no, he told himself. That was irrational. Think about the Praetor cutting off your balls. Stay angry.

“Do you think that’s it?” Omi asked.

“I’m turning up gain,” Marten said. He chinned a control and he listened for tunnel sounds. Somewhere far away… there was something slight. Maybe he imagined it. After twenty seconds of listening, he said, “I think we got them all. We’ll head back to the surface, covering each other along the way.”

“You don’t want to run after the Praetor?”

Marten was sick of these tunnels. “No. We’ll stay near the surface, making sure no one comes down after the Praetor.” Marten picked up his IML with its Cognitive missile. There were likely more cyborgs on the way. He wanted to shoot them on the surface, not face the impossible creatures down here in the tunnels.

Omi studied him, shrugged after a moment, and said, “Sure.”

-24-

Like Marten, the Praetor hated the tunnel, but for different reasons. This was too direct, letting the enemy know his exact route of attack. Therefore, he believed speed was critical. Thus, four battleoids and a deprogrammed cyborg charged deeper, covering several kilometers in a matter of minutes.

They blew open huge hatches with their plasma rifles and jumped through red-glowing holes. Finally, they reached what had to be the main chamber, a great oval area sheathed with masses of processing units.

“Lamps,” the Praetor said.

Powerful headlamps snapped on. It showed a parked stealth-capsule. The vessel was over one hundred meters long. It sat on a huge tripod, with a hundred lines attached to it like some vast, mechanical spider.

At its sight, the Praetor knew a moment of supreme exaltation. What other Highborn could have achieved such a spectacular feat and with such paltry numbers? Surely, he was the greatest fighting Highborn alive. He was also proving the combat superiority of living flesh versus the melded horrors. Nothing compared to the ultimate super-soldier.

“A hatch opens!” Canus shouted.

Cyborgs leaped out, firing lasers with uncanny accuracy. They centered on the first battleoid, the beams cutting through reinforced titanium with brutal speed.

Four plasma rifles lifted, together with Osadar’s laser. Orange globules roiled through the underground chamber. The hot plasma struck cyborgs and the capsule’s hatch. Two cyborgs went down in a shower of sparks. Three survived after a fashion as they continued to beam, killing one battleoid and then a second. Another plasma volley hit the crippled cyborgs and the one bounding at them. It clattered to the floor, a heap of smoldering flesh and fused machine parts.

“They’re down!” roared the Praetor, as he kicked a smoking cyborg head, watching it bounce across the floor. His entire being was filled with the unique, Highborn battle-madness. It was like a human going berserk, but with a critical difference. There was a cold, soldierly mind in charge of the seething passions. It made the Highborn berserker a frightening killer, wanting to taste blood and pulp flesh, but guided with cunning ruthlessness.

At that moment, the capsule’s exhausts began to flicker.

“No!” shouted the Praetor. He mustn’t let the prize escape. “Follow me!” He marched for the hatch. Canus and the others hesitated. The Praetor whirled around. “Come! We must enter and destroy the Web-Mind.”

Canus lifted his plasma rifle. “Let us destroy the vessel.”

“Cowards!” shouted the Praetor. He faced the vessel, and with practiced precision, he used exoskeleton power. In three terrific bounds, he reached the glowing hatch. “Let the greatest among us achieve the ultimate victory.” Then the Praetor grabbed the frame and hauled himself into the huge stealth-capsule.

Osadar hung back from the others. Perhaps her innate pessimism suspected a fatal trick, some last-minute screw-job. Her helmeted head twitched toward the capsule’s exhaust as more propellant exited. As Canus and the others aimed their plasma rifles, cables began to pop off the capsule’s outer-skin. With extreme haste, Osadar retreated into the tunnel.

Canus raised his heavy plasma rifle. At that moment, the vessel’s glowing hatch clanged onto the floor. What must have been an emergency seal slammed down in its place.

“The Praetor is trapped,” a Highborn snarled.

“Aim there!” shouted Canus, pointing with his plasma rifle. Before he could pull the trigger, an EMP blast blew outward from the giant stealth-capsule. It washed over the battleoid-suits and the heavy rifles. Each of the battleoids froze, the circuits destroyed and the Highborn in them trapped.

If he could have moved his armored finger and pulled the trigger, Canus would have found his plasma rifle useless. He roared curses inside his suit, struggling.

As he did, the huge stealth-vessel swiveled on its tripod base. Then hot propellant gushed from the exhaust-port. The vessel lifted and began to move. It was the last sight Canus had. The hot propellant cooked him in his frozen armor-suit, killing him and the other helpless Highborn.

-25-

The over-watch technique was a laborious way to retreat or advance. At its most basic, one soldier watched, with a ready weapon aimed at the most dangerous area. The other soldier moved into a new position. Then he stopped and watched while his partner now moved. They leapfrogged back or leapfrogged forward. It could be done by man, by squad and sometimes even by platoon.

Marten and Omi used the over-watch maneuver heading up the tunnel and back toward the surface. They halted and waited as the tunnel shook and as hot gasses rushed past like a hurricane.

When it stopped, Omi asked, “What was that?”

Marten shrugged.

“What should we do now?” Omi asked.

“Keep moving,” Marten said.

They did, covering one another as they advanced. Then Marten saw a Webbie with a heavy laser-pack stagger around a tunnel corner.

“Wait,” Marten whispered.

Omi froze.

Through infrared, Marten watched the suited Webbie stagger and shuffle. By his actions, the Webbie seemed delirious. The HUD’s specs showed that the Webbie was like the others they had slaughtered earlier.

“Kill him,” Omi said.

“He’s no cyborg,” Marten said.

“He’s a Webbie, and they’re almost as bad.”

“Has anyone ever captured one of those?”

“Who cares?” asked Omi. “Kill him.”

“Maybe we should—”

Omi’s Gyroc kicked. The rocket-packet ignited. The APEX shell moved fast.

Webbie Octagon was exhausted. He’d shuffled under the heavy load for a long time. His shoulders ached and a point in his back knifed him every time his right leg moved. He yearned to throw off the laser-pack, but the kill-order prevented him from doing so.

He longed to glimpse Marten Kluge again. He would burn off a leg first, then an arm and then maybe a foot. He would enjoy the spectacle. Yes, it would be glorious to hurt and maim Marten Kluge. It was his greatest wish to see that barbarian—

It might have been a premonition, but Octagon looked up then. He saw a spark in the darkness. It rushed toward him. He switched on the vacc-suit’s helmet lamp. The beam washed over a kneeling, armored figure. The soldier’s helmet was aimed at him. The visor was clear. In it, he spied Marten Kluge.

Octagon hissed as he raised the laser carbine. Finally, his greatest life’s joy was about to be—

Omi’s APEX shell struck Octagon in the chest. The round pierced his body. Then the shell exploded, raining bits of rib-bone, heart-muscle, fat and brown vacc-suit. With its gaping, smoking hole, the corpse thudded onto the floor.

“You’re getting slow,” Omi told Marten.

“Did he look familiar to you?” Marten asked.

“Don’t be crazy. Who do we know that could have become a Webbie?”

It was then Osadar reached them via radio and told them what had happened in the armored chamber.

“The Web-Mind trapped the Praetor,” Omi said. “It escaped.”

Marten scowled. Then he picked up his IML. “If it’s over, we have to get out of here.”

“And do what?” Omi asked.

“Find a patrol boat and escape,” Marten said.

Omi shook his head. “It’s probably already too late for that.”

“When we’re on the cyborg converter, then it’s too late. Until then, we keep trying.” Marten shouldered his IML and started back for the dome.

-26-

Inside the large stealth-capsule, the Praetor struggled mightily. Because of the EMP blast, his battleoid-armor had frozen. With continuing grueling effort, he unlatched his suit’s seals. Sweat poured from his flesh and his muscles quivered at the effort. Rage gave him the power as his indomitable will drove him.

The Web-Mind had tricked him. It had trapped him.

Never!

With a roar, the Praetor tore off the last seal and heaved the battleoid open. Slippery with sweat, he slithered free of the encasing armor. He thus became the first enemy to see a Web-Mind.

It was a living nightmare. There were rows of clear bio-tanks. In them, were sheets of brain mass, many hundreds of kilos of brain cells from as many unwilling donors in the Neptune System. Green computing gel surrounded the pink-white mass. Cables, bio-tubes and tight-beam links connected the tanks to backup computers and life-support systems. The combination made a seething, pulsating whole, with the brain-mass sheets squirming slightly. The bio-tubes gurgled as warm liquids pulsed through them. Backup computers made whirring sounds as lights indicated a thousand things.

As the Praetor glared, a panel opened. Out of it rolled a robotic device with multi-jointed arms. At the ends were laser welders, melders and calibrating clippers. The various arms moved as the robotic device charged across the floor at him.

The Web-Mind’s gloating at capturing a Highborn and burning the others changed to panic. Against all probability, the Highborn had struggled free of his frozen armor-suit. Now the giant humanoid was inside the chamber.

That meant the Highborn must die. It would have been enjoyable to test the Highborn’s psychology during the long trip to Earth. Instead, it ordered repair units to dismember the shouting creature.

At the same time, the Web-Mind piloted its stealth-capsule through the tunnels. It headed for the surface and safety. The attacking vessels and missiles were gone. It was time to re-link with Gharlane and it was time to relay information through the laser lightguide with the Prime Web-Mind in the Neptune System.

The fight was short and vicious against the two repair units. It left the Praetor bleeding from six deep wounds as his right arm dangled uselessly. Gore oozed from the hole where his left eye used to be.

“You freakish bastard,” he mumbled. Then he stumbled at the bio-tanks. With a metal strut broken off a repair unit, the Praetor shattered ballistic glass. He thrust the metal strut through his belt, and with his hand, he began to tear out clots of pink-white brain mass. Gel spilled onto the floor as a klaxon began to wail.

“That’s right!” the Praetor snarled. “Scream while I kill you. Scream for me, my pretty. Scream.”

The Web-Mind sent out a distress call to the remaining cyborgs on Carme. Even as the Highborn destroyed computing power, it maneuvered the stealth-capsule.

The black vessel exited a tunnel and flew to an approaching party of cyborgs.

Then something akin to horrified panic erupted. The bleeding, dying humanoid smashed another globule of brain-mass. The destruction initiated a deep and hidden program.

Web-Minds were the ultimate creation, sublime beings beyond the capacities of inferior creatures to understand. Each Web-Mind was akin to what lesser creatures conceived of as gods. It was unthinkable that lower order creatures capture gods. It was vile to consider creatures tearing down a god or rendering them half-operable and imprisoning them. Destruction was preferable to creature-slavery.

As the harsh and unyielding program ran through its logic parameters, the shouting Highborn dug his large fingers into brain-mass. He yanked out the section that held the primary deletion program, meaning that sub-systems took over, trying to reconfigure the exact sequencing.

In its growing terror, the Web-Mind opened all channels, calling for all cyborgs to converge immediately on its coordinates. Then it began to search for a place to land.

The Praetor coughed up blood. Pain racked him. He hurt everywhere. It stank horribly in this awful place. Despite that, he forced his legs to move, and he hammered more ballistic glass. Then he continued to pluck out fistfuls of pink-white mass. It was brain tissue. He knew that much. He was killing his hated enemy.

Then he heard binary chatter. It came from speakers all around him. Was the Web-Mind trying to speak with him? Was it asking for mercy?

“Never!” he hissed. He squeezed his hand as mass squished between his fingers. Then he began to rip out more.

Marten and Omi exited the dome as binary chatter came over their headphones.

“What is that?” Omi asked.

“Cyborg speech,” Marten said.

“Who is that?” asked a harsh voice.

“What did you say?” Marten asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” Omi said.

“This is the Praetor speaking. I am in the Web-Mind.”

Marten and Omi glanced at each other.

“Where are you?” Marten asked.

“In the Web-Mind’s ship,” the Praetor said with a wheeze. “I’m dying, yet I am killing it.”

“Osadar said—”

“Never mind about your tame cyborg,” the Praetor snarled. “If you see a ship, shoot at it. Destroy the Web-Mind and we might still achieve victory.”

“Look!” Omi shouted. “There! I see a ship.”

Marten looked where Omi pointed. A dark blot of a vessel slid overhead. Marten lifted his IML, and he switched settings. He’d been saving this for the Praetor. Now the arrogant bastard—Marten pulled the trigger before he could finish the thought.

The Cognitive missile exited the tube. Its fuel burned and it shot up at the giant stealth-capsule, heading straight for it.

As the Web-Mind opened all channels and called for cyborg reinforcements, it heard the Highborn and the unmodified humans talk to each other over its communications system.

During that time, more of its brainpower vanished. The destruction was ongoing, and it confused the subsystem deletion program.

Delete, delete, delete—

The core of the Web-Mind sent delete pulses to the surface. It must delete. It must ensure that no creature capture valuable cyborg technology. Every unit must self-destruct and destroy-destroy-destroy.

The Highborn creature bashed at bio-tanks and life-support equipment.

Delete—

A missile struck and exploded, opening the stealth-vessel to the vacuum of space. As the Highborn swung his metal strut for the last time, the core of Web-Mind began to die from depressurization.

Then the vessel headed for the accelerating moon, soon smashing against it.

-27-

Carme continued to accelerate. The mighty fusion cores, eighty-seven percent of the coils, the generators and the gargantuan exhaust-ports were untouched by the battle.

Marten, Omi and Osadar reentered a dome. The EMP blasts, enemy ECM, explosive shells, zooming missiles, they had vanished with the Web-Mind’s death. Marten radioed other space marine survivors, all seventeen of them. No Highborn remained, not even the wounded one at the shuttle’s board.

The Descartes had vanished, while the second meteor-ship floated as wreckage many thousands of kilometers away.

A cautious several hours revealed the location of three working patrol boats, several control centers for various Carme-engines and two metal sheds full of unmodified Jovians.

“We should kill them,” Osadar said.

Marten stood with her in the same dome and chamber where the Praetor had first interrogated them. The control unit worked, and Osadar had spent most of her time attempting to master it. Through it, she’d discovered the two sheds and the Jovians.

Marten scowled. “What possible reason could you have for such a barbaric action?”

“Our attack here succeeded,” Osadar said. “Even more amazing, we are still alive and free agents. The universe cannot tolerate that, and therefore it will attempt to screw us. These so-called unmodified Jovians must have latent psychological commands. Given a chance, they will harm us or harm our mission.”

“The screw job is that we’re alive,” Marten said.

Osadar turned around from where she worked on the control unit. She cocked her head.

Marten laughed grimly. “We stopped a planet-wrecker. But there’s still a cyborg fleet in the system. Logically, there are still cyborgs in Neptune and probably more elsewhere. Social Unity remains. The Highborn still possess Doom Stars. Our continued existence means more endless conflict.”

“That is the nature of life, as the universe despises happiness. As long as one breathes, one must fight. Do not expect joy from life, Marten Kluge, or you will be endlessly disappointed.”

Despite the victory, Marten’s chest felt heavy. Maybe Osadar had a point, at least about endless disappointment. Everywhere he went, people died, usually in great numbers. All the space marines he’d picked—all but seventeen of them were dead. Yakov was dead. Every person from the Descartes was dead, including Rhea. He should have gotten to know her.

He knew he should rejoice at their marvelous victory. Instead, he felt soiled, a killer who brought death and destruction wherever he went.

The large airlock hissed and rotated open. Omi stepped through, together with a person in a brown vacc-suit. Maybe it was one of the unmodified Jovians. Omi helped the Jovian, keeping a hand on his or her elbow.

Marten lifted a com-unit. “Is there trouble?”

Omi shook his helmeted head as he brought the Jovian closer.

The Jovian froze then. Omi released the elbow.

“Here is the screw-job,” Osadar said. “I can feel it.”

For some reason, that troubled Marten. He blinked, wondering what this feeling meant, if anything.

The brown-suited person unsealed the locks and then threw off the helmet. It banged on the floor and rolled. She had brown hair and pretty, familiar features. The brown-suited person staggered toward him.

“Marten,” she whispered.

Marten blinked again, and the terrible weight in his chest vanished as he recognized Nadia Pravda. Marten groaned as moisture welled in his eyes. This couldn’t be real.

“Nadia?” he whispered.

She reached him, staggering into his arms, bumping him so he took two steps back. They clutched each other. They hugged fiercely.

“Marten Kluge,” she said, as tears flowed from her eyes.

Marten held her face, and he stared into her eyes. “Is it really you?”

She nodded, and she was laughing and crying all at once.

Marten hugged her again, and then, as gently as he could, he pressed his lips against hers. Nadia Pravda was in his arms. She was his Nadia, and she tasted sweet.

She responded, and together, they kissed in the cyborg-built dome on Carme, the rogue moon, the ex-planet-wrecker.

Marten whispered, “You’ll never leave me again.”

She tightened her grip, nodding.

“Nadia,” he said, and there was joy in his heart that was impossible to describe. He had found his Nadia. In an evil and harsh universe, he’d finally found an oasis of bliss.

-28-

Like a wave in a pond created by a dropped pebble, the Web-Mind’s radioed deletion-codes trickled outward from its last position. Many millions of kilometers away on Athena Station, a special receiving unit from Neptune intercepted the faint radio signal.

An emergency computer there ran probability scenarios, trying to decipher the need for the deletion codes. After three minutes, it sent a questing radio call for the Web-Mind. It continued to do this for seventy-one hours.

Seventy-one hours of silence indicated the Web-Mind’s deletion. The odds of this were beyond the ninety-ninth percentile. Another special program activated in response to the Web-Mind’s deletion, seeking out the chief cyborg unit in the Jovian System. Shortly, the emergency program caused a short-burst information packet to speed to Gharlane. It sent him the lightguide laser code to Neptune. It also activated an accounting program in him.

Thus, Gharlane soon found himself hooked to his warship’s primary com-station, sending pulse-packets to the lightguide laser. That tight-beam laser in turn sent a grim accounting to the Prime Web-Mind in the Neptune System.

CHIEF CYBORG UNIT: JUPITER ASSAULT

GHARLANE PRIME, BATTLE COMMANDER

LIGHTGUIDE LINK: JUPITER-NEPTUNE

STEALTH CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

Tenth Cycle, Rotation 24

Concluding battle report No. 7

The Ganymede-Europa Lunge

The clever enemy meteor-tactic absorbed approximately thirty-one percent of our laser strikes and twenty-seven percent of our missile launches. Given their local warship-tonnage superiority, I broke off the penetration raid on Ganymede, leaving a screen of damaged patrol boats. They had been preloaded with Onoshi decoy equipment and they drew fifty-eight percent of enemy fire before their destruction.

The meteor-tactic proved decisive and indicated a primary enemy commander of level two or three ability. The analyzers confirm the reunification of Jovian political and military authorities.

The Ganymede-Europa Lunge caused a sixty-seven percent loss of warship-tonnage that originated from the Athena Station start-point. Enemy losses were computed at thirty-one percent.

The battle maneuver and combat resulted in the destruction of Io, eighty percent of the processing stations on the inner moons and critical Jovian loss on Europa. Monitoring the enemy news sites has revealed five critical hits on the water moon and a seventeen percent surface covering of Io-spawned radioactives.

Current warship ratios mandate a defensive cyborg strategy based on Athena Station. Enemy manufacturing presently runs at twenty-two percent of pre-stealth campaign levels. The probability battle-computer estimates a two-year struggle before the Jovians can eradicate our presence here.

I await instructions and reinforcements, Gharlane Prime, reporting.