Star Soldier

1.

Emergency military conference, Day Two of the Invasion of Japan Sector: 1.19 P.M.

Participants: Enkov, Hawthorne, Kitamura (Field Marshal, Japan Sector) Ulrich (Air Marshal, Strategic Command East), O’Connor (Admiral, Pacific Fleet) Green (Colonel-General, Replacement Army East).

Enkov: You misjudged them again.

Hawthorne: I don’t think that’s the correct analysis, Director. Strategically this invasion makes no sense. From Australia, they launched the Papua/New Guinea Campaign, which, I might add, has bogged down in the treacherous mountain terrain.

Green: Even Highborn have their limits, it seems.

Hawthorne: Exactly. But to address your question, Director, let me point out that they’ve captured twenty percent of the small Pacific Islands from Japan to the Hawaiian Islands to Australia. It seemed clear until two days ago that they planned to build a Pacific Basin Stronghold. Now their supply lines from Australia to Japan stretches past Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.

O’Connor: Over four thousand kilometers.

Hawthorne: Granted they rush supplies and troops in well-armed convoys, but our ability to intercept and destroy them has now—what are those numbers again?

O’Connor: Their transports are thousand-ton Vickers Hovercraft, a rugged prefab design that we believe is already in mass production, with Destroyer Class Hovers serving as escort. Fast V-Boats range as perimeter guards, while VTOL Hover Carriers provide fighters, bombers and their dreaded HK-Leopards. Those search out our submersibles with uncanny accuracy.

Hawthorne: Yes, thank you, Admiral. But what are the improved odds regarding our ability to sink them along this four thousand kilometer route?

O’Connor: A sixty-percent increase.

Enkov: I’m delighted to hear it. As will be the other directors. How much tonnage have you destroyed since the Japanese Invasion?

O’Connor: Ah… none yet, Director. It’s still early in the invasion and we have only a few boats along the route. But we believe a pattern has emerged, one that indicates—

Enkov: Here we go again. It’s always about holding back to study their pattern, to make sense of these swift moves that seems to paralyze my military men. Yet you just said, General Hawthorne, that attacking Japan lacked strategic sense. What you really mean is that the Highborn have upset your precious pattern concerning their intended behavior.

Hawthorne: They are unpredictable.

Enkov: Or perhaps they are simply more subtle that you, General.

Hawthorne: I take that as a given, Director. Yet I believe they’ve finally overstepped themselves.

Enkov: Not in terms of sea-borne supply, it seems.

O’Connor: It takes time to reposition our fleets, Director. The bulk of our submarine squadrons lie in Java Strait and the South China Sea, in the southern region off Malaysia. It was anticipated that the Indonesian Islands were their next target. We could have bloodied them well there. The surprises we had in store for them…. Well, it’s moot now. Presently, the Highborn supply-line from Australia to Japan brushes near the extreme west of the Philippine Sea but not quite over the Mariana Trench.

Enkov: I fail to see your point.

O’Connor: We must move our submarines carefully, Director. Highborn detection devices are incredibly sensitive. But if we could slip into the Mariana Trench—

Enkov: What difference does that make?

O’Connor: Depth, Director. If we can slip deep enough even their detection devices can’t spot our subs, or if they do spot them, short of nuclear depth charges we’re safe from attack.

Enkov: Safe, yes, but neither can you attack from the great depths.

Hawthorne: We’ve developed a new pop-up buoy that will be able to—

Enkov: Correct me if I’m wrong, General Hawthorne, but developed means on the planning screen, not yet aboard the submarines.

Hawthorne: Yes, Director. And therein is our chief problem. The former Directorate agreed to the creation of the Highborn because Earth seemed incapable of producing proficient soldiers. This new breed of warrior was supposed to do all of Social Unity’s soldiering. Because of it, Earth defenses were allowed to deteriorate. We are the heirs of their errors.

Enkov: More history, General?

Hawthorne: Sir, the truth is large military vehicles such as submarines and spacecraft take several years to construct, at least under peacetime conditions. Planes also have a lag time, but not as great. As you know we’ve accelerated production, but as of now, our space and water-borne fleets are only as large as we had at the beginning of hostilities. Fifty-three percent of our submarines were targeted and destroyed the day Geneva and the old Directorate was destroyed. Since then, Admiral O’Connor has only lost eighteen submarines.

Enkov: And shown little for it.

Hawthorne: I’m not certain I can agree with that analysis, Director. Premature moves only hand the Highborn further chances to complete their original destruction. We must husband our forces until an opportunity of enough worth and one that we can win presents itself. I believe the Invasion of Japan is just such an opportunity. Admiral O’Connor has moved his fleets into position or is in the process of moving them. Yet we must not allow the Highborn the free destruction of our fleets. Rather, I am timing for one sudden swoop upon every aspect of the invasion. Admiral O’Connor will cut their supply lines. Air Marshal Ulrich, who repositions his fighters and bombers along China’s coast and slips replacement fighters when he can onto Japan, will sweep the sky of enemy craft. Colonel-General Green has already ordered a mass transshipment of replacement troops from Vietnam to Korea. Once in Korea the bulk of them will be shipped onto Japan and there provide needed ground forces to sweep and destroy the trapped enemy units. It’s a bold and audacious plan, Director—Operation Togo.

Kitamura: Named in honor of the Japanese Admiral who destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet over four centuries ago in a surprise attack in the Tsushima Strait.

Hawthorne: Yes, thank you, Field Marshal. The Highborn have once more struck with surprise. But we’re reacting faster than ever and have a plan that has every chance of blooding them much more than they’ve planned for. This, Director, is why we’ve been husbanding our irreplaceable fleet units.

Enkov: What about the troop build-up in Indonesia?

Hawthorne: We’ll leave them there for the moment.

Enkov: A week ago, you said they were our best men.

Hawthorne: Second only to Field Marshal Kitamura’s soldiers.

Enkov: Report on that, Field Marshal.

Kitamura: Honored Director, Japan will never fall. Our soldiers have dedicated their lives to Social Unity and promise to hurl back these Supremacist invaders. Three assaults have struck the home islands, at Kobi, at Tokyo and at Sendai in the north. Battle rages hottest in Tokyo—

Enkov: I’ve received reports they dropped nuclear bombs.

Kitamura: Tactical nuclear explosions of one and two kilotons, yes, Honored One—Precision nuclear strikes that destroyed our “deep-space” laser batteries.

Hawthorne: Beam weapons, Director, capable of hitting spacecraft in near-Earth orbit.

Enkov: Yes, thank you so much, General. I had assumed that’s what the “deep space” appellation meant.

Kitamura: Honored One, although they destroyed the laser batteries, they failed to destroy our Merculite missile battery. Six orbital fighters have fallen to our launches.

Enkov: Why didn’t they strike that with nuclear fire?

Hawthorne: They did after we scored the kills. But because of our new clamshell shielding—four thousand tons of blast-concrete—the nuclear strikes were shrugged off. Incidentally, several cities have the new Merculite missile bases, Tokyo among them. They were installed six months before the civil war and are among the few innovations the Highborn lack.

Enkov: They’ve attacked with nuclear weapons. Now we must retaliate likewise.

Hawthorne: I’m not convinced—

Enkov: You’ve wavered from the first, General. But now I insist we launch nuclear strikes at their main concentrations.

Hawthorne: Dedicated orbital laser stations protect their main troop concentrations, at least if they’re true to form. Any missiles or cruise missiles fired at those formations will surely be intercepted. Besides, as long as we refrain from nuclear launches we maintain the moral high ground or at least we’ll keep the propaganda value in our court. Most Outer Planets governments have stressed their wish for each of us to refrain from nuclear strikes. If we wish to woo Outer Planets—

Enkov: Meaningless if we’re defeated before then. In any case, that’s a political decision and well beyond your scope, General.

Hawthorne: Understood, sir.

Enkov: Now a moment ago you said something very interesting, Admiral. You said that the fleets will not be in position for a week. Is that correct?

O’Connor: It could take longer than a week, Director.

Enkov: Then we must strike their convoys with nuclear missiles now. I don’t believe they have dedicated orbital stations protecting all four thousand kilometers.

Hawthorne: Perhaps to initiate Operation Togo a few selected targets might be—

Enkov: No, General Hawthorne, before Operation Togo. These nuclear strikes will be made before. I want their supplies and troops stopped now.

Hawthorne: What you suggest is risky, Director.

Enkov: How do you mean risky? They’ve already struck with nuclear weapons.

Hawthorne: I wish to point out with very limited nuclear strikes. With clean, as far as radiation is concerned, weapons. Large nuclear exchanges between us could easily lead to an irradiated planet.

Enkov: Better that than fall to the Supremacists.

Hawthorne: We are not yet defeated, Director. So I beg you to reconsider this most dangerous process.

Enkov: Field Marshal Kitamura, please continue your report.

Kitamura: Most Honored Director, if you would look at the map. The fiercest fighting takes place here, in Greater Tokyo. Samurai Divisions have hurled the enemy from the nearest underground entrances and advanced a thousand meters. Tokyo volunteers even now stream into battle as Kamikaze squads.

Enkov: Explain that.

Kitamura: Brave men and women and even children are strapped with high explosives. They crawl near or among the enemy and detonate.

Enkov: Incredible! Such dedication must be rewarded. I want lists of all volunteers. Mark them down as Heroes of Earth.

Kitamura: A wise decision, Director.

Enkov: Please, continue with the report, Field Marshal. This is fascinating.

Kitamura: Our casualties are heavy, but our blood flows to oil the path for the rest. Social harmony fills their hearts and others sup at their selfless dedication to the future. In the north, Sendai fell after an hour’s battle, but the lines have stiffened here and here. My commanders have assured me that the arrogant invaders will not get past our Fukushima strongholds without massive losses. In the south, Kobi residents have begged my commanders to arm them and let them enter battle. My air fleets have taken sixty-percent losses, but we have destroyed five troop carriers and ten V-Boats. Give me more fighters, Honored Director, and Japanese pilots will score even more victories. Our deaths do not matter, just that we may save our social unity.

Enkov: Splendid, yes, inspiring. Air Marshal, have you rated success by nationality?

Ulrich: We have, Director. Japanese pilots have scored twenty-eight percent of all known successes. Next are the Germans, at twenty-five percent. American and Israeli pilots each accounted for ten percent. A word of caution is in order, however. While the Field Marshal is correct at the heroics and ability of his former pilots, they were also his best rated. It would be a mistake to ship too many fighters into Japan until the beginning of Operation Togo.

Kitamura: I am sorry, but I cannot agree, Air Marshal.

Enkov: General Hawthorne, has a troop’s nationality shown any difference in terms of ground performance?

Hawthorne: Most definitely.

Enkov: Japanese troops do well?

Hawthorne: Very.

Enkov: Then perhaps the Highborn actions become clear.

Hawthorne: You detect a pattern, Director?

Enkov: The Highborn do not hew to your strategies, General, because they do not think like you. Land is not paramount. Men are. Consider. Why strike at Japan? Might it be because the Japanese make better soldiers than the neighboring peoples do?

Hawthorne: Perhaps. Yet a conquered Japan also aims a strategic arrow at Beijing. While I don’t see how invading Japan at this time fits into their overall strategy, it is by itself not an unbalanced move.

Enkov: I believe they’re more concerned with taking out our best recruiting grounds, then taking those captive peoples and retraining them as Highborn surrogates.

Kitamura: The Japanese will never serve the hated Highborn. We are dedicated Social Unitarians.

Enkov: So did the Australian generals assure the Directorate, as did those holding New Zealand, Tasmania and Antarctica before them. Yet now these nationalities flock to the Highborn standards. You’re so fond of history, General Hawthorne. Didn’t the Japanese lick the American’s boots easily enough after World War Two?

Hawthorne: As the Field Marshal indicated, Director, Social Unity cures many ills.

Enkov: How refreshingly bold of you, General. Are you actually assuring me the Japanese won’t join the Highborn?

Hawthorne: I don’t intend on letting Japan fall to find out.

Kitamura: We will never fall! On this, I stake my life and reputation.

Enkov: I accept your pledge, Field Marshal.

Kitamura: Thank you, Honored Director. You will see that Japan loves you and honors your socially approved leadership. Even now new armies of volunteers train in the cities’ depths. We will boil out and overwhelm them!

Enkov: That, gentlemen, is the kind of zeal we need. Now, General Hawthorne, how soon until this grand assault of yours occurs, this Operation Togo?

Hawthorne: Your timetable, Colonel-General?

Green: Nine weeks at the earliest.

Enkov: Too long, much too long! The Highborn run circles around us because they move. By the time we’re ready for them, our men are marching into their holding pens or being buried in the field. We have to match their speed, their ability to shift from one spot to the next. You have four weeks, and then you will commence Operation Togo with whatever’s ready.

O’Connor: I need those four weeks to slip my submarine squadrons into position. On the fifth week, we might be ready.

Enkov: Fight your way into position!

O’Connor: Without surprise—

Enkov: To insure success we will immediately submarine-launch nuclear strikes against their sea-lines.

Hawthorne: Director—

Enkov: My mind is made up on this. I have not struck first with nuclear weapons. But I refuse to sit idly by and allow them to bombard us with impunity.

Hawthorne: Very well, Director. But I cannot guarantee Operation Togo with only a four-week lead-time.

Enkov: Four weeks and I demand that you guarantee it for me, General.

Hawthorne: Perhaps if the Directorate rescinds its policy on the habitats.

Enkov: Negative. They must remain open habitats. Frankly, I find the Highborn agreement to this unbelievable. If they stopped all food shipments earthward, we would face half rations for everyone on the planet.

Hawthorne: They want Earth intact, Director. So unless we change policy I don’t believe they will change their open space-farm habitat policy. At least they won’t change it as long as they’re conquering— As long as they’re making advances.

Enkov: Then why ask for Directorate policy to be rescinded?

Hawthorne: Because I’m beginning to wonder if that isn’t the place to break them. If we can’t break their battle fleet maybe we can destroy one or two Doom Stars.

Enkov: You think that’s possible?

Hawthorne: With surprise… maybe. If our new proton beams prove—

Enkov: No! Maybe is not good enough. We will stick to saving Japan. Four weeks, gentlemen, to gather what forces you can and then strike against their invasion. And you must immediately disrupt their four thousand kilometer long supply-line, Admiral. Your submarines are to move now! They are to launch nuclear sea-strikes as close to the enemy as possible. If they own space, we can still use the oceans. I want you especially to target their transports. Until then, Field Marshal Kitamura, you most hold Tokyo. You must defend the Merculite missile battery, no matter what the cost. If that means frontal assaults with your newly trained levies then you must do it.

Kitamura: Agreed, Honored Director. But we will take massive casualties.

Enkov: That doesn’t matter. Engage the enemy. Make him bleed until we’re ready to drive him off Japan. Then everyone will see that the Highborn are not invincible.

Hawthorne: Shouldn’t our objectives be studied in greater detail, Director?

Enkov: You have just been given your objectives, General. Now I want them carried out. If, that is, you can guarantee me success.

Hawthorne: Director, I—

Enkov: Give me victory, General Hawthorne, or we will fall back onto Carthaginian strategies.

Green: Director?

Enkov: Take it up later with General Hawthorne, and consider yourself under the same terms, all of you. Gentleman, the emergency meeting is adjourned. Now, to your tasks!

2.

Convoy A22 left Sydney Harbor at three o’clock in the afternoon Sunday. The first day it sped over the waters at fifty kilometers an hour. Thirty hover transports carried the 20th FEC Division and the 101st Jump-Jet Battalion, which was composed of veteran Hawk Teams. They skimmed over the choppy waves in a diamond formation. Playing shepherd to the transports were four Gladius Class Hovers, small and deadly destroyer sized vessels. They bristled with guns and missiles launchers, and dropped probes as they hunted for enemy submarines. In and out of the diamond formation, they roamed on the prowl. On picket duty twenty to forty kilometers out roved ten V-Boats, hydrofoil ships badly tossed among the waves. Ocean duty left the crews exhausted. A journey all the way to Japan hammered them. In the middle of the transports hovered the VTOL Carrier. Sleek HK-Leopards—reconnaissance planes—and sleek attack choppers lifted from its flat top as they scoured the sea for enemy.

A quarter of the way through the journey, storm warnings forced the convoy off course to the west. The sea grew rougher, until the hovers shut down turbines, settled unto the gray waters and moved like ordinary sea vessels. Overhead, dark clouds threatened rain. On the former cushion of air, the trip had been relatively smooth. Now the men found themselves pitched to-and-fro. Many grew seasick, crawling to the head and spewing or limping into their bunks and trying to endure the endless motion. A few stubbornly continued their crap and card games.

Lieutenant Marten Kluge, his Top Sergeant Omi and Sergeants Stick and Turbo had squeezed themselves around a bolted down table in a little cubby in the rec-room. There they played five-card stud. Each wore the dusty brown uniform of FEC volunteers. Turbo and Stick wore their slouch hats. With a stylus and plex-pad, Omi kept track of the won or lost fortunes. The worn cards rested in a table holder specially made for sea duty. The discards they held with their elbows propped on the table. The room, as did everything aboard the sea-borne hover, pitched back and forth with exaggerated motion.

“Card,” said Turbo.

Omi slipped him one.

Turbo frowned as he settled the card into his hand.

“I heard we’re gonna be fed into the Tokyo maw,” said Stick. “For once Social Unity refuses to be overrun. It’s a meat-grinder from what I hear.”

Marten shrugged. He hadn’t heard anything like that.

“They said High Command wants… some kind of missile battery taken out.”

“Merculite missile battery,” Turbo said, still mulling over his cards. He’d become the Second Platoon’s newsmonger, finding it wherever he found his illegal drugs.

“What’s a merculite missile?” asked Stick.

Turbo tugged the peak of his hat lower over his eyes. “It’s fast, is what it is. Zooms out in seconds and drops orbital fighters so they plop into the ocean. High Command’s gone crazy over it.”

“Precious Highborn losses,” grumbled Stick.

“Yeah,” breathed Turbo. “Twenty credits!”

Omi scratched that onto the pad and quietly set his hand down. “Out,” he said.

Stick flicked a gaze over his cards.

Omi’s stylus hovered over the plex-pad in anticipation.

“They say it’s a blood-bath in Tokyo,” said Stick. “The Japanese have lost their minds, is what I hear. They run screaming at you with bombs strapped to their chests, and they blow both you and them to death. Behind them, follow honor-mad Samurai Divisions, one after another in an endless procession. And don’t let them capture you alive, either. They got these knives, sharper than my vibroblade. They use them to cut off your balls and—”

“You in or out?” asked Turbo

Stick nodded for a card.

Omi’s stylus glided over the pad.

“Two cards,” said Marten.

“It’s called the Siege of Tokyo,” said Turbo matter-of-factly. “And yeah, it’s a blood-bath all right, but with FEC Divisions and a scattering of Jump-Jet battalions.”

“No panzers?” asked Marten.

“Nope,” Turbo said. “They’re up north sweeping the home islands, as the Japanese buggers call them.”

“What about Highborn?” asked Omi.

Turbo shrugged as he adjusted his hat. He squinted at Marten to make up his mind.

“So we’re all killing each other for some worthless missiles?” asked Stick.

“Earth is on the run, don’t you know,” said Turbo. “But it’s gotten too easy for the High Command, so this time they’re not using as many Highborn. It’s an all-volunteer show.”

“The Earth on the run part is right,” Stick said. “An old-timer told me the Highborn move all their units like lightning, theirs and the volunteers. He said their staff work is amazing. If they’d ever tried this in the Old Army, said the old-timer, it would have been a balls-up from the get go.”

“In and call,” said Marten.

With a grin, Turbo spread his cards: three queens, ace high.

Stick threw down his hand with disgust. Marten quietly folded his and handed the cards to Omi. He slid out from the booth and stretched, staggering as the ship rolled. He bumped against the table as the ship swayed in the other direction.

“I’m going topside,” said Marten.

Omi grunted and slid out too. “Mind if I join you?”

Marten nodded.

As they left the rec-room Turbo yelled, “We need two more players.”

Marten and Omi slid along the corridor and crawled up the stairs. They donned rain gear, slick hats and staggered to the front deck railing, where they hung on. Huge gray waves rose and fell, while darkening clouds loomed threateningly in the sky. Only sailors moved here and there above deck, attaching lines or running to perform some unknown chore. Behind the lead hover followed the other twenty-nine transports. Overhead a chopper thumped somewhere, barely audible over the blistering wind.

Cold salt spray lashed the two men. They wiped their faces constantly.

“I’ve never been on the ocean before,” Marten shouted.

“Just one time for me when my mom and I visited Korea,” Omi said.

“You’ve been out of Sydney before?”

“A year before she was divorced and escorted into the slums. Thanks to my dear old dad.”

Marten rubbed salt out of his eyes, glancing at the grim-faced gunman.

Omi’s mouth twitched. “A drunk fell overboard that journey.”

“Yeah?”

“They stopped the ship and picked him up, but he’d broken his neck, probably from the fall.”

“Probably?”

Omi shrugged.

Marten was struck by Omi’s moodiness. Normally the man was the Rock, as some of the men had taken to calling him. “What really happened?” Marten asked.

“A thief pinched the drunk’s wallet. But the drunk wasn’t so drunk and whirled around, starting to holler for help. So the thief, he was a little guy, hardly even a teenager. He used a martial arts move. He snapped the drunk’s neck, and was pretty surprised it worked liked it was supposed to.”

“So the thief pitched the drunk overboard?”

“Yeah.”

Marten thought about that, finally asking, “So what’d he find in the wallet?”

Omi frowned sourly, taking his time answering. “Some plastic, a sheaf of porno pics, nothing much for all the work he’d gone to.”

Overhead a bomber zoomed low over the water. It seemed to be in a hurry somewhere. Marten and Omi watched. Thirty seconds later what seemed like small packages tumbled out of the bomber’s bottom.

“Depth charges?” asked Marten.

“Seems like.”

The packages plopped into the wild sea and disappeared.

They watched the spot. Suddenly, water sprayed upward, twin geysers. They kept watching, but nothing like oil or mangled bodies or anything else surfaced to show that an enemy sub had been hit.

“Turbo tells too many stories,” Omi said.

“You mean the ones about convoys that get hit before they ever reach Japan?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re right. He shouldn’t tell those.”

“I think they’re BS.

“Why is that?”

“The Highborn have the game sewn up,” Omi said. “Social Unity is on the run. No way is Social Unity going to train soldiers fast enough to face the Highborn before it’s all over.”

“Social Unity might get desperate.”

“So?”

“Desperate men do dangerous things.”

“I suppose…”

3.

One of those desperate men wiped sweat off his face. He was a little over thirty kilometers away, deep under the tossing waves. The captain of the Riga stepped behind the tracking officer. The officer tapped a chart, and whispered, “As clear as it’s going to get, sir.”

The captain closed his eyes. He was queasy. The enemy’s hunter/killers were too efficient. Too many fellow captains had already paid the ultimate price for this wild strategy. Yet he nodded. One must obey Enkov.

“Fire one and two,” he whispered.

The watch officer stared at him. Everyone else held his breath.

“Fire,” repeated the captain. “Tubes one and two.”

“Firing one and two, sir,” said the firing officer.

The Riga shuddered.

In the dark ocean depths, two nuclear-tipped missiles hurtled skyward. Enemy radar and sonar picked them up. Enemy officers roared orders. Planes turned to intercept. Counter missiles left circling bombers. Other bombers and choppers needed less than fifty seconds to rendezvous to the drop zone to let their ultra-powerful depth charges sink. None of them, however, were going to make it in time.

4.

Unaware of their fate, Marten and Omi continued to talk. Then, over twenty kilometers away, an amazingly bright flash lit up the dark clouds. A huge, ominous mushroom cloud arose. It towered higher and higher. Marten and Omi stared at it in shock, their mouths open.

Omi tried to speak, but failed.

Marten’s chest tightened with terror. He couldn’t believe what he saw. There had been rumors. Turbo had said—His chest unlocked and his numb mind started working from its momentary stoppage. “Get below!” he shouted, shoving Omi toward the nearest hatch.

They turned and ran, staggering and stumbling along the pitching deck. So did other men, babbling sailors who sprinted for the hatches. They jammed the nearest hatchway. Fists started flying, until a boatswain bellowed orders.

The hovers and ships of Convoy A22 acted amazingly fast. Perhaps the ships’ captains had been given secret instructions in case a nuclear bomb should explode in their vicinity. Not as smoothly and as in unison as some of their earlier maneuvers had been done, they veered from the nuclear blast. Each ship throttled up, until they fled at full speed. One hover lifted onto its cushion of air, higher and higher as it leapt past the other hovers. Then a glitch hit its engines. The hover’s nose sank. A wave rolled and crashed down hard, and the airborne hover flipped onto its back.

That was Marten’s last sight of it as the shouting sailors shoved him through the hatchway. He fell down the steps and landed on his hands and knees, and twisted away as others landed on top of him. He crawled, and then unsteadily arose and staggered into the rec-room.

“Nuke!” he bellowed.

Omi shoved in behind.

Shocked, paling faces stared up at him.

At that moment, loudspeakers crackled, and the captain spoke. “All personnel are to grab hold of something solid. A nuclear shockwave will soon hit the ship. Please be prepared. That is all.”

In a bedlam of shouts men scrambled for safety. Marten thrust himself at his spot at the card table, clutching the bolted down furniture with all his strength. Seconds later the shockwave hit. The transport shuddered and groaned, and they skipped across the ocean waves like a flung stone. Howling, screaming winds tore over them, and a hot flash caused men to open their mouths. Marten knew they were wailing in terror, but the winds were too loud for their shouts to be heard. Somehow, their hover kept upright. These ships had been built to take a pounding.

Across the table, Turbo stared slack-jawed at Marten. Stick mumbled prayers. Omi squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, no one knew how long, the winds died down and the pitching lessened.

Wide-eyed soldiers sat up. A few of them wept. More than one had broken bones.

“This is war,” Omi said grimly, at last opening his eyes.

“I wonder if they targeted a convoy ahead of us?” asked Marten.

“Our baptism of fire,” mumbled Stick.

Turbo laughed. “We haven’t seen nothing yet, is my guess.”

“You’re crazy!” Stick shouted in outrage.

“Earth has gotta hold somewhere if they’re going to win,” said Turbo.

“So?”

“So maybe Tokyo is where they’re gonna hold.”

“Tokyo is where we’re going,” Omi said.

“Yeah,” said Marten.

“Tell me one thing,” whispered Stick.

“What?” asked Turbo.

“How do I go AWOL and survive?”

They each glanced at one another, perhaps all wondering the same thing. Marten knew he couldn’t get the image out of his mind of lasering those four poor fools in the desert. Maybe he didn’t deserve to live.

5.

Convoy A22 split soon thereafter or at least the eight transports that had survived the shockwave did. It was decided providing a smaller nuclear target was more advantageous than group protection versus submarine torpedo attacks. So a single destroyer patrolled for the four transports of the Slumlord Battalion, minus the HQ Jump Jet and artillery detachments. They had presumably gone down with their ship. None of the V-Boats ever showed up again, and only one other time did they see a chopper. It was far in the distance, undoubtedly looking for a place to land after its carrier had gone down. They also saw a second nuclear blast, a flash that was too far away to send another shockwave rolling over them.

Dispirited and scared, the men gloomily wondered if the dark ocean would become their grave. Luckily, the storm abated the next day and they rode their air cushion as fast as the turbines could whine. Marten led the men in hard calisthenics, exhausting them physically so they didn’t have enough mentally to conjure up unneeded terrors. The hovers whisked over the Pacific Ocean all alone. From horizon to horizon stretched the mighty salt sea.

“It almost seems peaceful,” said Turbo several mornings later. Rumors said they were a day out of Tokyo.

“It gives me the creeps,” Stick muttered. “Everywhere you look is endless sea, water and clouds.” Stick shook his head. “It doesn’t stop, just goes on and on and on. It makes a guy feel insignificant.”

“Aren’t we?”

“No,” said Marten.

“No?” asked Turbo.

“Breath the air, taste the salt tang. Look at the view and enjoy it, because today you’re alive.”

“And tomorrow I die,” said Turbo.

“Maybe,” Marten said, “but today you can affect the world, or if not the world then somebody in it. So that means you’re not insignificant.”

Turbo shrugged.

“You’d better not feel that way when you’re covering my backside in Tokyo,” Marten told him.

“Good point,” said Stick. “In the old days I told the Blue Jackets the same sort of thing before we strolled the streets for a rumble.” He flexed his muscles. The short, stocky youth looked more dangerous than ever in his brown uniform and steel-toed combat boots.

“We’re gonna die in Tokyo,” Turbo said gloomily.

“We didn’t die in Reform,” Stick growled.

“Because we were lucky,” said Turbo.

“No, because Marten had balls to act,” said Stick. “I’ll tell you what I think.”

“Must you?”

“Life is like a knife-fight. You gotta crouch, glare your man down and grit your teeth. Then you gotta attack before you get a knife stuck in your ribs.”

“How can you slip a vibroblade into life?” asked Turbo.

“That’s not what I mean,” Stick said. “It’s the attitude.”

“Wonderful,” Turbo said. “Attitude.”

Stick shoved him. “Better keep on my good side, junkie, or it’s you who’ll get the knife in the ribs.”

Turbo squinted down at the shorter, much more thickly built Stick. “I’m combat trained, you ape. You can’t push me around anymore.”

Stick pushed him again.

“I’m warning you!”

“Knock it off,” said Marten. “Here comes the captain.”

Captain Sigmir strolled onto the front deck. He’d been jumping between transports, inspecting what was left of Tenth Company. Other than a lone sailor swabbing the middle deck, the captain and they were the only ones topside. Captain Sigmir wore the same black uniform he had the first day. Behind him followed two carbine-toting thugs, his personal bodyguards. Officially, they were his batman and orderly, both corporals and dirty-fighting experts.

“Gentlemen,” said the captain.

Marten and Stick saluted. Turbo lowered the brim of his hat.

Captain Sigmir expelled his breath as if someone had slugged him in the gut. His two bodyguards, odd-looking men, grinned at one another as they took up port arms behind the towering captain.

“After shock?” asked the captain softly.

“Sir?” said Turbo, the one addressed.

“Your disrespectful salute, soldier. I want to know what caused it.”

“Oh,” said Turbo. “It must have been my preoccupation with the joy of being alive, sir.”

Captain Sigmir narrowed his strange eyes. Since the end of training camp, he’d been acting even more weird than usual.

“Salute, you idiot,” said Stick, prodding Turbo in the ribs.

“Sir!” barked Turbo, snapping off a crisp salute.

“Is your sergeant being insubordinate, Lieutenant?”

“Sir,” said Marten, “I don’t believe so, sir.”

Captain Sigmir clucked his tongue a few times, as he eyed Turbo. “Sergeant,” he finally said, “take off that silly looking cap.”

Turbo wiped it off his head.

“You seem pale, Sergeant. Sickly.”

“I feel fine, sir.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In top physical shape?”

“Sir?”

“I asked you a question, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. In top physical shape.”

“Excellent. I want you to roll up your sleeves and square off against Petor.”

The thickest bodyguard, a roly-poly Muscovite with a single hairy eyebrow over his bluest of blue eyes, handed his carbine to the other guard.

Marten tried to explain. “Captain—”

“Please keep quiet, Lieutenant, and watch your sergeant’s fighting technique. I’m sure you’ll see areas that need improvement. Begin.”

Turbo was still rolling up his sleeves as Petor snapped a kick at his left knee. Turbo cried out, flopping onto the deck. Petor attempted another kick. Turbo rolled and clutched the foot, but Petor jumped back, yanking his foot free. Turbo scrambled up. It didn’t really matter, though. Despite his comical appearance, Petor truly was an expert at dirty fighting, and twenty seconds later Turbo slumped to the deck, nearly unconscious.

Stick and Marten had grown tense and angry, easing onto the balls of their feet. The second bodyguard, however, had lowered his carbine in an apparently nonchalant manner. Now he aimed it at them. Captain Sigmir appeared not to notice the interplay. He kept licking his lips, chuckling as Turbo grunted or cried out. As the lanky sergeant hit the deck, the captain held up his hand. Petor stepped back, a slight sheen of sweat on his ever so round face.

Squatting beside the fallen Turbo, Captain Sigmir grabbed him by the hair and jerked up his head so they could peer eye-to-eye. “Joy is a wonderful feeling, Sergeant. But where we’re going, it’s a dangerous emotion. Work on hate, or if that’s too difficult for you then fear. Fear of pain or death would be the two most appropriate emotions.”

“Yes, sir,” whispered Turbo, who was missing one of his front teeth. It lay on the deck in a small, bloody glob.

“I like your attitude now, Sergeant. So run along to the infirmary and see to your mouth.” Captain Sigmir let go of Turbo’s hair, rose to his imposing height and faced Marten. “I abhor slack discipline, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Marten growled. His stomach had the feeling it once had when Hall Leader Quirn had his hands on Molly, and he had that same helpless feeling as when he’d seen his father slain. He hated that feeling. Today, however, he wasn’t that young teenager.

“Oh, it’s not as bad as that, Lieutenant. A few scrapes and bruises and hopefully a lesson finally driven home.”

Marten nodded sharply.

“Ah, I see a word of advice is in order. Life is precarious, Lieutenant, so you must grab it by the short hairs and force it to accommodate you. Soon we will be in combat. You must therefore learn to enjoy what pleasures you can squeeze out of life, yes?”

“If the Captain says so, sir.”

“But you just heard me say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Sigmir removed his cap and rubbed the forehead scar. He squinted as he muttered to himself. Then he brightened, set his cap back on and moved a step closer to Marten. “Can it be that you also need more combat training?”

Marten glanced at Petor, who grinned evilly at him.

Captain Sigmir put a single finger on Marten’s chin, turning Marten’s face so they stared eye-to-eye. “I’m addressing you, preman.”

“Sir,” said Marten, hating that finger on his chin so much that he could hardly think.

Captain Sigmir searched Marten’s eyes.

Marten finally reached up and took hold of the captain’s huge wrist, moving it so the finger no longer touched his chin.

Captain Sigmir’s pursed his lips. “Lieutenant—”

“Have a care, sir,” Marten told him softly.

Captain Sigmir’s eyes widened. “Do you have any idea what this means?”

“Do you, sir?”

The astonishment left the captain’s face. A weird gleam now appeared in his eyes. “Very well, Lieutenant. Petor!”

“Won’t be doing anymore fighting today,” Marten said, his hand dropping to his holstered pistol.

“Oh no, Lieutenant, no, no. Perhaps you think I can’t disarm you on the instant. So please notice my other bodyguard.”

“I am. My Top Sergeant stands behind him.”

Captain Sigmir raised his eyebrows, held Marten’s gaze a moment longer and glanced back. Omi stood behind the bodyguard. The ex-gunman leaned against the railing. As if resting his hand, Omi had it on the butt of his holstered pistol.

Captain Sigmir smiled in a strange way and said, “Very good.” Then he turned and without another word marched off, his two bodyguards trailing.

“I don’t like this,” said Stick, as he helped Turbo.

“No,” said Marten, his gut churning. What did that strange smile mean? And why had the captain given up so easily? Marten feared for their future.

6.

The following evening Tokyo hove into view. They saw the fires kilometers before they saw the Japanese landmass. An orange glow sat on the midnight horizon. Even this far out smoke blotted out the stars and the half moon that an hour ago shone serenely upon the sea.

The original port of entry, according to swollen-mouthed Turbo, had been Tokyo Harbor. They would now disembark on the peninsula and in the city of Miura. A seventy kilometer march would bring them near the merculite missile battery, the site of the civil war’s most vicious fighting. They feared Captain Sigmir, wondering how he would discipline them. They hoped his Tenth Company operational planning kept him from carrying-out any retribution long enough for him to die in combat.

An hour later, the four transport-hovers docked and the men jogged off in full gear. Instead of marching into the heart of Tokyo, they filed into waiting trucks—ancient, beat-up relics—and they immediately roared off toward the fires in the distance.

A corporal on loan from the 9th FEC Division, a first-wave invading unit, shouted instructions at Marten as the truck bounced along the potted road. Enemy artillery boomed in the distance. Highborn rocket launchers whistled loudly in return. Besides the outer noises, their truck rattled and quavered as its worn engine roared.

“If you see anybody who’s not wearing FEC brown, combat body armor or riding the sky on his jetpack, you shoot him!” shouted the corporal, a skinny kid who couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. “And don’t take off your armor or helmets unless you’re underground in a bunker or in the infirmary!”

“What about the Highborn?” Marten shouted back.

“What about them?”

“What do we do if we run into them?”

“Stay out of their way. But if you can’t, don’t speak unless spoken to. You already know that. Surely your captain has taught you the proper responses.”

Stick muttered something unintelligible.

“Now,” shouted the corporal. “If somebody waves to you, a civilian I mean, shoot him. If he looks sick or is crying, shoot him even faster. They’re all bastards and trying to get close enough so they can blow you and them to heaven. They’re all insane in this part of the world.”

“What about children?” shouted Turbo.

“They’re the worst.” The corporal thoughtfully studied the worried soldiers of Second Platoon. “I know it’s hard, and you’ll feel terrible afterward. But when you see your buddies shredded before your eyes and you’re the only one left after several days, it gets easier. So just gun them down and maybe you’ll be riding a truck someday telling others how to survive this hellhole.”

The men absorbed his words in silence.

“How long you been here?” asked Omi.

“From the beginning. Okay, listen close now. When they tell you it’s the big push, they mean you gotta go over the top and storm assault a strongpoint. When they say hold, it means you’re surrounded and they can’t get any more supplies through until tomorrow. So don’t fire everything away in one burst, but start sniping. And if they tell you about how your name will go down in history, well, it’s all over for you then. Your only hope at that point is that masonry covers you in an enemy blast but doesn’t kill or cripple you—and of course that our side digs you out in several days. If it’s the enemy who digs you out.” He shrugged. “Save the last bullet for yourself is my advice. Like I said, they’re all bastards here. Oh, and don’t believe anything they told you about Suspend and revival later. That’s all crap. We’re all expendable expect for the Highborn.”

“How long can this go on?” shouted Turbo.

“I’ll tell you how long: Until the Highborn decide.”

“What do you mean?” asked Marten.

The corporal shouted, “Couldn’t the Highborn take Tokyo if they really wanted? I think so. They’ve taken everything else. Why not here?”

Marten and his sergeants must have looked unimpressed.

“Hey,” said the corporal, “I saw what the power-suited giants could do the first day of the invasion. Nothing could stand against them. If someone could stand, they simply leaped to a different place and attacked from the opposite direction. None of that matters to you. At o-three hundred tonight you’re moving into your defensive position. So good luck.”

He held out his hand, Marten shook it. “You’re not going with us?”

“No, sir. I’m getting off at the next stop to instruct the next batch of fodder.”

“Fodder?” asked Turbo.

“Sorry. I wasn’t supposed to say that.” The corporal grinned, but it lacked sincerity. “Show them what Aussies are made of, mate.”

7.

Heavy shelling made the trucks shiver so badly they halted twenty kilometers short of their destination. The men dismounted and entered an inferno. Rubble and ruined, smoldering buildings towered all around them. Smoke billowed into the night sky and flames shot up high in the distance. They felt the heat of it on their faces and the acrid smell seared the inside of their nostrils. Exploding rockets shook the ground and made them duck and start walking in a bent-over crouch. In the near distance mortars crumped. Farther away artillery boomed and occasionally a hellish red laser beamed down from somewhere unseen in the sky. That sound was the worst, a high whine that grated on the nerves and always caused a gut-wrenching explosion.

Hunch-shouldered guides led them through the shattered mess of the city. As they marched, they crunched over broken glass, concrete, spent casings and shredded clothing.

For three hours, they marched, getting sweaty in their steel and ceramic helmets, armor vests and leggings. Sometimes men popped up from trenches or foxholes and gave them a thumbs-up. At other times, hollowed-eyed soldiers simply stared at them. The worst were those who refused to glance over, as if they didn’t exist.

“Look at those guys,” muttered Turbo. “That’s what we’re gonna look like soon.”

“Quiet in the ranks,” said Marten.

They marched to the front, to endless screams, whistles, bangs and thundering guns. And always that red glow showed where Tokyo burned hottest. The stench grew worse and finally they slipped in their nose filters. It was highly uncomfortable, but it made breathing possible again.

A unit of glassy-eyed troops staggered along the other side of the road, away from the front, probably for refit. Their armor-vests stank of smoke and gore, their skin was either chalky or filthy from dirt. None of them could work up a cheer for the 93rd Slumlords.

“See,” Marten shouted to Second Platoon, “if we work as a team it’s possible to survive.”

Ex-Sydney slum dwellers stared at him in disbelief. They looked more than ever like smalltime gang members, drug runners and misfits. Slapping armor onto them and giving them guns wasn’t going to turn them into soldiers, not after a mere six weeks of basic training.

Finally, the guides brought the 93rd to a set of underground bunkers. It was five in the morning and Second Platoon, given its own bunker, was exhausted physically and mentally. The men threw down their arms, slipped off their armor and sank onto cots and chairs.

A man popped into the bunker, shouting, “Lieutenant Marten!”

“What?”

“Follow me, sir. Conference, two bunkers over.”

Marten hurried after him into another bunker and to a small room filled with the combat officers of the 93rd Battalion/20th FEC Division. Captain Sigmir signaled him to sit beside huge Kang, the Lieutenant of First Platoon/Tenth Company.

Charts came out, a fast pep talk by the Highborn Colonel and some counsel on how to lead their men this first day into combat and then finally their objective. They would hold a ‘quiet sector,’ a huge hulk of a granary. It seemed the enemy had found underground entry holes into this food storage complex, so they were to watch for crafty, sneak raids. The granary was part of a slow, encircling siege-move on the merculite battery. The massive granary was made out of old-fashioned plasteel. Neither continued enemy shelling, plasma nor wave-assaults had taken it out. Since it anchored tomorrow’s planned assaults, the granary had to be held at all costs. Tenth Company would have floor and basement duty, and as it turned out Second Platoon would be the point unit down there. More was said, but after learning his brief, Marten paid the rest slight attention.

“This is it,” said the Colonel, another Lot Six Highborn, but saner than Captain Sigmir. “This is what you trained for. Now show us that you premen are worthy of retraining and rank in the New Order.”

A half-hour later Stick complained to Marten, “Why us?”

“Why do you think?” asked Omi.

Their part of the basement duty proved to be a maze of fallen rubble, blasted holes in the ceiling that rained a couple bricks every now and then, narrow corridors from one point to the next and a groaning mass above that threatened a cave-in at any moment.

As he’d been trained, Marten put his eighty men into their positions. At the very least, he always left a corporal in charge of a squad. Some of the men grabbed shut-eye—the smart ones, it turned out.

After six hours of waiting, Japanese tunnel rats boiled out of the sewers. They attacked with bellowing yells, vibroknives and shock grenades. From every direction around Second Platoon, or so it seemed, the enemy drove in. The newly trained FEC soldiers screamed in fear, their carbines chattering in the dark. Grenades roared. There was more screaming, and then vibroknives hacked and slashed. The screaming grew higher-pitched. From above, as if timed, the entire granary shook. Static cut out communications. Helmet lamps snapped on, the light washing through chalky dust that floated everywhere. Shock grenades flew at every point of light.

“Turn them off and snap on your infrareds!” Marten yelled. He stood behind a chunk of fallen ceiling. Behind him, two privates fired blindly into the dark. He used his sidearm, firing at anything that moved.

“Omi!” he shouted into his mike. Crackle filled his earphones.

“Banzai!” screamed out of the darkness.

Marten whirled around. A grenade landed at his feet. Marten lunged, scooped and hurled it back, then ducked. It flashed. The blast knocked him against his concrete slab. Three howling enemy soldiers threw themselves at him. One FEC private gurgled as a blade whipped through his throat. Marten rapid fired. Two Japanese flopped against the wall. The last one tried to skewer him in the gut. For a second Marten’s armor held as the vibroblade whined against it. He clouted the soldier with the butt end of his pistol. Then he stomped on the man’s knife-hand, who grunted in pain. Finally, Marten put the barrel against the helmeted head and pulled the trigger. Gore and blood stained his armor, but Marten was past caring. Six weeks of training and something else deep in him bubbled to the forefront.

“Come on!” he shouted. The remaining private followed him into the darkness.

Picking up men as he went, Marten rallied what was left of his command. Too many, far too many of the former slum dwellers lay sprawled in death or scattered in bloody pieces. The survivors of Second Platoon demanded blood in return. Kicking, biting, firing, stomping and smashing they drove the tunnel rats back into their holes. Then a lull hit as the remaining enemy gasped his last on the floor. Single shots rang out as untrusting FEC soldiers checked the supposed dead.

Second Platoon was learning fast that only fools took chances. Shocked, pale-faced men, their chests heaving, looked to Marten for an explanation. He stared at the darkness out of which the enemy had come. His eyes narrowed. He was a soldier, eh? Then he was gonna do things right! He motioned them to follow him as he retreated, blowing corridors as they went, working their way topside step by step. Ten minutes later a headcount showed him fifty-eight men out of eighty had survived this first encounter with the enemy.

After manning the new positions, Marten called in to report. Captain Sigmir demanded a face-to-face encounter.

“Should I join you?” Omi asked.

Marten eyed the dark stairwell leading down to the basement. He didn’t want to face the captain alone, and Omi was his toughest, steadiest man. But that meant the ex-gunman was needed here.

“No,” said Marten. “I’ll be fine.” Besides, what could Omi really do against Captain Sigmir?

“I’m coming then,” said Stick.

Marten shook his head and humped alone to Tenth Company’s HQ in what had once been the granary’s receiving office. There was hot coffee and donuts, of all things. A man typed a report on a computer. The other HQ Company staff, including the two bodyguards, watched and listened.

Captain Sigmir leaned back in his chair. He sat behind a desk. Marten stood at attention before it.

“Lieutenant,” asked Sigmir, “how many enemy dead?”

Marten shrugged.

“Lieutenant, you surprise me. You left your basement post, retreated in face of the enemy—”

“Begging your pardon, sir, we first killed them all.”

“I fail to understand then why you retreated.”

“Because I took heavy casualties, sir.”

The captain drummed his huge fingers on the desk.

“Your orders included no such provision as retreat. You must hold your post until relieved or until you’re dead.”

“That isn’t what you told us in training, sir.”

The captain raised his eyebrows.

“You said a good commander saves his men through maneuver instead of being bullheaded. I retreated so I wouldn’t be outmaneuvered again. They know that basement too well, sir.”

“Spurious reasoning, Lieutenant. A barracks lawyer is what you sound like to me.”

“I repositioned Second Platoon at the two stairwells that are left, sir. They won’t slip up here so easily.”

Captain Sigmir slapped a hand onto the polished oak desk. “What? So the enemy is free to dig through the other stairwells!”

“No, sir. I put sensors amid those pile-ups. If they’re able to dig through there… sir, we’ll know right away.”

Captain Sigmir stood. Everyone around them stopped what they were doing, glancing up in fear at the massive, Lot Six, brain-damaged Highborn.

“Lieutenant, you realize that because of this act of cowardice on your part that I could have you dragged behind the office and shot in the back of the head.” Sigmir snapped his fingers. “Then you’d be dead and Top Sergeant Omi would take your platoon into the abyss.”

Marten stiffened to absolute attention.

“Or perhaps I should march you back to your platoon and throttle you myself, as an example to the others.”

“Sir, I—”

“Silence!” roared Captain Sigmir.

Marten’s fingers twitched, the only indication that he almost drew his pistol to try to gun down this monster. He was certain that it would be futile, but he didn’t want to die without a fight.

Captain Sigmir’s eyes gleamed as his weird smile stretched into place. “Step outside with me, Lieutenant.” The captain strode ahead and out of the office.

A moment later Marten stepped through, his hand on the butt of his pistol.

Captain Sigmir stood several feet away, his hands on his hips as he peered down at Marten. “So, the preman has balls, does he?”

Marten gulped the lump out of his throat, closing the door behind him.

“You could draw, Lieutenant, and then you’d be dead.”

Marten wondered if that was true.

Captain Sigmir showed his teeth in a feral grin. “How little you premen understand us, even me, a damaged beta. Yet I am a Highborn. Do you doubt that?”

Marten slowly shook his head.

“I herd premen into battle, trying to make warriors out of you. It isn’t an enviable task, but it is a purpose, and it is one that I will succeed at. Lieutenant, you can’t pit your skills against mine. To even think so is sad and hopeless. And so few of you actually have any potential. Yet… I will admit that there is something different about you.”

“Sir?”

“Your men look up to you, Lieutenant, and do you know why?”

“No, sir.”

“Come now, don’t be humble. I dislike such pretense.”

Marten licked his lips. Sigmir seemed capable of anything, of any absurdity. He dared say, “I’m not fond of pretense either, sir.”

That wolfish grin grew. “Well said, Lieutenant. They look up to you because you’ve dared to stand up to me. They rightly recognize that as an act of bravery. And now you’ve taken your platoon out of the tunnels. Yes, it was the correct military move. I knew you were the best of my tacticians.”

Marten was bewildered. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“You’ve shown initiative, Lieutenant, and you’ve gained the thanks and respect of your men because of it.”

“But…. I’ve only fifty-eight men left.”

“Premen. Untermensch.”

“Sir?”

”Untermensch, Lieutenant, sub-humans, sheep, fodder, take your pick. So few of them are soldiers, none warriors. The enemy has now shed the useless ones for you.”

“Sir?”

“Fifty-eight men out of eighty, Lieutenant, the ones who fought their way out of the horror of hand-to-hand combat in the dark. The fifty-eight: those who might yet make passable soldiers. By posting you where I did, I’ve done the hard work for you.”

Marten stared at Captain Sigmir, at the nakedness of the man’s arrogance and madness.

Sigmir clasped his hands behind his back. “Do you know, Lieutenant, that I will gain rank because of the Siege of Tokyo? I will gain a high place in the New Order.”

“On our bodies, sir?”

“Exactly! Yes, you do understand. I suspected you might. I have given you the respect of your sheep, Lieutenant. It is my gift to you because of what I will demand. Consider my revelation, and perhaps someday I will allow you to be my aide as I rise in rank.” The smile became a trifle sad. “For premen, I’m afraid, true rank is impossible to achieve, no matter what the Colonel told you.” The smile became crooked and Sigmir’s eyes gleamed. “Do you know, Lieutenant, that in reality Lot Six wasn’t a failure?”

Marten spoke carefully. “No, sir, I didn’t know that.”

“Lot Six was the first of the new men, the Herrenvolk, the Master Race.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you truly understand?”

“I think so, sir.”

Sigmir nodded. “Yes, perhaps you do. You may go, Lieutenant.”

Marten saluted crisply, turned and marched back to his platoon. He realized that as long as Sigmir ran the company that all their lives were in danger. The captain viewed the world through the prism of Highborn concepts of glory.

Marten soon climbed over hunks of concrete and coughed dust out of his throat. Through a hole in the wall, he saw blazing, burning Tokyo. Even though it was day, the black smoke overhead produced a pall of gloom over the doomed city. Tracers flashed and a glob of plasma flew somewhere that thankfully wasn’t here. He strode a little farther and shouted the password to a hidden sentry.

Marten soon flopped down within the strongpoint. His men trained their guns at the open stairwell a short distance away. It led into the basement none of them ever wanted to reenter.

“Drink this,” said Turbo.

It was hot and jolted Marten’s tired brain. At the other strongpoint, Omi commanded the other half of Second Platoon with help from Stick. At least his friends hadn’t died in what already was blurring in Marten’s mind as a mad, senseless killing frenzy.

He studied his men. Tired, determined soldiers watched that stairwell with grim intensity. Grime streaked their faces, and cuts and bruises. They no longer looked like slum dwellers to Marten.

Turbo had a gash under his eye to add to his puffy lips. He sipped the hot liquid. “This don’t make sense,” Turbo suddenly whispered, as he leaned near Marten.

“Huh?”

“We can’t afford to take losses like this.”

Marten thought about Captain Sigmir’s words, but he said, “Why do you think the Highborn keep feeding more and more of us into battle?”

“That’s just it,” Turbo whispered. “That nuke took most of our convoy. How many other convoys have they decimated?”

Marten envisioned the enemy using nukes here. The thought made him sick. “This is Earth’s holdout,” he said.

“That’s what I’m saying. Why don’t the Highborn clean it out?”

Marten nodded toward the dark stairwell. “Because these people can fight—and don’t forget those sea-launched nukes. Maybe the Highborn can’t get enough people here to take it.”

“I wonder if that’s the reason,” said Turbo. “Maybe there’s a—I don’t know, one of their slick, Highborn plans behind all this.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Marten, standing. “Grab some shut-eye. Take a pill if you gotta. I want you fresh in a couple hours when I try to sleep.” Then Marten made the rounds to see how his troops where holding up.

8.

Peace reined for nine hours. Then they learned that two more convoys had been nuked and destroyed. There had been no survivors. Each convoy had been earmarked for Tokyo, for the big push to the merculite battery. Soon thereafter, the Colonel of the Slumlord Battalion called his captains and lieutenants together in his HQ in the granary’s old monitoring station. Most of the surveillance screens in the room had been broken the day they stormed the granary. Bloodstains still marred the walls. They sat in high-backed chairs around a large table. The Lot Six Highborn towered over everyone else.

“There’s been a change in emphasis, gentlemen,” the Colonel said, standing at the end of the table. He rapped it with a large knuckle. “Advance at any cost is no longer the prime directive. You are now to husband your men, bleed the enemy and wait for reinforcements to get through.”

“Sir?” asked Sigmir.

“We’ve reentered a maneuver stage,” the Colonel said. “Verdun tactics—at least until the transports start getting through in numbers—will no longer dictate our actions. Ninety percent of the reinforcements are marked for the panzer drive north and the heavy infantry push to our south. Our goal, gentlemen, is to pin down as many enemy formations as possible.”

Marten had learned that the greatest asset of the Highborn was their ability to shift plans. If the situation changed, their goals changed to suit what was possible. It was a daunting power, and he felt uncomfortable in their presence, even if they were only Lot Six, seven-foot tall Highborn. The weird vitality, the intense stares, the life force emanating from them made him feel small, weak and inferior. And that made him angry. So he cleared his throat and asked, “What are Verdun tactics?”

The four Highborn glowered: the Colonel and his three captains. The lieutenants, Australian-born all, perked up.

“Mind your place, preman,” growled Sigmir.

“Now, now,” said the Colonel. “Perhaps an explanation is justified. Verdun was a battle-site in World War One, Lieutenant.” The Colonel must have noticed Marten’s perplexity. “One side set out to grind down the other through a vast battle of attrition. I think the term ‘meat-grinder’ has been used among your men. Such a term is rather accurate, as such things go, and Verdun had been planned as a meat-grinder.”

“I don’t understand,” Marten said.

The Colonel glanced sharply at Sigmir.

“I believe he grasps the concept, Colonel,” Sigmir said. “What he’s trying to—”

“—He’d better grasp it,” interrupted the Colonel. “Otherwise he should be instantly demoted to private.”

Marten hated their arrogance. Sure, they could outfight and out-think him, but he was putting his life on the chopping block for them. The least they could do was treat him like a man. He asked, “What was the reason for using Verdun tactics?”

“I just explained that,” snapped the Colonel.

“I don’t mean back then, sir,” Marten said, “but for using such tactics here.”

“That’s quite outside your theater of concern,” the Colonel said loftily.

Marten couldn’t agree, nor would he let it go. “Sir, do you mean to say that the Slumlords were supposed to grind the enemy by letting ourselves be ground in return?”

“Weren’t you listening?” asked the Colonel. “Verdun tactics are suspended until further notice.”

“I realize that, sir. My question is why did High Command ever plan to use them in the first place? It seems beneath Highborn military skills.”

The Colonel stiffened as the room grew still. The four Highborn gave off a caged tiger feeling, like a mad beast lashing its tail, eager to pounce and kill. The force of it, in a knot of radiating will, hit Marten almost like a physical blow.

The regular men, the FEC lieutenants, grew uneasy and then visibly scared. Kang was a huge man by normal standards but dwarfed by the Highborn. He slid his chair away from Marten until Marten sat alone.

The Colonel worked to control himself. He finally said, “To be frank, Lieutenant, High Command believed that Verdun tactics was all that you hastily-trained premen were capable of.”

“But now, sir?” Marten asked.

The Colonel flushed, his snow-white skin turning crimson. “Can’t you discipline your men?” he snapped at Sigmir.

Sigmir reached out and cuffed Marten across the back of the head.

Marten jerked around as his hand automatically dropped to his holstered pistol.

“I’d make him point man,” the Colonel icily told Sigmir.

Marten released the pistol butt and stared at the table. He’d discovered that the Highborn thrived on premen acts of contrition. It fed their bloated egos and made them feel even more smugly superior.

With the slightest dip of his head, Sigmir acknowledged the Colonel’s suggestion. “Yes, perhaps I shall put him on point.”

“Fighting spirit is one thing,” the Colonel said, “this lack of disciple quite another.”

“He will be taught his place,” Sigmir assured the Colonel. “Lieutenant, you will remain silent until further notice.”

“Yes, sir,” Marten said. “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

The Colonel sniffed loudly, and then ignored Marten as beneath his notice. “As I was saying—”

An alarm cut him off. Com-lines buzzed and the entire granary trembled—caused by enemy artillery shells hammering against it. Concrete pebbles from the ceiling were dislodged and rattled upon the table. Dust drifted.

“To your posts!” roared the Colonel.

9.

Having slipped onto Japan so that he could lead the fighting from the home islands, Field Marshal Kitamura had given the word for the grand frontal assault. If they could clear Tokyo, then reinforcements could be rushed north and south, and then maybe Japan could be held until Operation Togo. But first tasks first. So quick-trained levies boiled up from the depths. Samurai Divisions gathered their strength and Kamikaze squads strapped on their bombs. What was left of the airforce hurled itself at the largest Highborn concentrations. A massive artillery park endlessly shelled enemy territory.

The FEC 4th Army took the brunt of the first day’s attack. It was composed of the broken 9th, the newly arrived 10th and the yet intact 12th, 20th and 22nd FEC Divisions. The remnants of two other divisions, shattered beyond repair, had been taken to the docks and reformed into a garrison brigade. The 23rd and 204thJump-Jet Battalions provided mobile elites to plug any gaps. Lastly, prowling the back lines, shooting stragglers, regrouping others, in effect stiffening the FEC volunteers by their presence, was the Highborn 91st Drop Assault Battalion. The giants in their heavy combat armor were the terror of both sides. The better-off FEC 7th Army held the city to the south, while the 5th Panzer Corps was to the 4th Army’s north. An offshore battery of artillery-bearing submarines provided the armies with gun tubes, while an orbital laser station was dedicated for Highborn Tokyo use.

Roughly, one hundred thousand FEC soldiers with a smattering of Highborn waged street war against three hundred thousand Japanese. A few of the Japanese formations were the dreaded Samurai Divisions, well-trained soldiers that man for man were more than a match versus the best-trained FEC formations. However, the bulk of the three hundred thousand Japanese were hastily trained civilians, stiffened by police units. They’d had even less training-time than the FEC volunteers. Nor had they the benefit of Highborn instructors. To make matters worse, they were more poorly armed and armored than their FEC counterparts.

The Japanese frontal attack lacked grace. Field Marshal Kitamura knew his soldiers: they were brave but barely trained. Boldly led in attacks their morale might last a week, maybe a few days beyond that. Then newer levies still training in the depths could be brought up and thrown into the cauldron. Of course, complex tactics were beyond them. So he hurled them straight at the enemy, or as he told his commanders, “We’ll shove a spear into their guts.” To add to the spear’s effectiveness, he tied on a bomb as it were onto the tip, in this instance, the Kamikaze squads.

To Marten and his men, the sequence seldom varied.

First enemy artillery pounded their positions. Following almost on its heels screamed the demonic suicide squads. They crawled, ran, limped, dropped down with jetpacks, popped out of sewers, anyway they could they tried to close and detonate. Then waves of hypnotically bolstered soldiers or stim-induced berserks rushed in. They were armed with carbines, sometimes with heavier weapons, always hurling grenades and fighting hand-to-hand with vibroknives and swords if they could. A few times the Samurai Divisions clanked forward in their dreaded bio-tanks.

Almost as bad as the constant attacking, Highborn Intelligence learned that an entirely new batch of recruits, another two hundred thousand, trained deep in the city for the next wave. From intercepted communications, it was clear that Tokyo was to remain a sea of bloodshed, that the city would be held at any cost. Intercepted holo-news reports showed that Social Unity lied to the people of Tokyo trapped below. The holo-shows told of incredible victories, that soon the Supremacists would be hurled back into space.

Above ground, the realities of the situation dictated the strategy for each side and that governed tactics. The underwater nuclear attacks had badly hurt the Highborn ability to re-supply the city. Ninety percent of whatever got through to Japan went north and south. Seldom did anything trickle into Tokyo.

A week after the initial attack, Marten lay hidden behind the twisted heap of a battle tank. The metallic corpse had the dimensions of a dinosaur. He rested his new sniper laser on the twisted tank body, tracking through his scope for signs of enemy. Beside him, Stick gasped, having just run from Company HQ with orders from Captain Sigmir. It was near noon, but that was difficult to tell under these conditions. Like ominous thunderclouds, a vast sea of smoke blotted out the sunlight. From various parts of the city flames and more funneling smoke rose. Here and there behind both lines, artillery tubes spat fire. Marten ignored it all as he tracked across a field of rubble and boulder-strewn chunks of plasteel and concrete. Beyond the rubble stood ruined buildings, their walls immodestly torn away to reveal the various floors.

“Do you believe them?” Stick whispered.

Marten pressed the firing stud. A flash of laser-light stabbed a man crawling toward them—he was forty meters away. The bomb strapped to his chest exploded. Stones flew up and rattled against the dead tank. Marten rolled and slithered through the dust and dirt to a broken sign for Tempko Sake. Stick tagged along. Two Japanese on the third floor of the nearest building stepped forward. Each aimed his electromag grenade launcher at the useless bio-tank—where Marten had just been. Marten lasered them. Then he moved again.

“Well?” asked Stick a little later.

“Well what?” whispered Marten from a foxhole he’d dug earlier. He tracked across the rubble, watching carefully.

“Do you believe the reports?”

“Which ones?”

“That High Command is finally hunting down the last of the nuke-launching subs?”

“Sure, I believe that.”

“Do you think they know that?”

“Who?”

“The enemy generals!” said Stick.

Marten’s eyes widened as the hairs on the back of his neck rose. He jumped out of the foxhole, pulling Stick with him. Hunched over, they sprinted to a trench where several men of their platoon manned a tripod flamer. “Down,” hissed Marten.

Everyone flattened himself against the bottom of the trench.

Shells screamed out of the dark sky, hammering against the old tank, the sign and on top of the foxhole. More rubble, stones, dust and miscellaneous items including flesh was flung into the acrid air. The barrage lasted seconds, and then silence ruled again. Marten rose, peering over the lip of the trench as he listened carefully. He heard the crunch of boots before he saw the gray movement.

“Up,” he whispered.

Around him soldiers rose, and now each of them could see the wide-eyed Kamikazes, their lips pulled back in a death grimace as they crawled or bounded from spot to spot toward them. Lasers fired—red lines of agony. Kamikazes curled around them, dying, sobbing and sometimes detonating their grisly packages. From south of their trench came wild shouts of rage. A wave of enemy soldiers high on stims raced at them in a desperate bent-over rush. Carbines barked from enemy hips, bullets whined around Marten and his men. One bullet staggered Marten, striking his heavy chest armor and ricocheting away with an evil spang. The flamer crew, veterans now, swiveled their weapon and sighted. A strange belching sound issued from their cannon and an orange glob of plasma burned the enemy squad in a fierce sizzle. Beside Marten, one of his men gurgled with a ripped out throat.

There was no time for niceties. They had to spoil the next probing attempt. Marten pointed to three other men: snipers like him. He led them to the dead tank. In this type of battle sniper work was never done.

“If it’s true,” Stick whispered in his ear, “the enemy generals must know that.”

“What are you talking about?” Marten whispered. He was unaware until then that Stick had followed him out of the trench.

“That the enemy soon won’t own any more nuke-firing subs.”

“So?”

“So, they’ve got only so long here then until we’re reinforced.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“So how long until they make a final push with everything they got?”

Marten’s stomach grew queasy. Since there wasn’t much to say about that, he shrugged and kept tracking the ruins.

Suddenly, one of the enemy dead behind them stirred. He was minus an arm, and only one eye worked. He looked up and stretched his torn lips in a dreadful smile as he reached for his detonation button. That caused his elbow to scrape against concrete. Stick whirled around, saw him, drew and fired.

Marten nodded his thanks. He’d give the enemy this: they fought to the end—the little good it did them. Stick probably had it right. The enemy generals had to realize their situation couldn’t last forever. The Highborn ruthlessly hunted the nuke-launching submersibles and pared their numbers. Perhaps worse for the enemy in Tokyo, the orbital laser station religiously hunted down and burnt the artillery if it wasn’t quick enough to relocate. But worst of all for the enemy were the Highborn who’d crawled forward and studied their tactics. Just like a few minutes ago, FEC troops fell back at the first sign of attack, so hopefully artillery shells exploded upon empty areas. Often Highborn gun tubes fired then, upon the Japanese assembly areas, uncannily catching them at just the wrong moment. The battle was like a clumsy vid-wrestler fighting a cunning knifeman. The knifeman made deadly little cuts and avoided the wrestler’s grapples. But if the wrestler ever got a good hold or if he knocked the knife away…

Relentless day and night shelling and the first-day softening nukes of the original Highborn attack had turned the buildings, streets and the near-surface tunnels of Tokyo into rubble and ruin, and that made wonderful defensive terrain. In a week of fighting tens of thousand of Japanese soldiers had died hideously; burned, shot, gutted and blown to bloody bits. According to the latest reports, more enemy engineer and flamer troops were being rushed up from deep within Tokyo. Sigmir had told them that in ages past flamethrowers had been used for close combat. The flamer was the modern progeny. It discharged a short-range glob of plasma and could kill even heavily armored Highborn. Marten had seen it happen, and he’d seen the rescue teams rushing to the Highborn to take them back to the hospital submarine to resurrect them if they could.

The Highborn who’d studied the enemy had made their reports and recommendations. Now the Highborn colonels and captains intensively trained the FEC soldiers in even smaller unit tactics. Instead of platoons and companies being the units of maneuver and fighting, it had become the individual sniper and the storm group. Storm groups were built around the three-man tripod flamer crew. To support the flamer the others carried sniper lasers, gyroc rocket carbines, machine pistols, and grenades for close-in work. This was no longer street fighting in the usual sense. To stand in the open was too dangerous. Most of the fighting took place inside the ruined buildings or near them.

As he scanned the rubble, Marten uneasily rolled his shoulders. “They’re not finished here today,” he whispered, feeling the enemy out there.

“Should we fall back?” asked Stick.

Marten considered it, and then shook his head. High Command had at last ordered them to stop retreating. The week of relentless enemy frontal assaults had driven the FEC formations too far out of position for High Command’s ulterior plans, or so Sigmir had told him this morning.

Before Omi’s team replaced his, Marten fought off two more Japanese probes and one more wave attack. He and his assault group of eight men slew forty-three enemies, losing only the throat-shot private in return. By Highborn standards, it was an excellent morning’s work.

Finally he and his team humped back to company HQ, a hundred meters behind the twisted wreck of a Samurai tank. Holes in the ground were the entrances to the various bunkers.

Petor, the single-eyebrowed Muscovite bodyguard, rose from where he squatted and snapped his fingers.

Marten turned and pointed to himself. Petor nodded, his stimstick waggling in his mouth. Then Petor squatted again before the hole-in-the-ground entrance, with his carbine over his knees.

Marten slipped past him and within the cramped command bunker. It was a simple hole with a thick slab of plasteel for a roof. Despite its crudeness, it was impervious to everything but a direct hit from one of the larger shells. A small bulb on a table provided muted light. Sigmir sat in the only chair, while Kang sat impassively on a stool. The Lot Six Highborn poured over a map of Tokyo.

Sigmir noticed Marten, looking up long enough to say, “Lieutenant, good of you to show.” Then he went back to studying the map.

There weren’t any more chairs or stools, so with his head bent Marten shuffled near and examined the map. A red circle had been drawn around the merculite missile battery that was now far away.

Sigmir peered at the map, as he said, “No more retreats.”

“So you told us this morning.”

“Correct. Now we have two more days to prefect our techniques.”

Marten glanced at Kang. The huge Mongol sat with his eyes nearly closed. He never spoke in Sigmir’s presence unless asked a direct question. Only once had Kang spoken about Sigmir to Marten. He’d said, “You’d better watch out. Sigmir will kill you soon.”

“Then help me kill him,” Marten had said.

Since then Kang rarely spoke to him, no doubt distancing himself from a doomed fool.

“Do you understand what the ‘no retreat’ order means?” asked Sigmir, his weird eyes glittering intently.

Marten nodded.

“But you’re merely a preman,” chided Sigmir. “How could you possibly know?”

“Captain, sir, if you’ll tell me how I’ve disobeyed your orders I’ll—”

Sigmir laughed, cutting Marten off.

Marten glanced at Kang again, who now seemed to study the map with deeper interest.

“You misunderstand me,” said Sigmir. “Yes. You follow orders… most of the time. But for the moment that’s not my concern.”

“Sir?”

“No more retreats,” said Sigmir. “Two more days to refine the new tactics. That means only one thing. Can you guess?”

Marten shook his head.

“Why, the order to advance, of course.”

“Advance?” Marten asked in disbelief. “That’s insane.”

Sigmir’s smile vanished. He studied Marten. “How is it that you feel qualified to make negative comments regarding High Command’s strategies?”

“Through logic, I suppose.”

“Logic!” spat Sigmir. “Say rather: a sheep’s bleating.”

“I take it we’re to be reinforced then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A second orbital laser platform will be dedicated to us?”

With a thick finger, Sigmir stabbed the location of the merculite missile battery. “I must be the one to storm it.”

Marten lifted an eyebrow. “Just you? I’m impressed.”

Sigmir grinned madly. “The Slumlords and I. They, and you, will join in my glory.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear it.”

“Does glory mean so little to you, Lieutenant? Then fix your thoughts on gaining higher rank.”

“Never mind the glory or the higher rank. I’d just like to survive Japan.”

Sigmir sadly shook his head. “What a pale goal you’ve given yourself, especially when so much is offered you.”

“Offered me?” Marten said, perhaps too impudently.

Kang looked up, and then quickly peered at the map again.

Marten understood it as a warning, but he didn’t care. The endless fighting reminded him too much of the Sun-Works Factory around Mercury, of his mother and father who had died there. That caused the carelessness that had landed him in the slime pits. “I’ve never been offered a real choice.”

“No?” asked Sigmir.

“If I’ve gotten anywhere it’s because I acted in my best interests, never because of the choices offered me.”

“Well said! Once the Slumlord Battalion realizes that its best interest lies with me they will strive to join me in my glory.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Sigmir frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t believe so.”

“The Slumlords are the Colonel’s battalion.”

A twitching smile played upon Sigmir’s lips. “Yes, today that is true.”

“Today? You’re not suggesting—”

Sigmir held up an admonitory finger. “Have a care, preman. One word from me and you’ll be bound for a penal regiment.”

Marten knew of those. They were given the jobs the other side reserved for its Kamikaze squads. Sigmir’s threats were never idle. Still…

Marten leaned on the table, studying the plex-screen map. Sigmir had used a stylus to mark the enemy lines and formations in blue. The red-circled merculite site was far behind those enemy sites. He peered at the brain-damaged ‘superman’ who dreamed of glory and high rank, saying, “The merculite battery is over a kilometer from here.”

“Yes.”

“The only way you’ll get there is by riding on our bloody carcasses.”

“Perhaps you’d like to be point man, to show me the way, as it were.”

“Is that the prize for telling the truth?”

Sigmir’s dark eyes glittered dangerously. “Truth! Here is truth: do as I order, when I order and you may live. But know this, preman, that the day I die and am not resurrected is the day a posthumous letter requests the Colonel to have you shot for insubordination.”

Kang’s ever-slit gaze widened minutely as he studied the map.

Marten stepped back. He ached to draw and shoot Sigmir, to kill him and have done with it. It galled him that if he tried, if he even dared touch his holster, that Sigmir could probably kill him before the pistol was halfway out.

“Why not have me shot now?” asked Marten.

“Because you can fight, because you have zeal and the killer instinct. I’ve told you before how rare that is among your kind. For now, I use you. But the day you are no longer of use….” Sigmir smiled. “That’s the day the rabid dog dies.”

10.

Day and night, the orbital laser platform sought the thickest concentrations of enemy artillery tubes. Then a thick red beam stabbed out of the sky, burning, exploding and destroying the carefully deployed guns. Japanese tanks, headquarter commands, choppers, thick knots of troops humping over the hardscrabble, all tasted the fury of the space-borne laser. At times VTOL fighters screaming over the city simply vanished in the laser’s wash. Newly opened tunnels to the deep city melted, air vents exploded and armored personnel carriers became coffins on wheels. Relentlessly, the Highborn eliminated the war-machines and war-fighting capacity of Tokyo’s beleaguered armies. More and more it was simply the soldiers themselves who were left and the weapons they could carry. Food trucks were destroyed, radio beacons turned into slag. Rather than a coordinated army throwing itself upon the enemy, the vast horde of Japanese felt isolated, demoralized and bewildered. Still they fought. Grimly, new squadrons of Kamikazes launched themselves at targets of opportunity. The last bio-tanks were dug in and camouflaged.

Two weeks after their grand assault, the Tokyo soldiers lacked almost any artillery, tanks or coordination. Mortar tubes became highly prized weapons, along with captured flamers. The infantry dug-in as they prepared to hold what they’d taken. In the mass of rubble and ruin, they had the perfect defensive terrain. Hungry, thirsty, bitter and terrified, they’d put up as stubborn a defense as anyone had on Earth.

“Time,” Field Marshal Kitamura told them. “You’re fighting to give Earth time. So you must hang on and fight!”

Only one high-tech weapon was left them: the massive merculite missile battery. Space-borne lasers couldn’t harm it, or the orbital fighters dropping from the stratosphere and launching APEX missiles against it. The four-thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete shrugged off every attack. Then, at just the right moment, the clamshell whirled open like a man lifting his visor. Out flew heavy missiles at the retreating orbital fighters as they roared back into the heavens. The missiles had shot down enough of them so that now the orbital fighters flew less over the dying city. Sometimes the heavy missiles were targeted at the submarines off shore. After that, the orbital laser station and hastily deployed anti-missiles were given the mission of stopping the merculite missiles.

Two and half weeks after the initial Japanese counterassault, High Command ordered the 4th and 7th FEC Armies and the 5th Panzer Corps to go back onto the attack and retake Tokyo. They had perhaps three-quarters of their original troops. The Japanese had maybe a little under half of theirs, and that included the two hundred thousand of the second wave assault. The worst casualties for the FEC formations had been in 4th Army, the 10th FEC Division particularly. Units there had been merged and reformed.

Despite their losses, the 93rd Slumlord Battalion led the way into the city; Captain Sigmir eternally enthused at the prospect of smashing into the merculite missile station. When his numbers dwindled, as they did with sickening regularity, re-patched soldiers from the infirmaries found themselves sent there instead of returned to their original units. The few reinforcements to get through from Australia also went there. Sigmir refined the tactics. Marten, Omi and Kang best understood and executed them.

The unit of decision had grown very small indeed: the storm group. Each storm group was composed of several assault groups of six to eight men. Marten commanded the most decorated storm group, with Stick and Turbo as his assault group leaders.

Together, leapfrogging each other, slithering through rubble, blindsiding an enemy strongpoint, they broke repeatedly into the selected building. Dirt-covered and terrified, their throats raw from roaring battle-oaths and screaming for help they fired flash/bang grenades through doors and then rushed through right behind, or they slipped in quietly through windows, or they opened holes-in-the-wall with mortars fired directly. Once they were inside, their machine pistols rattled or a gyroc handgun whooshed as it shot a rocket-propelled slug. The heavy rounds were either chemical or high explosive. Grenades, too, by the cluster, took out stubborn defenders.

Then it was close-in work with vibroblades and spades, which in the furious hand-to-hand combat were often wielded like axes. A rigid biphase carbide/ceramic corselet protected their torsos. The rest of their body and limbs was covered by a full bodysuit of articulated metal and ceramic-plate armor. Their helmets had HUD. They were in constant contact with each other, using their built in com-units. Despite so many advantages, they took inevitable losses.

The assault groups didn’t go in without support. As soon as the assault group was inside, a reinforcement group followed. Upon taking and clearing a building, the next objective was preventing the enemy from returning. The reinforcement groups were more heavily armed with tripod flamers, heavy gyroc rifles, mortars, anti-tank missiles, crowbars, picks and explosives. In addition, a reserve group helped the assault groups block off enemy flank attacks. And if it proved necessary, they helped cover the withdrawal of the assault and reinforcement groups.

Refined through daily practice, Marten and the others became experts at this bitter street warfare. Their biggest threat loomed in Captain Sigmir, in his driving lust to be the one who stormed the merculite missile battery. He fed his obsession to the Colonel, who for reasons unknown thrived upon it. Thus in rather short order Sigmir became the tainted soul of the Slumlords.

Three weeks after the initial Japanese frontal assault, Marten slumped exhausted in an underground enemy bunker. Around him on the floor lay the bloody ruins of twelve Japanese soldiers. The last one, the only body-armored enemy, wore the red epaulettes of PHC. Likely, his fanaticism had kept the other eleven at their post. The rest of the room had shot-up furniture and radios and reeked of cordite. The assault had cost Marten’s storm group two men. Omi’s reinforcement group charged into the bunker and began searching room through room for secret tunnel entrances.

Marten’s joints ached and he’d had his fill of battle. Night and day, he killed men, terrified draftees who fought to protect their homes. He had no love for Social Unity, but were the Highborn any better?

Turbo slid down beside him. His thin face had grown skeletal, his eyes sunken and strange looking. For the past several weeks, his supply of drugs had been cut off.

“When’s it gonna be our turn to die?” Turbo whispered.

Marten didn’t want to think about that. Besides, he’d vowed his father and mother that he’d die free. This wasn’t free. It was just free from the clutches of Social Unity.

“Sigmir’s mad,” Turbo said quietly.

Marten unlatched his canteen, unscrewed the cap and guzzled water. His throat hurt because he always seemed to be screaming orders in the midst of gun-roaring battle. Where a bullet had grazed his armor, his ribs throbbed. He was dirty, scared and half in a daze.

The bunker reeked of sweat, blood and fear. His men moved sluggishly, some eating their rations, some cleaning their weapons, a few staring at the single dim bulb that provided illumination for this main room. Omi’s shouts from the corridors proved he’d found a tunnel entrance. He ordered his reinforcement group to bobby-trap it. Less exhausted than the storm troopers, Omi’s men bustled to his command, a few moving through the main bunker room.

“Did you hear me?” whispered Turbo.

“Sure Sigmir’s mad,” said Marten, screwing the cap onto his canteen. “So what?”

“So what! We gotta do something.”

Marten rubbed his eyes. His head hurt most of the time and it was so difficult to think.

”You gotta do something!” Turbo said.

“Me?”

“You saved Sydney.”

“Turbo….” Marten looked away.

“Is this our life then? Slave soldiers for the masters?”

Marten sat a little straighter. He had to survive… and then what? Maybe one of these days he could escape to the Outer Planets. He snorted at the idea. It seemed impossible that he’d survive this abattoir they called the Siege of Tokyo. Surely, within the week he’d be dead while his friends trudged to the next strongpoint.

“It’s either kill or be killed,” whispered Turbo.

Marten nodded wearily.

Turbo glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, as if judging the effect of his words. “You know, personally speaking, I think Sigmir hates you. He uses you, Marten.”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s afraid of you.”

Marten snorted.

“You’re… different,” Turbo said.

“I’m just a man.”

“Exactly.”

Marten faced the thin junkie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a man, and that scares Sigmir.”

“I’m a preman.”

“No, we’re premen. You’re something else, something from an earlier time, I think.”

Just then, Sigmir ducked into the bunker. He rattled in his combat armor. It wasn’t a battle suit as the nine-foot Highborn wore, but armor much like the storm troopers used. Sigmir held onto a massive pistol, a gyroc gun that fired .75 caliber rocket shells.

“On your feet!” the Lot Six captain shouted.

The tired storm troopers grumbled, stirring as they glanced at Marten.

“What is it, Captain?” Marten asked from his spot on the floor.

In two strides, Sigmir loomed over him. “On your feet, soldier.”

Marten slowly climbed up.

“The 9th had penetrated a street ahead of us.” Sigmir said in his overloud voice.

“The 9th FEC Division?”

“Gather your men,” said Sigmir.

“Look at them,” Marten said in a let’s-be-reasonable tone. “We just took this bunker. You can’t order them into another assault now.”

“Get them on their feet!” Sigmir roared, “And outside.”

“Captain,” said Marten, “sir, you can’t just hurl us at another strongpoint without letting us rest first.”

Sigmir’s eyes widened. “Would you deprive me of glory?”

Marten stared into those wild eyes. Around him Omi and the others watched—they’d come to see what the commotion was about. It would be so easy to step back, lift his gun and kill this insane beast. Perhaps Sigmir sensed that, for he aimed that huge pistol at Marten’s face.

“Come with me,” whispered the Captain.

Omi stepped forward to protest. Sigmir touched the barrel to Marten’s forehead.

“Stay back,” Marten told Omi. Then he nodded to Sigmir.

The huge Captain pushed him ahead onto the stairs and up out of the captured bunker. It was a steel-shelled dome only a few feet above ground. Behind them and over a slight rise of rubble waited other FEC assault groups in newly dug trenches. In the other direction lay another field of rubble and then a row of skeleton-like buildings. Far in the distance loomed the mighty merculite missile battery.

“Do you see that building?” Sigmir whispered into his ear.

Marten saw a pockmarked building, a vault-like enemy fortress.

“You will storm it immediately,” Sigmir said.

“Now?”

“That is what immediately means.”

“May I speak, sir?”

“Ah, at last I’ve found the key to you, eh, preman. You’re pleasant enough when a man has a gun to your head. Now listen to me. I’ve ordered an artillery strike on the building, then—”

Hideous but pitiful screaming interrupted the speech.

Marten and Sigmir jerked to their left. Two Kamikazes popped out of the earth and sprinted toward them, screaming their death cries, their eyes drugged and glistening. Marten threw himself onto the rubble. Sigmir coolly sighted and fired once, twice, the rocket shells barely igniting before slamming into the two doomed men. One of them, however, pressed his detonation button. He exploded and hot shrapnel flew through the air. One small piece sliced through Sigmir’s throat. The huge Highborn had taken off his helmet like everyone else, and his gorget guard had been unbuckled. A look of amazement filled his snow-white face. Then blood jetted and the seven-foot Highborn pitched backward.

Horrified, Marten back-pedaled. For a moment, no one did anything. Then Petor ran forward as he shouted into a hand unit. When he reached the corpse, Petor roared, “Help me!”

“Help you do what?” shouted Marten.

Petor pressed a hypo against Sigmir, no doubt shooting Suspend into the Highborn.

“Help me carry him!” Petor shouted.

Marten hesitated. He should have shot Petor before the bodyguard brought out the hypo. Then Sigmir would stay dead. Maybe—

“Fool!” Petor shouted. “Help me or he’ll kill you when he returns.”

The second bodyguard ran up. Marten doubted he could kill both of them without notice. And Sigmir already had Suspend in him.

So Marten helped the Muscovite bodyguard haul Sigmir to the rear of their area. It was a cleared plaza with a cluster of torn, two-story buildings. As they lay the body down a rescue team of battle-suited Highborn arrived, four of them. Marten watched them bound in one hundred-meter leaps. They landed in the plaza, their servos whining as the half-ton armor crushed bricks.

Two of the nine-foot giants clanked to Sigmir and set him in a black plastic freezepack that they’d brought. The pack had medkits and other strange devices. Needles stabbed the corpse and then the giants zipped the freezepack shut. The other two spoke with Petor, who pointed out Marten.

Marten rose from where a few of his storm group waited. They’d hurried over after hearing the news. Marten walked away from them so he wouldn’t implicate his men in case the approaching masters decided he was to blame for Sigmir’s death. Marten stood at attention as the two armored giants clanked to him.

They were huge, towering, menacing. Twenty-millimeter cannons aimed at him. Dark visored helmets, like techno-demons, watched him impassively. His weapons would be useless against them in their armor. He wondered why the battalion attached to the 4th FEC Army didn’t simply take Tokyo. Mortar tubes and smart missiles were slung on their backs. They seemed invincible.

The one with a sword emblem on his helmet spoke through amplifiers. “You are Lieutenant Marten Kluge, 2nd Patloon/10th Company/93rd Battalion?”

“I am.”

“Report.”

In short, concise sentences—the way he’d been trained to speak to Highborn—Marten told the two giants what had happened.

After he was finished, the two giants glanced at each other, their dark visors revealing nothing. Marten felt like a naughty child, and that made him angry. But here, in front of these two, he struggled to suppress his anger.

“Why didn’t you fire at the enemy?” asked the giant with the sword emblem.

“They surprised us.”

“So you threw yourself down?”

“Yes,” said Marten.

“An act of cowardice.”

“No,” said Marten. “It was one of survival.”

“You will not raise your voice to us.”

Marten hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Cowardice,” repeated the giant.

“Perhaps even retreat in face of the enemy,” suggested the other.

“Which is punishable by death,” said the first.

Marten looked up. The two armored giants decided his fate. His only weapon was his wits. “May I speak?” he asked.

The dark visors stared at him.

“Speak,” said the first, the one with the sword emblem on his helmet.

“Captain Sigmir shot and killed both Kamikazes. It was due to his misfortune of having taken off his helmet and gorget that he died. I reacted instinctively. And I might add that my storm group had just taken an enemy bunker.”

“That is immaterial.”

“You’ll find that my storm group is the most decorated in the 4th FEC Army.”

“Meaningless.”

“Surely not,” Marten argued. “You Highborn are said to honor valor. If my unit is the most valorous, then surely I, as its leader, must be also.”

The two giants considered that. Then the first one said, “If what you say is true, your act of… I will not say cowardice. Rather, cunning, is deplorable.”

“I don’t understand,” said Marten.

“You dropped to the ground in the hopes that your Lot Six commander would be killed.”

“I’ve been in battle too long to think that,” Marten said, his stomach knotting at their implacable will. “In fact, I’ve never heard of two Japanese killing a Highborn.”

“Say rather: a Lot Six specimen.”

“Captain Sigmir isn’t a Highborn?” asked Marten.

The two nine foot giants said nothing. Finally, the first one’s amplifier crackled. “We are superiors.”

“Why explain anything to him?” asked the second.

“So he understands his insolence and why he must die.”

“Does my battle record mean so little?” asked Marten, sweat oozing out of his armpits. “Is there no way that I might gain honor among you?”

Again, they were silent, as if he spoke nonsense and they tried to decipher his possible meanings.

“Show us your hand,” said the first.

Marten shucked off his gauntlet and showed them the number two tattooed onto the back of his hand.

“He has risen above himself,” said the second.

“So it seems,” said the first. “Preman—” The giant suddenly tilted his armored head, no doubt listening to an incoming radio message. A few seconds later he said, “Your Lot Six Captain will deal with you upon his return.”

As easy as that, they granted him life. Marten’s knees almost buckled, but he locked them and refused to kneel before them.

They turned and clanked to the other two Highborn. Together the Highborn bounded away with Sigmir, their twenty-millimeter cannons barking at an unseen enemy as they leaped toward the rear lines.

Omi strode to Marten, who felt limp, drained, surprised to be alive.

The tough Korean studied him closely.

“I didn’t understand half of what they were saying,” Marten explained. “But I understood they look at me as if I’m subhuman. And you know what?”

The ex-gunman grunted.

“I’m beginning to take that personally.”

11.

They learned that one of the new and improved features of Highborn was a gland that squirted Suspend into the brain at the moment of death. Thus, drugs had frozen Sigmir’s brain when he died. No damage had been done because of his lack of oxygen. At least so went the theory.

Three nights later, the Slumlords huddled in an underground garage, sitting on chunks of concrete as they cooked their suppers. Suddenly the talking stopped. Man after man looked up, amazed and fearful at what he saw.

Dressed in gleaming new combat armor, Sigmir strode among them. A fresh scar showed where the shrapnel had torn out his throat. He moved with purpose and force. His eyes glittered more darkly than ever and the corner of his mouth twitched as if he considered a joke that only he knew. There seemed to be a new grimness about him, a feeling that a dead man had joined them. Some of the storm troopers shivered as he marched past, a few crossed themselves with a long-forbidden religious gesture.

Captain Sigmir strode to where Marten sat.

Upon seeing the newly resurrected captain, Marten stared for only a moment. Then he jumped to attention and saluted smartly. “Glad to have you back, sir,” Marten said, who kept the quaver and more than a bit of hatred out of his voice.

Sigmir peered at him, the odd twitch never leaving the corner of his mouth. Finally, after an uncomfortable length of time, Sigmir whispered hoarsely, “Prepare for a dawn assault, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“I will be the first into the merculite missile battery.”

“…Yes, sir.”

Sigmir examined those who stared at him in shock and fear. “Do any here doubt me?”

No one spoke.

“Nothing will stop me,” wheezed Sigmir. “Not death, not the enemy, not the lack of guts in my men.” Once more, he examined them. Then he turned and strode to where the Colonel conferred with the other Lot Six captains.

“He’s a vampire,” whispered Turbo.

“I don’t know about that,” said Stick, who had yet to touch his food. “But he don’t die.”

“He’s going to kill us,” Omi said moodily.

“Why do you think that?” asked Marten.

“I’ve seen that look before. He’s mad, stark raving nuts. And if he has to kill us all to get what he wants then he’s going to do it.”

“We’ll see,” said Marten.

12.

8 May 2350

The Pre-Operation Togo military conference: 10.26 A.M.

Participants: Enkov, Hawthorne, Shell (Commander, Orbital Sector), Kitamura (Field Marshal, Japan Sector), Ulrich (Air Marshal, Strategic Command East), O’Connor (Admiral, Pacific Fleet), Green (Colonel-General, Replacement Army East).

Enkov: Commander Shell, please report upon the situation.

Shell: Delicate, Lord Director, but theoretically promising. According to our best information, two Doom Stars and other ancillary spacecraft still hold their station in Mars orbit. A Doom Star guards Venus, one has gone to refit at the Mercury construction yard and one is unaccounted for. We suspect but have not yet located the Doom Star in Earth or in the Moon’s orbit. Concerning enemy Near-Earth Orbital deployment, three laser stations continue to search and destroy targets of opportunity, as do two of their missile stations. Three Highborn orbital fighter platforms are dedicated to the present Japanese campaign and are in stationary orbit here, here and here.

Hawthorne: Adherence to our space strategy of scattering and therefore maintaining what is left of our deep-space vessels has forced the Highborn to garrison each of their planets with a Doom Star.

Enkov: That is an imprecise statement, General Hawthorne. They control the near orbit of each of the said planets, but not the planets themselves.

Hawthorne: Yes, Lord Director, I stand corrected.

Shell: The Highborn deploy superior electronic countermeasure and detection equipment, Lord Director. But in their wisdom, Space Command long ago placed emergency pods in Earth orbit for just this situation. These pods have been carefully maneuvered into position and are timed to detonate at the commencement of Operation Togo.

Enkov: Which stations in particular have you targeted?

Shell: Two of the three dedicated Highborn orbital fighter platforms and this laser platform.

Enkov: What about the others?

Shell: I have saved the best for last, Lord Director. Breakthrough beam technology and ‘total’ construction efforts have given us proton beam stations in seven cities. The proton beams are an order of magnitude greater in power and destructiveness, Lord Director. I assure you, the Highborn have never faced anything like these.

Enkov: Our previous beam sites drained the power grid. If these are more powerful, how have you solved the problem?

Shell: The proton beam is charged directly from a deep-core mine, Lord Director. All other city functions are taken offline or run with emergency systems. The proton beams have full and complete use of the deep mine. Therefore, lack of power is no longer a problem. These beams, they will be a terrible surprise for the Highborn. For the coming operation, these East Asian stations will target the remaining orbital platforms and—

Enkov: You’re ready?

Shell: Yes, Lord Director, but I would like to point out that—

Enkov: Thank you, Commander. Orbital Space Command has done their duty. Air Marshal Ulrich, please make your report.

Ulrich: Lord Director, in the Northern Chinese airfields we have reached seventy-nine percent of the projected strength levels. As mandated, the majority of these combat units are medium and long-range bomber formations. Korea holds the bulk of Fighter Command and is at sixty-three percent of projected strength levels. Long range Trotsky Bombers wait in the Siberian airfields at ninety-one percent operational strength. In another week, we could raise all those percentages near maximum.

Enkov: Four weeks was my original timeframe for the counterattack, Air Marshal. In two days, Operation Togo will commence with the units you already have in place.

Ulrich: Understood, Lord Director. But—

Enkov: Thank you, Air Marshal. Field Marshal Kitamura, please make your report.

Kitamura: The love of the Japanese people for their Director spurs them to deeds of unparalleled heroism, Lord Director. Tokyo holds. Kobi fell only yesterday, but after bitter fighting. Unfortunately, in the north the battle-lines have neared the beleaguered capital. Yet we have found the key to victory, Lord Director. While our army units, guard divisions, in particular, hold the gates, the people train underground in the cities. Thus, we launch endless assaults with the Kamikaze squads, maintaining our trained troops for—

Enkov: The Samurai Divisions?

Kitamura: Yes, Lord Director. They are the guard divisions, the heart of Japanese defense. They have been carefully maintained and they will go over onto the assault for Operation Togo.

Enkov: Tokyo has also held because the enemy’s supply lines have been relentlessly disrupted.

Kitamura: The people of Japan agree with you, Lord Director. Your precision nuclear strikes have defeated the mongrel forces of darkness.

Enkov: No, no, not defeated, Field Marshal. We must never overstate. But the nuclear strikes have given us the time to marshal our forces for the supreme blow. It seems, General Hawthorne, that you were wrong concerning Highborn reaction to our nuclear retaliation.

Hawthorne: Frankly, Director—excuse me, Lord Director—I’m amazed at the Highborn’s restraint.

Enkov: Not restraint, General. Fear. They evidence the fear of those who have overstepped themselves and now see their dilemma.

Hawthorne: But that’s just it, Lord Director. If they were afraid, wouldn’t they resort to nuclear retaliation on a massive scale?

Enkov: It always amazes me when my generals don’t understand the politics of nuclear weapons. The Highborn didn’t first use nuclear weapons in Tokyo because they feared, General Hawthorne, but out of arrogance, which is a form of confidence. Misplaced as that confidence has proved to be. Then they were shocked to discover that Social Unity has not lost its confidence—at no thanks to my generals and their timidity. Yet I don’t hold that against you, gentleman. As I said, nuclear weapons are political tools, needing political courage to use. Our nuclear strikes against their sea lines have had a devastating effect. Tokyo holds, where every other city has fallen after less than a three-day assault. For over four weeks, Field Marshal Kitamura has held the Highborn at bay, often taking back lost parts of the city, although now they retreat again. Kobi only fell after a prolonged siege and gave the Highborn savage losses. True, in the north their panzer divisions have wreaked havoc. But that’s why Operation Togo will begin in two days. Colonel-General Green, is the Replacement Army ready?

Green: The Siberian, Korean and Northern Chinese ports brim with transports and troops, Lord Director. The numbers are eighty percent of anticipated levels, but only fifty-nine percent of hoped for transports.

O’Connor: We’ve scraped together everything we could, sir.

Green: No disrepute was meant upon the Navy, Admiral. Those damnable orbital laser stations of theirs keep knocking out the transports.

Enkov: Only fifty-nine percent?

O’Connor: River and canal coasters have been reassigned, Lord Director. In another nine days—

Enkov: No, no, two days. Two days!

O’Connor: In two days perhaps seventy percent could be cobbled together to—

Enkov: I’m disappointed to hear you speak like this, Admiral.

O’Connor: The Highborn strike hard from sea and space, Lord Director. I’m not certain—

Enkov: Admiral O’Connor, defeatist talk is not what I anticipated at this conference, not before the beginning of Operation Togo and the start of the end for the Highborn.

O’Connor: I will do my best, Lord Director.

Enkov: Who said anything about best? You will comply with Social Unity’s requirements or I will find someone who can. You must employ ‘total’ effort.

O’Connor: The Navy stands ready to do its duty, Lord Director.

Enkov: Very good, Admiral. See to it that these are simply not false words given under duress.

Hawthorne: Lord Director, I hold to your principles concerning—

Enkov: The principles of Social Unity, you mean.

Hawthorne: Yes, Lord Director. Your serenity during these terrible days has given us strength and vision. But may I be permitted a possible conjecture concerning the Highborn?

Enkov: I called the conference for the interplay of ideas, General. Please, speak freely.

Hawthorne: My reports indicate that very few Highborn have landed in Japan.

Enkov: Three hundred thousand is a few?

Hawthorne: Their ability to raise Earth units and train them to fighting competency is astounding, Lord Director. The bulk of their invasion army is composed of former Social Unity personnel. Surprising, as it is to report, Lord Director, there are only a few Highborn units on Japan.

Enkov: Your report must be mistaken.

Hawthorne: Body counts of enemy dead indicate—

Enkov: Naturally, when Highborn die in battle their High Command has taken every effort to snatch those fallen bodies and hide the fact of their losses from us. The rebel Earth units—nobody loves traitors, not even those who employ them. So of course, the arrogant Highborn does not attempt to save the corpses of those they refer to as premen, not even their own premen. Field Marshal, don’t your men make every effort to drag their dead comrades off the battlefield?

Kitamura: Those in the Samurai Divisions especially do so, Lord Director, in order to cremate them and give the ashes of these heroes to their wives and children.

Enkov: There you are, General Hawthorne. I’m sure the Highborn believe we have no Samurai Divisions, at least if they allowed themselves the sort of conclusions you’ve drawn from their collected dead.

Hawthorne: One wonders if there might not be another conclusion, Lord Director.

Enkov: By all means, General Hawthorne, tell us this possibility.

Hawthorne: Lord Director, the lack of nuclear retaliation and the lack of overpowering Highborn formations within Japan leads me to a frightening conclusion.

Enkov: Fear must be conquered, General. It amazes me the lack of real courage I find in my military men. No, not the men, but in the officers, in the generals, admirals and air marshals. Nine weeks you originally told me—Nine weeks to build up the force to face these ogres we call Highborn. Many of the directors took their cue from you gentlemen. No! Courage, starting with political courage, with will, gentlemen, the will to face the enemy head on by any means necessary. I’ve given that tool to Social Unity. Those directors who lacked this quality have given way to those of us who don’t. Courage to use nuclear weapons. The will to attack faster than they expected us. Operation Togo must and will catch them flatfooted. Then we will hammer them remorselessly. Every plane, every ship, every trained soldier will be thrown at these mongrel ingrates of the scientists and their biological theories run amok.

Hawthorne: Lord Director, what if the Japanese Invasion is simply a gigantic, Highborn trap?

Enkov: Trap? You think that this is a trap? Unbelievable! If my allegiance monitors hadn’t kept careful tabs of your incoming and outgoing calls, General—A trap! You’d better explain yourself and this witless attempt at fear mongering.

Hawthorne: Lord Director, fear mongering is not my intention. And I repeat again that we in Strategic Planning agree totally with your theories on will and courage.

Enkov: Not theories, General. Facts!

Hawthorne: I agree, Lord Director. Yet… I hesitate now in, ah…

Enkov: No, no, speak your mind.

Hawthorne: Lord Director… fleet and air units are hardest for us to replace, after space units, of course. What if—the Highborn are clever. They must know we will strike back. That at some point we must strike back if we hope to defeat them. So I am compelled to consider this awful possibility. What if they have staged this invasion in order to draw out our last fleet, air and space units? My reports lead me to—

Enkov: General Hawthorne, I will not tolerate this defeatist talk. Not this late in the planning of the greatest attack to ever be launched against the enemy of man. If there truly is a lack of Highborn formations in Japan, it merely shows that our nuclear strikes were even more effective than we thought. They fear to place Highborn where we can hit them. Their losses, I suggest, have been even heavier than you, my generals, have let on in their various campaigns against us. I understand basic military caution. You have all been trained with it. It is the reason a man like me is needed at such a historic moment. But your collective caution has now edged near treason, for it has developed in many of you an unnatural dread of the Highborn. Strike hard, with the most devastating weapon possible, and we will see how quickly the Highborn lose confidence. Operation Togo, fought at the pace of their own attacks, will utterly demoralize them. All the Solar System will see at last that mongrel dogs cannot beat down Social Unity. Now, if I had let your original suggestion stand of taking nine weeks to gather what I’ve forced you to do in four weeks…. Field Marshal Kitamura, could you hold out for another five weeks?

Kitamura: It would be difficult at best, Lord Director.

Enkov: How will Operation Togo affect Japanese defense?

Kitamura: A successful counterattack will save the home islands.

Enkov: Do you doubt its success?

Kitamura: Please excuse an old soldier, Lord Director. That military disease you just spoke about had infected me. But your leadership, just as the sun drives away shadows, has driven away the doubts I once had. Operation Togo cannot fail!

Enkov: Your honesty does you great credit, Field Marshal. Alas, nothing is perfect, gentlemen. But we must be confident of the outcome, or how can we expect the soldiers under us to fight all out for victory?

Kitamura: You speak the truth!

Enkov: This is the Battle for Earth, gentlemen: the successful completion of Operation Togo. It absolutely must not fail. I expect each of you to goad your men to furious action. If there is any slacking in our counterattacks, then I expect each of you to go out and by personal example revive our warriors. If that means you must make the supreme sacrifice—you will be given a hero’s funeral, I assure you. The time of planning is over. Our will is set. Now we must act.

13.

Near-Earth orbit swarmed with hundreds of major satellites. Yet more satellites orbited in the ‘higher’ LaGrange points. Most of these major-sized habitats were the huge farm platforms that supplied the people of Earth with the bulk of their food. They had been declared open, belonging to neither side. So far, each side had in practice left the farm habs open, or at least neither side had overtly used them militarily. Many of the biggest habitats rotated at the L5 and L4 points in higher Earth orbit. These were often industrial plants, using the raw ore of carefully maneuvered asteroids brought from deeper in the Solar System, or blasted off the moon, or purchased from the Comet Barons of Outer Planets. The profusion of habitats made Earth orbit the most cluttered portion of space in the Solar System. In near-Earth orbit, staring down at the planet, were the three laser platforms, the two missile and three orbital fighter stations of the Highborn.

Following their own particular orbits in and out of this profusion of satellites were small ice-coated pods. Year after year, the pods had orbited. Deep in the ice, about the size of a Twentieth century automobile, was a nuclear bomb with rods pointed outward. Those rods were presently trained at the Highborn military platforms.

Message pulses from Earth activated the almost invisible pods.

The explosions threw off massive qualities of x-rays. Those x-rays sped ahead of the rest of the blast. Before they were destroyed in the incandescent fury of the nuclear explosion, the special rods directed those rays in an invisible beam at the orbital fighter stations.

Unbeknown to most of Earth Command, both the Highborn strategists and their Spy Masters had predicted a massive surprise counterattack. Logically, and because of premen emotional makeup, the Highborn strategists believed the counterattack would take place from Earth. The indicators hadn’t been difficult to read. And the Grand Admiral’s strategy practically mandated such a counterattack. Thus, over the past few weeks the Highborn had slipped their orbital fighters off the platforms. They couldn’t afford staggering losses of these craft. Only now had the orbital-fighter construction factory at the Mercury Sun Works shipped its first batch of new and improved space fighters. Thus, only a few of the dreaded orbitals had been left at the platforms. They ran on full automatic. No living beings, especially not superior new men, were on the attacked platforms. The x-ray beams annihilated the few remaining fighters, the robots in the station and maintenance, and one of the laser platforms, which was also devoid of Highborn personnel. The ice-covered bombs destroyed mere shells; Highborn targets set to take the brunt of a blow they suspected had to be coming soon.

Operation Togo had begun with two deceptions, the Highborn’s trumping Social Unity’s.

14.

Seventy kilometers north of Beijing, in the Joho Mountains, lay a three hundred-year-old complex of coalmines. Deep within those mines was the mind of Operation Togo. This center coordinated the many and various military limbs of the largest amphibious assault in human history.

In the early morning of 10 May, and several minutes after x-rays demolished the Highborn platforms, dim green light flooded the inner command center, and the glowing eyes of a hundred-odd TV screens added to the illumination. The headquarters staff monitoring these screens and providing communication with the outer limbs spoke in quiet whispers and crept about on soft-soled shoes. Air Marshal Ulrich, a thick-shouldered bull of man and a main nerve nexus to the decision node of this brain, glared at the screens showing various northern Chinese airfields.

HB-13 Annihilators were catapulted out of underground runways, lofting the heavy bombers into the dark, morning sky. Behind them followed long-range NF-5 Night Owls and Wobbly Goblins 9000s, the latest in electronic counter measures aircraft. AL-101 Standoff Screamers, which launched near-space missiles, roared up last to do battle with the remaining space stations. Hundreds of aircraft per hidden base sped into the night sky, heading toward their rendezvous point over the East China Sea.

A colonel muttered quiet words to the air marshal. He checked his chronometer before grunting, “Scramble Korea.”

Airforce staff officers leaned toward their mikes, issuing orders. The screens switched to underground Korean airfields, where swarms of F-33 Tigers and A-14 Laser Razors buzzed into the night sky like angry wasps. They headed directly for the Tsushima Strait and Japan beyond. Lastly lofted sleek attack choppers, whomping a few feet above the waves all the way to the islands.

In the circular chamber, left of air control, Admiral O’Connor likewise studied screens. His showed Earth’s last carriers, the latest in ship design. The fast, submersible carriers rose out of the deep and whisked toward Japan on a cushion of air. First Fleet and Second Fleet together numbered over twenty of the sub-hover flattops. They launched bombers, fighters, surveillance craft and cunning ECM drones. Third, Fourth and Fifth Fleets contained every other major oceanic unit left to Earth. Serene underwater shots showed an armada of sleek hunter/killer submarines and the much bulkier cruise missile submarines. Yet other screens provided an idea of the incredible number of troop transport and cargo ships at Social Unity’s disposal. In the first wave alone fully seven hundred thousand SU soldiers, twenty-five hundred bio-tanks and one thousand cybertanks would land in the beleaguered Japanese Islands to hurl the hated invader off Earth.

Space control, to the left of Navy, waited to order the interceptors into action and to issue the go-word for the merculite missile batteries in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. Meanwhile, the newly placed and incredibly powerful proton beam stations in Manila, Taipei, Shanghai and Vladivostok clawed near-Earth orbit, obliterating the remaining space platforms. Already air-launched missiles from the Standoff Screamers roared into near-orbital space to finish off what the beams missed.

General James Hawthorne paced back and forth in the center of command. Against the Lord Director’s strictest orders he had kept observers in various farm habitats orbiting Earth. Despite the open habitat order granted by the Highborn, General Hawthorne needed military personnel there to give him far ranging eyes into space. His disobedience was a tremendous gamble in two completely different ways. If the Highborn found out, they might destroy the habs or they might rescind the open order. If they did either, those areas of Earth still under Social Unity’s control could face massive starvation. The second danger, a much more personal threat, was that Lord Director Enkov’s allegiance monitors—ruthless secret police agents—might uncover his disobedience. They pried everywhere, and were one source of Enkov’s unprecedented power. The bionic guards who lined the circular command chamber and watched everyone were the other source.

General Hawthorne briefly mused upon the Lord Director’s ways. Enkov believed in blunt power used brutally. The Lord Director had taken captive family members from each of his military officers ranked colonel or higher. These members had become hostages for their good behavior. It was an ancient trick, and so far, it had worked beautifully, at least in terms of maintained loyalty.

General Hawthorne paced as his air armadas gathered like hungry wolves off Japan’s shores. He paced as his fleets hurried to disgorge hundreds of highly trained battalions into battle. He clasped his hands behind his back and strode first one direction and then another. He wore no soft-soled shoes, but military gear that clattered on the tiled floor. He paced in the dim green light. He paced, and he smelled danger. Yes, four weeks ago he’d been in favor of Operation Togo. But since then… was this a trap? He couldn’t shake the feeling. And if it were a trap… who would shoulder the blame for it? Not the Lord Director.

The minutes ticked by. The general paced, and his staff officers pointedly ignored him as they studied their screens. Tension grew. He radiated it. They felt it. So far, the Highborn hadn’t reacted. No lasers stabbed out of space. The stations had been destroyed or damaged beyond use. No orbital fighters screamed down to face his fighters. Again, it was splendid, unbelievable success against negligible Highborn defense. It was unprecedented. No Thor missiles (rocks hurled down from orbit and sped by gravity) bombarded strong points.

The staff officers showed their nervousness in various ways. They wiped their hands on their pant legs or they lit non-narcotic stimsticks or they kept their faces impassive or they checked their chronometers every ten seconds or—only one man paced, his shoes click, click, clicking on the tiles.

None of them, despite the tension, the grimness of not knowing, of waiting, glanced at the bionic security men who even now guarded against treachery. Those carbines, those surgically enhanced muscles had one purpose, one goal: to slaughter anyone who lifted his hand against the State, which was to say against Lord Director Enkov.

General James Hawthorne stopped and blotted his mouth with his wrist.

Air Marshal Ulrich growled, “We have them!”

General Hawthorne thoughtfully pursed his lips.

“We’ve caught them by surprise,” agreed Commander Shell. “We’ve cleared near-orbital space of them. Japan is ours for the plucking.”

General Hawthorne studied the TV screens showing deep space. It was empty, devoid of enemy craft. Subtlety, his bony features shifted from unease, to suspicion and then to a grim certainty. “Scramble the interceptors,” he said.

The staff of Space Control turned sharply. Commander Shell took several steps nearer the general before he clicked his heels together. “Sir! Interceptors have limited fuel capacity. They are only to be launched at intervals, thus always keeping a reserve for when the others are forced to land and refuel.”

“I know very well what their limits are,” said General Hawthorne. “Scramble them all.”

“But sir—”

“This instant, Commander.”

The interceptors were planet-based space fighters, a turbine-rocket hybrid. The interceptors’ magneto-hydro-dynamic turbines used atmospheric oxidizer until they reached the vacuum of space, then they switched to chemical rockets. The use of the MHD power plant in the atmosphere saved the bulky chemical fuel for vacuum use alone, increasing the pitifully short range of the interceptors. Even so, the range limits called for utterly precise use. Those uses had been drilled into every space control officer from the moment he began his training.

“We’ve gained tremendous successes,” argued Commander Shell. He was a small, hawkish man, young for one of such high rank. “Now is the time to hold our cards and wait for whatever moves the enemy can make.”

General Hawthorne stared in dread at the screens showing deep space. His gut boiled. Something, a thing he couldn’t see but feel, oh yes, he felt it twisting his innards—He refused to acknowledge Commander Shell.

Commander Shell shot an imploring look at Air Marshal Ulrich.

The bull-shouldered Ulrich stepped near Hawthorne. “James,” he said. “We have them. But if they have something that can catch us when all the interceptors have landed…”

“No,” said Hawthorne, sweat glistening on his face. “If we had really surprised them they’d have thrown something at us by now, some backup, emergency reserve we couldn’t have seen before this.”

“That’s madness!” said Shell. “We took out everything they had in orbit.”

“Yes, much too easily.”

“Their arrogance was their undoing,” said Shell. “The Lord Director was right. We must not let our… fear of them unhinge us.”

Hawthorne glanced at Shell.

“I implore you, General, stick to procedure.”

“This is a trap,” Hawthorne dared say.

“What? Nonsense!”

“Highborn don’t go down so easily. We all know that.”

Commander Shell snorted. “They aren’t really supermen after all. We’ve simply fallen for their propaganda. Our success today proves that.”

Hawthorne stubbornly shook his head. “Launch all your interceptors, Commander.”

Commander Shell hesitated. “Perhaps a call to the Lord Director is in order, General.”

General Hawthorne faced the smaller man. “Anyone disobeying my orders will be immediately shot. Is that understood, Commander?”

Commander Shell thought about that. Finally, he clicked his heels and issued the needed orders.

Air Marshal Ulrich grunted as he stepped beside his friend. He whispered, “You’d better know what you’re doing, James.”

A soft, cynical laugh fell from General Hawthorne’s lips. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace again.

15.

Not all of the electronic gear on the space habs orbiting Earth was trained starward. Several passive optic sensors of great power watched the planet, the East Asian Landmass to be precise. Its operators squirted a message to a special satellite that sent it on to the Doom Star Julius Caesar, presently hidden behind the largest space habitat in the Solar System, the gigantic Tiaping Hab in ‘high’ L-5 orbit. The vice-commander in charge immediately beamed a message to Grand Admiral Cassius aboard the sister Doom Star Genghis Khan, also lurking behind Tiaping Hab.

The Grand Admiral, his eyes alight with the need for bloodshed, barked quick commands. The two Doom Stars—each kilometers in diameter—pumped gravity waves and glided forward under emergency acceleration. Although it had occurred much sooner than anticipated, the premen had at last tripped the wire so carefully set for them. Each Doom Star had taken station eight weeks ago in a stealth move and maintained practically zero radiation and radio signature. Now the admiral would pay the premen back for the arrogance of their nuclear strikes and for daring to destroy the space stations. Now they entered phase three of his intricately mapped strategy. Premen were so naively predictable. He just hoped the entire Free Earth Corps in Japan wouldn’t have to be written off. To start training a new Earth Army all over again… he shrugged. As the brilliant preman Napoleon Bonaparte had once so insightfully said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

16.

“Commander!” shouted a staff officer, breaking the quiet of the command center.

Commander Shell growled, “Report.”

“Doom Stars, sir.”

All eyes turned to the staff officer as Commander Shell and General Hawthorne strode to screen S-Fifteen. They hovered behind the staff officer. With unconcealed dread, they studied the growing shapes. The massive Doom Stars gained momentum as they streaked earthward. Spherical as moons and bristling with weaponry, they were launching squadrons of orbital fighters: squat, wicked craft that every person on Earth had learned to hate.

“They’ve never used Doom Stars this near Earth,” said Hawthorne.

“What are they doing here?” muttered a staff officer.

“We’ve been tricked,” said another.

“They’re deep space vessels,” Commander Shell said. “Caught in Earth’s gravity they’ll be easy prey for us.” He frowned at the screen, at the mass of orbital fighters that were spewed from the two Doom Stars. “How many orbitals do they hold?”

“I thought we destroyed the bulk of them at their stations,” an appalled staff officer whispered.

“I want to know which Doom Stars those are,” said General Hawthorne crisply.

“The Genghis Khan, sir.”

“Grand Admiral Cassius’s flagship?” asked General Hawthorne.

Commander Shell grew pale.

“Yes, sir. And the Julius Caesar, sir.”

Somewhere a man retched. The tension in the command center had grown oppressive. The very air seemed to thicken. The Highborn hadn’t yet used the Doom Stars like this—they couldn’t afford to lose one. Everyone wondered what their potential was when fighting this far down the gravity well of a major planet.

General Hawthorne stared at the two Doom Stars as if he could will them away. The Highborn had out maneuvered them again, and so easily. If he’d known that Doom Stars were so near—disaster loomed.

“Sir,” said Commander Shell, “this means—”

“All interceptors at the Genghis Khan,” whispered General Hawthorne, glad he’d insisted they all be launched. Already a plan formed in his brilliant mind, a risky, all or nothing gamble.

“What?” said Shell. “But that’s suicide! The Doom Stars are still too far out. Let them come into closer Earth orbit.”

“Don’t you think I know they’re still too far out?” shouted Hawthorne.

Commander Shell took a step back.

General Hawthorne breathed deeply, once more using his sleeve to dab his features. “Straight at the Genghis Khan,” he said softly. “We have to buy our boys time and pray for luck. We’ll have the added advantage of surprise.”

“What?” said Shell. “Surprise?”

“They’ll never expect us to throw the interceptors so deep into space.”

A visibly agitated Commander Shell collected himself. Once he had been the highest rated interceptor pilot of Earth. His first love still lay there. Everyone knew it.

“General Hawthorne, sir….” Commander Shell straightened his uniform, stepping closer and saluting. “I respectfully beg to report, sir, we cannot afford to throw away the interceptors.”

“Thank you, Commander. I understand your feelings.”

“Sir! I—”

“I said thank you, Commander.” General Hawthorne stared the smaller man down.

At first Shell stiffened, and something in his manner alerted the bionic guards along the walls.

They shifted their attention to him, an ominous, absorbing interest. He glanced at them. A nervous tic twisted the commander’s mouth. Now he couldn’t seem to bring himself to stare back into General Hawthorne’s eyes. Yet he was a stubborn man, and with eyes downcast, he faced the general. “Sir, if we regroup and scramble North and South American squadrons and met the enemy in the stratosphere—”

“No.”

Commander Shell swallowed audibly. “Sir,” he said, his shoulders hunching and something elemental draining from him. He turned to the screen.

So did General Hawthorne. Already the interceptors popped out of the stratosphere and into space. Their rockets glowed orange as they shot toward the nearer Genghis Khan. As far out as the Doom Star was, it would be doubtful that the interceptors would have enough rocket fuel to return to Earth, not after burning their reserves in space-battle maneuvering.

“The orbitals have high ground,” whispered Shell.

General Hawthorne knew that in terms of a space battle Earth was a heavy gravity well. That any craft coming toward the planet came as if down a steep hill and any craft heading up fought gravity, the same for their torpedoes and missiles. As it was, the squat orbital fighters already held every advantage over the interceptors. To give them high ground as well…

Commander Shell, trembling, ashen-faced, turned for the last time toward General Hawthorne. “Sir—”

The general put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “We’re going to take massive losses today. My only goal now is make them bleed as much as possible. That means some of the amphibious troops have to make it through.” In an authoritative voice he said, “Alert the merculite batteries and the proton stations!”

“We can’t fire until the interceptors are out of the way,” said Shell.

General Hawthorne stared steely-eyed at the screen. “Like you said, Commander, our interceptors don’t have a chance. But they can still be of use as decoys.”

A staff officer said, “The batteries and stations are online, sir!”

“Tell them to target the Genghis Khan and fire everything they have.”

Upon hearing those words, a shocked Space Commander Shell slumped into a nearby chair. His eyes seemed to film with tears, but it was difficult to tell.

17.

The bloody remnants of the 93rd Slumlords fell upon a trench line of Samurai defenders. Men fired at pointblank range. Vibroknives whined; the dying screamed and the shock of grenades hurled both attackers and defenders against the trench walls. Then Captain Sigmir jumped down among them. With his gyroc pistol, he blasted Samurais into gory chunks. When his gun clicked empty, he went berserk. Armored elbows, hands and feet, he lashed in every direction, laughing in maniacal glee as he slaughtered those weaker than him.

Then it was over, the trench taken. The survivors crumpled and tore off their helmets, gasping for air. They were shaken and surprised to be alive. Their faces reflected the certain knowledge that they’d been transported to Hell and that no one knew the way back. Slowly, sanity returned to their eyes. They were embarrassed to glance at each other, to know that others had seen them behave like animals so they could endure another hour of life.

Three hundred meters in front of them towered their goal, the end of a savage quest, a cup of blood that they’d paid in pounds of flesh to sip. The mighty merculite missile station was almost in their grasp—it seemed that they would be the first to reach it. After weeks of butchery and dying, the 93rd Slumlords had breached the battery’s outer defenses. Few of the original FEC soldiers were left: Marten, Omi, Turbo, Stick, Kang, Petor and a few others. The 10th Company had less than forty soldiers to its name. Those few set up flamer tripods and smart missile sites. The others guzzled synthahol and cleared filth off their weapons.

These past weeks the FEC 4th and 7th Armies had been bled white, lashed to the attack by the Highborn battalions to their rear and the Lot Six commanders among them. The 5th Panzer Corps also prowled the rear lines, adding to the menace for possible deserters. Both FEC infantry armies were like javelins, hurled at the enemy and broken upon them, but not before killing the target. Effective Tokyo defense had ended, except for pockets of fanatical diehards. The toughest enemy clot remained around the merculite missile station. The FEC survivors now stormed those outer lines, pouring their lives away for the dubious honor of being first to breach the high-tech site.

Sigmir reloaded his pistol and ordered weary men to their feet—they had been attacking continuously for thirteen hours. He motioned to Marten, and together they explored the trench system, finally coming to the trench nearest the station that towered five stories tall. Nearly two hundred meters to their left, FEC storm groups clambered out of the trench and ran in a hunched crouch toward the station.

“No!” hissed Sigmir, as he brought up his gyroc, leveling it at FEC troops that belonged to a different Highborn.

As he aimed mines roared out of the ground where the storm groups ran, killing almost all of them in flashes of flames and hot shrapnel.

Relieved, Sigmir lowered his gun.

“Pathetic suicide,” Marten said bitterly. He hated Sigmir. The Highborn… he couldn’t decide whom he hated more, PHC officers like Major Orlov or Highborn madman like Captain Sigmir.

Sigmir narrowed his intense gaze as he studied the station. His broad, snow-white face was a strange blend of almost sexual relief and twisted, unbearable tension.

“Maybe one of the Samurais we killed has a map of the minefield,” Stick suggested.

Omi snorted at the idea.

“We’ll have to slither over the top to get there,” said Sigmir. “We’ll use sonics to detect and then avoid the mines.”

“And die to a flamer sweep,” said Marten.

Any good humor he might have had drained from the seven-foot Sigmir. His eyes held death, had seen death, lived it and come back again. The tension in him coiled tighter than ever. What made him an invincible warrior, a death-dealing machine, now radiated toward his own men—that might dare thwart him so near his goal. Softly, with infinite menace, he asked, “You have a better idea, Lieutenant?”

“Yes.” Marten gestured to the FEC soldiers that had survived the mines and now furiously dug foxholes as protection against gunfire from the fort. “But until we bring those men out there back here we can’t use my idea.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Sigmir. “Tell me.”

Marten hesitated. The fanatical way Sigmir scratched his throat told him he didn’t really have an option—unless he wanted to kill his commander. But with Highborn that was surer suicide than running over the top. “It’s simple,” Marten said. “Order an artillery barrage onto the mines.”

“Perfect.” Sigmir rubbed his hands, and he lifted his com-unit.

“Wait,” said Marten. “We have to bring them back first.”

“Negative,” said Sigmir. “There’s not enough time for that. Someone else might enter the station before me if we wait.”

“You’d murder them?” Turbo asked in outrage.

Sigmir whirled on him.

“He’s tired,” said Marten hurriedly. “It’s been a long thirteen hours.”

Stick nudged Turbo and whispered hotly in his ear.

Turbo got that stubborn look, shaking his head. He told Sigmir, “Crawling out there is insane. Worse, it’s death.”

Sigmir laughed mirthlessly. “What do you know about ‘worse than death’?”

Turbo maybe realized his danger. He shut his mouth and shrugged.

“Yes,” purred Sigmir. “It’s like I thought. You know nothing. So I will teach you.” He shoved his pistol against Turbo’s face.

“No!” shouted Marten.

Sigmir fired. Turbo’s head disintegrated and his torso flopped to the bottom of the trench. Sigmir jumped back, aiming the gyroc at all of them. “Who else questions me?” he asked in a strange, transported sort of way, as if this was the extreme moment of his life.

They were too stunned to react, and the huge muzzle of the .75 gyroc was aimed at them. Perhaps it was the thirteen hours of constant combat. Besides, what was one more death anyway, even if that of their friend? Before they knew it, Sigmir called for an artillery strike.

“Get down,” he ordered.

Marten and the others put on helmets and crouched low, their heads between their knees. Soon hellish screams told of incoming fire. The ground shook and buckled as 155mm and 209mm shells impacted with tremendous roars. High explosive shards flew everywhere, shredding whatever was caught in the open.

Marten endured. If he died, then it was over. If he lived… a savage snarl twisted his lips. Turbo!

The barrage stopped, an awful stillness taking its place. All Marten heard was buzzing and an inner roar. He dared lift his head. A bloody haze mingled with the dust and the rubble that had been rearranged. Beyond the worked-over ground stood the mighty merculite station, the same as ever.

He couldn’t believe that Turbo was dead, killed, murdered by Sigmir, just as the FEC soldiers out there in the minefield had been butchered.

“Over the top,” shouted Sigmir.

At that moment, the four-thousand-ton clamshell of the merculite missile station whirled open. Rockets roared into life, once more making speech impossible. Huge, heavy missiles lifted out of the station, flames belching behind them. Missile after missile rose and accelerated into the heavens.

As they did, Marten and the others climbed out of the trench, sonic locators in their hands as they crawled across no man’s land. Most of the mines had been destroyed. But some always remained. A great weariness filled Marten. It made him so tired that he almost didn’t care that Sigmir had murdered his friend. Turbo… there would be no revival for a preman, for a subhuman, a nothing to these… these who called themselves superior, Highborn.

As Marten crawled through the plowed-up ground, he glanced at Omi. The ex-gunman had a hard, grim look. A little farther back, Stick clenched his teeth in rage. If they made it across this expanse—Sigmir’s day was near at hand.

Marten’s sonic locator beeped. A live mine was getting ready to leap.

18.

Over half of Earth’s interceptors hurdled toward the Genghis Khan. Torpedoes poured out of the interceptors’ tubes and their laser cannons spewed at will. The Genghis Khan’s anti-missiles knocked out ninety-nine percent of the interceptors’ torpedoes. Packets of prismatic chaff absorbed the lasers. Then the orbital fighters began a turkey shoot, destroying interceptors as fast as they could target, lock and fire.

Amid the slaughter, the heavy proton beams from Manila, Taipei, Shanghai and Vladivostok shone. Interceptors and orbital fighters—every space vessel caught in the dull-colored beam—vanished. The real target sprayed lead-lined gel, thousand pound layers of it. The gel absorbed protons, dissipating strength. The proton beams didn’t flash in pulses like lasers, however, but maintained constant targeting. The gel heated, melted, and then vanished. The Genghis Khan sprayed more. Their supply seemed endless. Yet the new and deadly beams kept shining. Closer and closer, the devastating fury of the proton beams neared the Doom Star.

Grand Admiral Cassius roared orders.

Million-ton chunks of rock previously blown off the moon were maneuvered into position. General Hawthorne’s assessment teams had considered them mining asteroids brought near Earth for the industrial habs in high L-5 orbit. Their assessment was horribly wrong. Engines attached to the million-ton rocks pumped furiously. Targeting computers guided the rocks toward their impact points on Earth.

Meanwhile, the first merculite missiles streaked out of the gravity well of Earth and toward the Genghis Khan. Normally it would have been simplicity itself for the Highborn to knock out the merculites. However, the orbital fighters alone didn’t have the ECM power to lock onto them. The Julius Caesar tried, but amid the proton beams, the incredible gel mass between it and its target and the orbital fighters, the Julius Caesar failed for the first time in its existence. Anti-missiles from the Genghis Khan zoomed at the merculites. The heavily armored Earth rockets shrugged off the majority of the anti-missiles. Of course, a few of the merculites were shifted off target by the blasts. A few headed for deep space. Very few of the merculites exploded. But more than one slammed into the Doom Star Genghis Khan.

Explosions like volcanoes threw metal, air and flesh into space. Flames roared briefly, mere nanoseconds, before vacuum stole the needed oxygen. The Doom Star was compartmentalized like a beehive, but Grand Admiral Cassius was flabbergasted that the premen had attained this much. The Doom Stars were the Highborn, the essence of their power. If one was destroyed….

More merculites hit the stricken vessel.

Admiral Cassius closed his eyes, trying to contain his rage. He breathed heavily, opened bloodshot eyes and ordered the Genghis Khan to break off.

As he spoke, more explosions rocked the massive ship. Damage control reported a full eighth of the ship on fire or destroyed. Another eighth was in immediate danger. The Genghis Khan could very well be destroyed if something wasn’t done fast to counteract such a tragedy.

Reluctant, enraged, baffled, Grand Admiral Cassius ordered an antimatter strike in near space.

Bombs sped almost instantly from the Genghis Khan and detonated just as fast. Killing EMP surges washed over the Doom Stars and down at the merculites racing up. Hundreds of orbital fighters and the remaining interceptors died in the antimatter blasts. Thousands of Highborn aboard the Genghis Khan perished or they would die in hours or days from poisoning. Social Unity had never managed to strike such a savage blow before.

The antimatter blasts gave the Genghis Khan the time she needed. The Julius Caesar finally hove into position. Her anti-missiles and more importantly her heavy beams blew up the next flight of merculites. And now the million-ton rocks entered the stratosphere.

“Scum!” roared Cassius. “Animals! Eat this!”

19.

Cheers filled the command center as the Genghis Khan broke off. Men leaped to their feet and hugged one another. The Highborn weren’t invincible. They could be beaten after all.

Space Commander Shell rose to his feet and squared his shoulders as he took off his hat and placed it over his heart. Air Marshal Ulrich slapped him on the back. “Brave lads.”

“The best,” whispered Shell.

General James Hawthorne glared at screen after screen.

“Sir!” shouted a staff officer.

Hawthorne strode to him and gaped at what he saw. It looked like a meteorite. “Where’s it targeted?”

“Beijing, sir.”

The cheers died as men turned to look at the TV screens.

“Hong Kong!” shouted another man, pointing at his screen and the vast meteorite it showed.

“Taipei!”

“Manila!”

“Shanghai!”

“What do we have that can stop them?” shouted Hawthorne.

Space Commander Shell shook his head. Air Marshal Ulrich was speechless. There was nothing.

“What about nukes, sir,” suggested a staff officer.

“Target the Beijing meteorite with nukes!” shouted Hawthorne. “Now!”

A staff officer shouted orders.

On screen, the meteorites streaked toward Earth, the proton beams washing them unable to destroy enough of them to matter.

“Sir! We need Lord Director Enkov’s authorization to launch nuclear weapons!”

“Raise him,” snapped Hawthorne. “You, order them to launch regardless of authorization, on my authority.” Hawthorne found himself spun around to face the captain of the bionic men.

“Belay that order,” the bionic man said.

“Look at the screen!” shouted Hawthorne. “Unless I destroy that meteorite Beijing will be obliterated, and so will the other cities. Then Enkov will die. I don’t think he’s going to thank you for that.”

”Lord Director Enkov,” corrected the bionic man.

“You fool!”

The pressure on Hawthorne’s arm increased painfully. In moments, the bone would break. “Listen to me.” Then it felt as if his bone creaked in complaint. The bone felt like a piece of lumber under terrific pressure.

“Cancel my order,” whispered Hawthorne.

The staff officer said, “But, sir—” A bionic guard put a gun against that man’s ribs. “Yes, sir,” said the staff officer.

In the rest of the command center, the other bionic security men along the walls trained their carbines on the staff officers. A massacre of debilitating proportions seemed only seconds away.

“I beg you to listen to me,” Hawthorne told the bionic captain. “We have—”

“Impact in thirty seconds, sir!”

Hawthorne turned from the shouting staff officer and stared into the bionic man’s eyes. It was difficult to think with that bone-crushing grip on his arm. The bionic man didn’t seem to be straining at all. Briefly, Hawthorne wondered why they didn’t create an army of these bionic men. Then he had to use all his concentration in order to form his words. He said, “Your loyalty and obedience is impeccable, but surely you can see that we must save the Lord Director’s life, not to mention our capital.”

A sour smile creased the bionic captain’s lips. “Disobedience is not allowed. Termination is the result, both yours and mine. I refuse to be terminated.”

“Look at the screen.”

“Yes, unfortunate.”

“Are you willing that the Lord Director should perish?”

“Obedience is mandatory.”

“Look,” said Hawthorne, trying to turn and look at the screen.

“Negative,” said the bionic man, using his infinitely greater strength to keep Hawthorne from turning.

“Ten seconds!”

“I have to order a nuclear strike,” General Hawthorne shouted.

“Eight seconds, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… impact.”

From the various screens, bright glares filled the room. The seconds ticked by. Then a rumble, a quake, caused the underground bunker to quiver. Soon the shockwave passed.

“Beijing is gone,” whispered a man.

The bionic man released General Hawthorne.

Hawthorne staggered away from the bionic captain. The general gingerly massaged his biceps and wondered if his arm was permanently damaged.

“Manila, gone. Taipei, gone. Vladivostok—”

“Now what, sir?”

General Hawthorne tried to collect himself. It was difficult. The scale of death was… millions, no, maybe a billion dead. He couldn’t visualize it. His chest threatened to lock up as his heart hammered.

“The Julius Caesar is entering low-Earth orbit, sir, the stratosphere. And the Genghis Khan seems to have turned around. It’s coming back.”

General Hawthorne looked up. The Doom Stars filled the screen, part of the Genghis Khan a mass of smoking wreckage.

“We badly hurt one of them,” whispered Ulrich.

General Hawthorne squinted. The main brunt of the amphibious assault had yet to be touched by the Highborn. Was it possible to snatch victory from this… this… could one call a billion deaths a mere blow?

“Lord Director Enkov on line seven, sir.”

“He’s alive?” General Hawthorne asked in amazement.

Before he could say more the bionic captain hustled him to line seven. There he saw the haggard, angry face of Lord Director Enkov. No doubt, the Lord Director was already looking for a scapegoat. General Hawthorne had few illusions about who that would be.

20.

Murderous gun-battles raged in the merculite missile station. The last of the Kamikazes, Samurais, rocket engineers, hastily trained civilians and ex-police officers refused to surrender. They fought with whatever tools were at hand. They were more stubborn at the end than they had been at any other time in the Siege of Tokyo.

Showing no mercy, the FEC soldiers kept coming. After silencing the heavy machinegun ports and blowing the underground locks, the last of the 93rd Slumlords had stormed into the station. Behind the super-thick station walls and below the four-thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete, the merculite station was a vast fortress filled with rows upon rows of heavy merculite rockets.

Perhaps sixty of the huge, armored missiles waited on a conveyer. They looked like bullets on a machinegun belt, and were fed to four blast pans: the launch sites. Between the blast pans raged the gun battles. Bullets and shrapnel bounced off the vast missiles.

Heavy body armor turned the battle in favor of the Slumlords. Remorselessly, they advanced toward the control room. Men in tattered rags crawled along the girders, dropping grenades. They popped out of supply tunnels, guns blazing. Each time, lasers and gyrocs cut them down. Then a last remaining squad of Samurais leapfrogged to the attack. They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and blown to bits. Their blood stained three of the rockets that were closest to the blast pans.

Marten led his assault group, their weapons smoking from constant use. Alone or grouped in twos or threes they sprinted, bounded or crawled to new positions. Lasers beamed, machine pistols chattered and gyrocs barked. All around the FEC soldiers, the colossal missiles towered over them. To Marten, they seemed like idols, things that should be worshiped and most of all feared. The merculite missile station was a cathedral to war, to man’s madness and killer instinct. It was only right then that men murder men in this place.

“Why don’t they surrender?” shouted Stick, slapping a new clip of grenades into his electromag launcher.

“They can’t,” said Omi, lifting his laser and burning a hole in an engineer that raced at them with a wrench.

“Why not?” said Stick, laying down a pattern of grenade fire that slew another four unfortunates.

“Because they’re insane,” Omi said, “beyond reason.”

Marten marveled at these last Japanese even as he killed them. A squad of political police officers screamed a war cry as they ran at them. They fired stunners, utterly ineffectual against combat-armored soldiers. Some of Marten’s men actually stood up, taking the brunt of the stunner fire as they blew apart the pathetic, would-be warriors.

When the last police officer fell, Marten rose. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned his men forward. Sigmir’s assault group rose and followed.

Marten paused at the corpse of one of the stunner men. The man must have known his weapon couldn’t hurt armored soldiers. So why had…. Marten’s chest tightened. He reached down and took a tangler that was attached to the corpse’s belt. He hadn’t seen one of these since…. His stomach fluttered as he thought about the Sun-Works Factory circling Mercury. For years there with his parents, all he’d ever used was a tangler, one just like this. It was a policeman’s weapon, useless on the battlefield.

A feeling suddenly came over him, an insight into himself. These Japanese were like his parents. They’d never given in, but had died for freedom. Yet what good was dying? He stuffed the tangler in his pack and hurried after his assault group. They knelt behind some missiles, trading fire with….

Marten threw himself onto the concrete floor, an enemy grenade flying over him.

“Look out!” he yelled. He rolled left, behind the nearest missile.

A flash and a scream told of another FEC death. How many had to die before the Siege for Tokyo was over? Then he saw motion, the bomb-thrower sprinting to get nearer them. In a single, liquid move, Marten rose and fired. Riddled with bullets, the bomb-thrower staggered backward, a look of shock on his face.

Marten hated Social Unity, but he felt pity for these poor sods. Then he squinted thoughtfully. He didn’t love the Highborn either. He laughed—at last understanding who he was.

“What is it?” shouted Stick, who stood nearby, slapping yet another grenade clip into his launcher.

Marten shook his head. But it had come to him, finally. He belonged to neither side. He was his own side, as his parents had been their own side. And what side was that? the cynical part of him asked. Freedom’s side, he decided.

In that instant, he conceived something new within himself, the germ of a new country, or perhaps one that was very, very old and would be reborn again. In his land—the one he now bore in himself, as a pregnant woman bears a new life—a murderer would pay for stealing another man’s life.

“I see it!” shouted Petor.

Marten snapped out of his musing and peered around his missile. He saw it too. It was a door marked CONTROL ROOM.

Sigmir howled, and he dashed toward the entrance. Amazed at the berserk rush, the FEC soldiers of the 93rd Slumlord Battalion watched the huge Lot Six Highborn hurl himself at the door. It burst apart on impact. Sigmir rolled in amidst gunfire. He roared a battle cry as he leaped up and let his gyroc bark.

At the very same instant, the clamshell top whirled open to the nighttime sky. A loud clank sounded as the heavy missiles lurched toward the four blast pans.

“Look at that,” shouted Stick. He pointed up into the sky. “What is it?”

Marten peered where Stick pointed. His jaw dropped.

Through a break in the smoke, he saw the full moon. It had a dirty color because of the haze. In front of the moon slid a perfectly circular shape. It too seemed far away. But for something so far away to block out even part of the moon’s light, the thing would have to be enormous.

Then it came to Marten, and goosebumps ran up and down his spine.

“What is it?” shouted Stick.

“…Doom Star,” whispered Marten.

Stick looked at him as if he were crazy. “Doom Stars don’t come close enough to Earth to be seen by the likes of us.”

“What else can it be?” asked Omi, who looked up too.

Stick shrugged, and all three of them studied the huge circular shape that slowly slid in front of the moon. Each gasped as the huge shape lit up. Beams, missiles, or that weird gel they’d heard about, something leaving the ship made a play of pretty colors. One of those pretty colors became a beam that slashed through the clouds. Before it could stab within the site, into the merculite missile station, the four-thousand-ton dome whirled shut on its gargantuan hydraulic sleds.

Omi, Stick and Marten exchanged glances. Within the merculite station, the sounds of gunfire, of battle, died down.

“It’s finished,” said Stick.

Omi raised his eyebrows.

“We’ve taken the merculite missile battery,” the former knifeboy said.

“You mean that Sigmir has,” Omi corrected.

“Yeah,” said Marten. He knew now that he carried something critical within himself. But if freedom were to be reborn, he had to act the part of a true man today. He nodded sharply to his two friends, asking, “Do you two remember Turbo?”

Their faces hardened.

Stick said, “We remember. But we can’t do anything about that now.”

“Why not?” asked Marten.

“Because it would mean our deaths,” Omi said.

“Given that we’d even be able to kill him,” Stick added.

“Do you doubt our abilities?” Marten asked.

Neither of them answered.

“I don’t,” Marten said. He turned and marched for the control room. A moment later, he heard Stick and Omi behind him.

As Marten entered the bloody room, Stick whispered, “How you gonna make it so we don’t die in return?”

Sigmir sat the controls—the panels circled the room. A heap of dead technicians lay on the floor.

The huge Highborn spun in his chair, facing them. “Gentlemen, it is done and I have won.”

Marten stopped, with Stick flanking one side of him, Omi the other.

Sigmir glanced at each of them in turn, his dead-seeming eyes searching theirs. With the reactions of an auto-sweep, he fired at Stick. Marten rolled. Omi cursed and beamed Sigmir. The laser light bounced off Sigmir’s shiny armor; unknown to them it had been reflected, laser-proofed. Stick grunted. The gyroc shell lodged in the armor joint of his torso and right arm. Then the shell exploded and Stick blew to the floor, dead. Marten fired round after round against Sigmir’s armor. The bullets bounced off to little effect, even though Marten was hoping to weaken the armor by repeatedly hitting the same spot.

Sigmir roared with laughter and re-aimed his gyroc. Marten leaped aside. The explosion of the shell threw him hard onto the floor. Both Omi’s laser and Marten’s machinegun were powerless against Sigmir’s superior armor. Realizing that, Marten dropped his gun and drew the tangler from his pack.

“Fool!” bellowed Sigmir.

Marten and he fired at the same instant. The gyroc round was a dud and failed to ignite. It still hit Marten in the chest and threw him backward. The strong sticky strands, meanwhile, tangled the seven-foot berserker.

Sigmir shouted wildly and strained to snap the strands.

Bruised and aching, Marten rose and emptied his tangler onto Sigmir, cocooning him with the wire-thin strands.

“Release me!” roared Sigmir.

Omi shot off the radio attached to the Lot Six Commander’s helmet.

Marten dashed to the controls of the merculite station. They were of similar design to those in the Sun-Works Factory. His fingers played over them. Then Marten ran, shouting to Omi, “Come on!”

“Preman!” Sigmir bellowed. “Release me or face my wrath.”

Marten didn’t pause. He ran out of the control room, shouting orders at everyone to retreat. Above them, the clamshell top whirled open and the missiles lurched toward the blast pans.

“Evacuate the station!” bellowed Marten. “Hurry!”

“Where’s Sigmir?” shouted Petor, running toward them.

Marten nodded to Omi. Omi waited until the bodyguard was almost on them. Then he indicated that Petor flip open his visor. He did so. Omi plunged a vibroblade into the bodyguard’s face.

***

Panting, running for the nearby trench line, Marten peered up at the night sky. Four missiles launched from the merculite station. Far above, the Doom Star glowed. All around Tokyo and farther a-field terrible laser beams flared.

“Run!” Marten roared.

FEC soldiers ran, knowing that they had only seconds left. They only just made it to the trenches.

Marten landed hard, almost knocking the wind of out himself. The night erupted in a blaze of fire and steel and rocking shockwaves. Marten lay curled into a fetal ball. The pounding was worse than anything he’d faced so far. Heat washed over the trench. Shrapnel that had once been the inside of the merculite missile station flew over in bunches. Bits of dust and concrete rained upon the FEC soldiers, causing each man to tremble violently because he thought it meant the end. They endured the Doom Star beaming of the inner missile site. The intensity of the explosions shook their nerves near the breaking point. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, it stopped.

Marten and Omi uncurled. They avoided looking at each other because each knew from experience that a haunted look would stare back from a zombie’s mask. So they breathed gingerly, amazed that they could still be alive.

“Here comes the Colonel,” said a man.

Marten dragged himself upright. He wouldn’t lie. He’d tell him that Sigmir must have been caught in the merculite station. Everyone knew how insane the Captain was about capturing it. He must not have run away in time, but if the Colonel didn’t buy the story…

Marten glanced at Omi.

Omi whispered, “Then we’ll have to kill him, too.”

Marten smiled grimly in agreement.

21.

General James Hawthorne left the command center in time to forgo watching his carefully assembled armada and army demolished unit after unit by the Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan Doom Stars. Thousands of bombers, fighters and choppers, wiped out by heavy beams. More than five thousand stratosphere-launched missiles blasted the transports laden with a hundred battalions. Surfacing flattops and cruise missile submarines were finished by a combination of beams, missiles and underwater nukes. And in their place, deeply deployed subs rose and disgorged power-armored Highborn onto Japan.

The careful gathering of hardware and military personnel in the massive build-up… the leaders of Social Unity had made it possible for the Highborn to destroy more units than they had ever been able to find since the start of the war. Perhaps it was true that the Highborn had been bloodied more than ever. The ledger, however, weighed heavily in Highborn favor.

That much General James Hawthorne knew as he rode a fast ground effects vehicle, a GEV, to meet with Lord Director Enkov. The compartment he rode in was sealed from the world. He wore neither chains nor handcuffs, but in the GEV compartment with him sat the bionic captain and five of his most trusted bionic soldiers.

They had hustled General Hawthorne out of the command center. They had marched him past the general’s own security men and past the armor units who had secretly pledged personal loyalty to James Hawthorne. Lord Director Enkov had given strict orders concerning the general, and no one had the firepower or the will to take on the bionic guards and thereby thwart the leader of Social Unity.

General Hawthorne contemplated his future. How odd was fate, how twisted and bizarre. He glanced at the bionic captain, and said, “The Lord Director’s instincts are impeccable. He had to have fled Beijing only hours before its destruction. His survival skills are unrivaled, wouldn’t you say?”

The bionic captain remained impassive. A massively built man, with artificial muscles and stimulant-powered reflexes, he sat ramrod stiff, eyes forward. His five trusted soldiers sat likewise, with the added feature of short, bullpup carbines held in their grimly powerful grips. Armor vests added to their invincibility.

“Enkov does not intend me to survive the meeting with him,” Hawthorne mused. He seemed remarkably composed in spite of his statement. “I’m sure he’ll ask you to report on my comportment during the operation.”

The bionic captain minutely changed position, so he stared impassively at the general.

“I tried to do my duty as I saw fit,” said Hawthorne. “I of course will tell him that you were simply trying to do yours.”

“I obeyed my orders.”

“Of course,” said Hawthorne. “And like the Lord Director I too believe that obedience is the highest military virtue. Of course, not all virtue belongs to the soldier. Some must belong to the commander. Chief among the virtues he should possess is loyalty—Loyalty to one’s subordinates and to one’s own orders. Otherwise a commander is merely whimsical and therefore not worthy of obedience.”

The bionic captain allowed himself the tiniest of frowns, and a faint downward twitch of the smallest portion of the left side of his mouth. “Lord Director Enkov does not plan your death to be a pleasant one.”

“Such is my own belief.”

“Yet you are calm.”

General Hawthorne shrugged. Then he sat still, a tall gaunt general with wispy blond hair, bony features composed and a row of medals on his chest. The bionic captain had allowed him time to don his dress uniform, a considerate gesture.

Soon the GEV stopped, settling onto the ground. The door opened and the bionic captain and his five soldiers escorted the general step into an underground bunker. The ultra-clean garage of the bunker held many tanks and GEVs and a company of black uniformed allegiance monitors aiming pistols at him. They wore black helmets with dark shaded visors. All of them were tense, ready for anything. .

The bionic captain marched his five men and General Hawthorne past the allegiance monitors and into a sterile white corridor. More bionic men stood at attention along the corridors. No one said a word as General James Hawthorne’s heels drummed upon the tiles. Impassively, they watched. How carefully and zealously Enkov had built up this special Corps of new men, Hawthorne thought. Surely now the Lord Director had to rule with a greater severity than before. A purge would be in order, a cleaning out of the traitors in the military who had allowed such an unprecedented disaster. At least Hawthorne was certain this was how Enkov would be thinking. Today, Hawthorne himself would be the first scapegoat.

They finally reached a steel door—the end of the corridor, end of the line. The door slid open, and the captain and his five most trusted men marched the general into a small room, interrogation sized. Lord Director Enkov sat behind a rather small desk. Flanking him stood his original bionic bodyguard.

A plain wooden chair sat before the desk.

“Sit,” wheezed the old, wrinkled man who held supreme power.

General Hawthorne sat.

With a trembling, palsied hand, Enkov stuck a stimstick between his withered lips. His eyes seemed to glitter with promised death for everyone who had failed him. As the stimstick glowed into life, the Lord Director pointed an accusatory finger at the general.

“You failed.”

“May I speak?” asked Hawthorne.

The bionic captain shifted uncomfortably.

Enkov noticed. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He leaned back in his chair and eyed the captain of his guards at the military command center of all Earth. It had been a post of high rank, surely one of the Lord Director’s most trusted positions. The evidence of the captain’s five-man security team, still armed in his presence, showed the truth of this.

Enkov asked, “Do you have something to report, Captain?”

“He did his duty,” General Hawthorne said.

The Lord Director lifted his bushy white eyebrows. Red smoke drifted out of his nostrils. “I don’t recall asking you a question, General.”

“No,” agreed Hawthorne. “But it’s time we told the truth, you and I. And heard the truth, too,” he said to the bionic captain.

Enkov glanced from the bionic captain to the general. A mixture of caution, suspicion and—was that fear?—mingled in the old man’s features. He noticed the port arms of the five trusted bionic soldiers. The Lord Director leaned toward his intercom.

The bionic captain, the one who had stopped General Hawthorne from using nuclear weapons to stop the million-ton meteorites, gave his men a subtle finger-signal. They raised their carbines and riddled the Lord Director’s bodyguard with bullets.

The Lord Director jerked back in his chair, surprised and bewildered at this sudden turn of events.

“You are relieved of duty, sir,” General Hawthorne told Enkov.

The stimstick dropped out of Enkov’s mouth. Then he snapped forward as his old, palsied hand reached for the intercom button. The hand never made it. The carbines spoke again. And the ancient, Lord Director fell to the clean floor, dead.

***

A half-hour later, the bionic guards ushered the General into Director Blanche-Aster’s office. She sat in a wheelchair, a red plaid blanket over her useless legs and a bulky medical unit hooked into her and keeping her alive. Her face was drawn and old and she wore a turban because it was rumored that all her hair had fallen out. Her eyes yet shone with dangerous life.

“General Hawthorne,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice.

“Director.”

“By killing the Lord Director, you have committed a horrible deed.”

“I stand by it,” he said, determined to die with dignity.

“Do you? Do you indeed?”

“The Lord Director’s arrogance cost Earth too dearly,” General Hawthorne said. “He had a debt to pay and I merely helped him pay it.”

“That’s claptrap, General. Your neck was on the block and you did what you had to in order to save it. Or do you think me so dull that I’d actually believe that you’re committed to saving Earth?”

General Hawthorne clicked his heels together. “Director, I think of nothing else.”

She studied him with those dangerously bright eyes, with those deeply knowledgeable eyes. “A single word from me, a nod even, and you’ll be dragged out and shot like a murderous junkie.”

“Yes, Director.”

“Don’t interrupt me, General.”

He tilted his head in acknowledgement.

“I could first have you tortured, lingeringly tortured, the scene saved on video for the world to watch.”

His stomach knotted, but he kept the bitter emotions off his face.

“Yet I need someone to run the war, General. I need someone who can hurt the Highborn. You’ve hurt them. Tell me, if you fought this war under my direction, could you win it?”

He peered straight into her eyes. “I could.”

“Director,” she admonished.

“Director,” he said.

“I’m reinstating you as the Supreme Commander of Social Unity. And I insist that you defeat the Highborn.”

“I will do my duty, Director, to the very best of my ability.”

“Hmm. Yes, I really do hope so.” A hard, wintry smile twisted her face. “So hadn’t you be off then, my General?”

General James Hawthorne saluted smartly, turned on his heel and marched out of her office. He had a war to win.

22.

Transcript #42,124 Highborn Archives: an exchange of notes between Paenus, Inspector General, Earth, and Cassius, Grand Admiral of Highborn. Dates: May 13 to May 17, 2350

May 13

To Cassius:

Hail the Grand Admiral! Glorious! Victorious! The very Earth trembles at your audacious blow struck amidst treacherous sneak attacks and a startling new enemy beam weapon heretofore unknown. I salute you, Grand Admiral. Your strategic brilliance awes us in Training Army, Earth.

I am pleased to inform you that ahead of schedule Australian levies E, F and G have been trained to competency and await FEC Army assignments. Alas, not all is perfect. We still await the Antarctica transshipments of the new Praetor Mark III panzers. Three battalions of veteran panzer crews have been assigned them, but until we receive the transshipment, training will continue to be delayed. Otherwise, Grand Admiral, excellence reigns in Training Army, Earth.

May 14

To Paenus:

The Japanese furnace all but devoured our FEC Divisions. Despite overwhelming losses, however, they held. You are to be congratulated on your training procedures, my dear Paenus. The panzer crews proved disciplined, although yet lacking in true exploitation zeal. Still, under the circumstances of narrow, built up fronts and mountainous terrain, I am not displeased with their performance.

Paenus, our glorious victory of 10 May moves the Campaign for the Solar System into its next phase. I must ask that you scour the FEC Divisions recently thrown into the Japanese cauldron and designate several “hero” units. At once, contact Commander Brutus of Ninth FEC Army so he may award honors to the deserving premen. The numbers need not be large, but only “heroic” formations must be chosen. Said troops will be transferred to Training Commandos, Space. I regret your loss of these trained soldiers, but we are stretched everywhere. Your quick compliance is appreciated.

May 15

To Cassius:

Long live the Grand Admiral! To hear is to obey. My inspection officers fly to the Japanese Islands even as I write this missive. They will scour the FEC formations and present you with heroes or with premen with enough savagery, skill and battle luck so they will not sully the reputation of the Commandos.

May 16

To Paenus:

Your choices, I know, will be excellent. And ensure, too, proper pomp and circumstances during the honor ceremonies in order to heighten FEC morale. As you know, the premen are a touchy species, given to dramatic emotional displays. But then you know this better than I, my dear Paenus. Are you not the architect of our valorous FEC formations?

Salutations and Congratulations on a duty well preformed.

23.

The 93rd Slumlord Battalion, all seventeen survivors, wore dress uniforms as they waited on parade to be pinned with medals by the Inspector General of Training FEC Army, Earth. Highborn Superiors were here along with some of the older Lot Six specimens. Mostly FEC soldiers stood at attention, panzers roaring past and orbital fighters zooming in a thunderclap across the sky.

“They honor us,” said Kang.

“Are you so easily impressed?” Marten asked.

The big Mongol scowled. “Look at the orbital fighters, the panzers, the battle-suited drop troops.”

“So what. A little razzle to dazzle us into obedience. I’m unimpressed.”

“Then you’re a fool,” said Kang. “Paenus himself honors us. And we’re to be transferred to Training Commandos, Space.”

Marten glanced at Omi, who stood on the other side of him. The ex-gunman kept his face impassive. Marten turned back to Kang. “We’re leaving Earth, that’s all I care about.”

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

Marten merely grinned. He stood at attention, waiting for Paenus to come and pin him with a bit of tin. The decoration was meaningless. Turbo and Stick were dead. Almost everyone he’d trained with in Australia was dead. He wondered how Molly and how Ah Chen fared. He’d probably never know. But one thing he did know: He would be free, somehow, whatever it took. And now the Highborn were sending him off-planet. Well, he’d only come to Earth in order to escape the Sun-Works Factory. From orbit around Earth it would surely be easier to escape to the Outer Planets and be free than from deep within this gravity well.

“Here he comes,” growled Kang.

Marten stiffened to ramrod attention. He hoped Social Unity and the Highborn killed each other off. Then maybe men would be able to live as they’d been meant to live. He knew that once he escaped from the Commandos that he’d make his dream into reality. But first, he must survive this bit of frippery. He pasted a look of awe on his face, trying to think how a dog would feel being petted by its master. Let them think what they wanted, for now. Soon enough they’d find out the truth, and then let both sides beware.

24.

Meanwhile, in deep space between the orbital paths of Neptune and Uranus, the first, ultra-stealth cyborg pods continued their journey to Earth.