“They’ve acknowledged,” said Omi.
In seeming despair, Osadar bent forward and rested her helmeted forehead on the control panel.
“We’ll kill the first ones,” Marten told her.
Osadar said nothing.
Marten watched the meteor-ship. A piece of the junkyard fired jets, detaching itself from the small asteroid. It was a black globe, probably the same size as their original pod.
Here we go again.
As Marten watched the globe ease toward them, a headache spiked a point between his eyes. Did cyborgs control the Thales-class warship? Or were Jovians allied with cyborgs? None of this made any sense.
* * *
Forty-six harrowing minutes later, Marten set his Gauss needler at high velocity. Then he waited with a tripping heart as the red flare of a slowly moving laser-torch cut open their tomb. Omi stood beside him, with his own needler out.
Marten clunked his helmet against Omi’s as he chinned off his radio. They would speak through the metal of their helmets. “If it looks like they’re going to capture us…” Marten said.
“Yeah,” Omi said, his voice sounding tinny and faraway, “in the heart.”
“In the heart,” Marten agreed.
The laser-torch cut its last section of bulkhead. Someone with a clamp on the other side removed the section. The being poked its head in, and stopped short.
Marten’s tongue felt raspy and his heart hammered as he knelt to the side. He aimed his needler at the enemy faceplate. He liked that his hand was steady and that his voice didn’t crack.
“The last people were cyborgs,” he said over the radio. “So let’s get a look at you, friend, before I riddle you with needles.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Goodbye, my friend, Marten thought, on the verge of bellowing with rage and shooting Omi.
Then the staring visor went from black to clear. A pale, frightened man regarded him. The man had a round face, a small nose and a small mouth.
Marten’s stomach relaxed a fraction, and he eased pressure from the trigger. “Are cyborgs on your ship?”
The man blinked rapidly almost as if trying to comprehend the question. Finally, he asked in a strange, clipped accent, “Cyborgs? Do you mean like the creatures they’ve been broadcasting about from Mars?”
“That’s right,” Marten said, trying to determine if the man was faking ignorance.
“What’s wrong?” a woman asked over the crackling radio-link. “Is anyone hurt in there? If they are, we need to get them out fast.”
A vacc-suited hand pushed the pale, blinking man deeper into the chamber. Then another helmet poked in. That person stopped suddenly.
“You have a weapon,” she said.
“We’re nervous,” Marten said. His needler pointed rock-steady at her faceplate. “I’d like to see your features, if you don’t mind.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Just do it,” the pale-faced man pleaded, clutching her suited arm.
The woman hesitated and then her visor became clear. It showed a pretty female with small features and a round head.
“We ran into cyborgs earlier,” Marten explained.
Her features changed into something like a person facing a crazed killer high on stimulants.
“Cyborgs… yes, I understand,” she said, pasting on a tremulous smile. “We don’t have any aboard the Descartes. Please, put away your weapon. And-and you can come with us.”
Her look did it for Marten—that talk of cyborgs was crazy.
“It-it would be better if… if you gave me your weapon,” she said.
Marten holstered the needler and shook his head.
“Ship protocol—”
“Will have to take a back seat today,” he said, patting his holster.
She nodded quickly, and said, “If you’ll follow me then. And just to let you know… the Force-Leader will want to know how you managed to become trapped in one of the Rousseau’s pods. I do not wish to insult you, but you don’t seem like a Jovian guardian.”
“I’m not. I’m Marten Kluge. My friends and I just arrived from Mars.”
-5-
The ride to the meteor-ship was short and uneventful. They docked with a hiss, a clang and a jolt that threw Marten against his restraints. Then he unbuckled himself and he and his friends floated after the two who had cut them out of the sealed pod.
They entered an airlock. There was more hissing and Marten felt the air-pressure grow around him. The inner lock rotated open and they entered a narrow corridor lit by a diffuse glow. A flexible membrane covered what had the bumpy outline of asteroid rock.
Marten realized they were inside the meteor, and this membrane likely helped seal in the atmosphere. Some rock was porous and would allow air to escape.
The two Jovians unsealed their helmets, cradling them in their arms. The woman had short, brown hair like fuzz, and the roundness of her head was even more pronounced than before. She looked back, waiting for them.
Marten unsealed his helmet, twisted it off and left it hanging from the back of his neck. He tasted the ship’s air. It was recycled from renewers, no doubt. It had a hint of oil and burnt electrical gear. Were they having technical problems aboard ship? Or was it more ominous than that?
Behind him, Omi removed his helmet. Osadar made no move to take off hers, which seemed like a wise precaution.
“There’s something you should know,” Marten began.
The pretty woman frowned, maybe hearing trouble in Marten’s voice.
“Ah….” Marten had been thinking about this the entire trip to the ship. “We came from the Mars System. I know I told you that, but—”
“I’m an artisan,” the woman said, interrupting, “a mechanic. You should save your explanations for the Force-Leader or for the Arbiter and his myrmidons.”
“Excuse me?”
Before the artisan-mechanic could explain, she gasped in horror, staring past Marten.
Marten turned. Osadar had removed her helmet. Her cyborg forehead gleamed, with the stamped letters and numerals OD12 on them. The plastic features and the strange eyes—Marten tried to visualize what the Jovians saw. Osadar had a space-zombie’s features, like one of the living dead that someone had only half-resurrected from Suspend or from a battlefield corpse-pile.
“Quick,” the artisan-mechanic gasped. “Go! Alert the ship-guardians.”
The small man Marten had first aimed his needler at moaned in dread.
“If you’ll just listen for a moment,” Marten tried to say.
Marten’s voice galvanized the small Jovian. He sprang from the chamber and scraped against the membrane of the narrow corridor. He curled his legs and shoved off again. Then he sailed out of sight down a bend in the corridor.
“There’s no need for alarm,” Marten said.
“Emergency!” the pale-faced woman shouted into a com-unit.
Omi shoved against Marten’s shoulder and twisted past him.
The pale-faced woman squeaked. And she lowered the com-unit as she stared at Omi’s needler. It was an inch from her forehead. A tinny voice squawked out of the com-unit.
“Tell them everything is fine,” Omi whispered.
The woman stared at the needler, too terrified to move.
Omi tapped the muzzle against her forehead. He did it twice. She moaned each time. “Tell them now,” he said, in his enforcer’s voice, the one he’d used in the slums of Greater Sydney.
Trembling, the woman lifted the com-unit. “Ah…we’re-we’re fine, just fine.”
“We should flee the ship,” Osadar whispered to Marten.
“They’d just shoot us down,” Marten said. “We have to talk our way out of this.”
“We have a hostage,” Omi said.
The woman’s trembling increased.
“She is an artisan,” Osadar said. “You have nothing with her.”
“What’s that mean?” Omi asked. “Artisan?”
“Put away your needler,” Marten told Omi. “We can’t shoot our way out of this.”
Omi didn’t even glance at Marten. The tough Korean kept his eyes on the woman.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered. She arched her body toward him, seemingly promising her flesh.
“Omi,” Marten said, gripping the Korean’s gun-arm. “We’re in their warship. They must have space marines of some kind.”
Omi glanced at him.
“We’ve come in peace from the Mars System,” Marten told Omi, although he spoke for the woman’s benefit. He wondered if she’d kept the com-line open. Even in her terror, there was something competent about her. He was also speaking for the benefit of whoever listened. “We’re nervous because you became scared. Osadar is a cyborg from the Mars System. But she broke her programming. She’s fighting against the Neptunian cyborgs now.”
The woman bobbed her head in the manner of those willing to agree to anything.
“Put away your needler,” Marten said.
Without a sigh and without saying he was sorry, Omi holstered his weapon.
“Go,” Marten gently told the woman.
With wide eyes, she watched Omi. He nodded.
Woodenly, she turned around. With a tight sob, she began to float down the corridor.
* * *
The woman floated through a hatch. Marten followed her into a narrow vacc-suit-rack chamber. It was packed with military personnel in blue uniforms, short-billed caps and stubby hammer-guns aimed at him.
Probably, he should have given the woman his needler in the damaged pod. But it was too late to change that now.
“There are three of you,” a tight-faced woman said, likely the commander of the blue-uniformed people.
Through the hatch, Marten said, “Come in slowly.”
Omi came in first. When Osadar followed, the line of military people stirred uneasily. Hammer-guns rose into firing position.
Marten expected them to discharge. It’s what any Martian would have done—at least any Martian that had met cyborgs. With cyborgs in this system, Marten tensed, expecting a fusillade of shots.
“Who—” The tight-faced ship-guardian tried to form words. Shock stole the last color from her already pale features. “What are you?” she whispered.
“Cyborg,” another ship-guardian said, a man.
“What?” the tight-faced woman asked him.
“That’s a cyborg.”
The tight-faced woman frowned with incomprehension.
“A true cyborg,” the man said, almost in awe, “like the videos from Mars.”
The tight-faced woman looked at Osadar again. The shock was beginning to wear off. Fear, repugnance and horror swept into its place. The woman swallowed uneasily.
Many of the hammer-gun bearers reacted the same way. Any one of them could start firing.
Marten realized that to these people cyborgs conjured up the memory of the horrible videos from Mars. They apparently had no idea they had lost one of their own ships to the cyborgs.
Marten raised his hands until they were over his head. “We’ve escaped from Mars, from the fighting there. Osadar—that’s the name of our cyborg—she deprogrammed herself.”
“What?” the tight-faced woman asked.
“Osadar is deprogrammed,” Marten said.
“Osadar?” the woman asked. She obviously didn’t comprehend.
“The cyborg is deprogrammed,” Marten said.
“Speak clearly.”
“The cyborg is no longer under Neptunian control. It means she has her mind back. She thinks and feels just like you and me.”
“I don’t understand that,” the woman snapped. “She’s melded with a machine.”
“We should disarm them,” the man said.
“Yes!” the tight-faced woman said. She thrust her arm out, the muzzle of her hammer-gun aimed at Osadar’s head. “Drop your weapons!” she shouted.
“Why not let your artisan come to us,” Marten suggested, with his hands in the air. “Let her draw out our needlers so you don’t get nervous. We don’t want you to accidentally shoot us.”
The tight-faced woman chewed that over for a half-second. “Good idea.” She gave the order. She had to give it a second time more harshly than the first.
Timidly, the artisan-mechanic floated to Marten and drew the needler from his holster. After all the needlers were in the hands of ship-guardians, the commander cocked her head. She had an implant in her right ear, a black mote.
“Which of you is the leader?”
“I am,” said Marten.
“You’re coming with me,” the woman said. “You and—” Her eyes narrowed. “Cyborg, do you understand me?”
“I do,” Osadar said, with a hint of weariness.
“If you resist, we will have to destroy you. Do you understand that?”
“Destroy equals death,” Osadar said. “I understand.”
“She’s still human,” Marten said.
The tight-faced woman gave no indication that she heard his words. She spoke louder at Osadar, as if that would help the cyborg understand better. “We’re taking you to a holding cell. Both you and the man will enter it. We will lock you there for now. Any resistance—”
“I will not resist,” Osadar said. “You are the authority and speak for the philosopher-governors.”
The tight-faced woman blinked in surprise.
“I was born in the Jupiter System,” Osadar said.
“Born?” asked the woman, as if Osadar spoke absurdities.
“She’s human,” Marten said. “The Web-Mind on Neptune torn down her former body and replaced it with a cyborg body. But in her heart, her brain, her soul, she’s still just as human as you or I.”
The tight-faced woman squinted, making it impossible to see her eyes. “No tricks, do you understand? We’re ship-guardians and will do what we must to secure our vessel. To the holding cell with the cyborg. And you,” she told Marten, “are going to the Arbiter. He’ll know what to do.”
-6-
Two ship-guardians with drawn hammer-guns urged Marten through the narrow companionways.
A Velcro-like fiber had been laid on the deckplates, and both the ship-guardians and Marten wore Velcro-pads under their boots. A ripping-sound accompanied their progress through the meteor-ship. Marten figured it would have been easier just floating toward wherever they were going, but he adjusted to their procedures. He hoped Omi and Osadar were okay.
The ship was a maze of narrow halls, corridors and shafts. He passed cubbyhole quarters and heard the throb of a fusion engine down the corridor as they passed by. Grilles emitted recycled air. In a larger room, mechanics clanged metallic tools against what looked like twenty-foot drums placed side-by-side. Space was a premium in there, too. Some of the floating personnel squeezed between the drums, using hand-monitors to check on something.
Marten would hate to see their recreation room, if they had one. It was likely a closet with stationary cycles parked side-by-side. Twice, he and the ship-guardians squeezed past personnel in brown smocks, artisan-mechanics. The mechanics gave off an oily, machine odor. Marten was sure he gave off a rank, sweaty odor. He badly needed a shower.
It was difficult to tell, but Marten believed he moved into the depths of the meteor-ship, into the most protected portion. Until now, the halls had been painted blue and gray. Abruptly, the corridor ahead became red and white.
“Halt,” a ship-guardian said. They were the man’s first words.
Marten noticed a red light wink above. It was on the ceiling, marking the change in colors. It seemed to be part of a recorder or a camera.
A door opened in the red and white companionway. Two tough-looking men stood there. They were different from other Jovians. There was something elemental about them, something that spoke about gene labs and modified test-tube babies. Were these the myrmidons the woman had spoken about earlier?
The two squeezed out of the opening. They were ne
arly identical in appearance. Each was shorter than Marten, but immensely broad of shoulder and deep of chest, with knotted, muscular arms that almost dangled to the deckplates. They had low, hunched heads, black helmets and fierce, darting eyes. They wore white trousers and jackets, with epaulettes on their shoulders. They had various devices on their belts—rods, disks and restraints.
They vaguely reminded Marten of Major Orlov’s red-suited killers from Sydney, Australian Sector. The fight in the deep-core mine—
“Go,” the ship-guardian told him.
Marten glanced back at the man.
“The myrmidons will take you to the Arbiter. Go,” the ship-guardian repeated, motioning with his hammer-gun.
Marten walked into the red and white corridor. One of the myrmidons grabbed his wrist. The man’s fingers tightened like a spring-loaded clamp, and Marten had a sense of dynamic strength, likely much greater than his own.
“Come,” grunted the myrmidon. It was hard to call it a word. The short, powerfully-built man jerked his arm.
Resistance seemed useless. The two myrmidons could likely wrestle him to the Velcroed deckplates in short order. Marten twisted his wrist anyway. He twisted and jerked hard, exerting force at the thumb. The thumb was the weakest spot of a gripping hand. The myrmidon’s thumb was like iron, but Marten must have caught him by surprise. He ripped his wrist free.
The myrmidon whirled toward him. Marten felt the second myrmidon at his back, ready to apply whatever force was necessary to subdue him.
In the hallway, in the gray and white portion, a ship-guardian gasped.
“Just show me the way,” Marten said. “I’ll follow you.”
The myrmidon in front of him bared his lips, revealing small teeth. The muscles in his arms bunched, and Marten was sure the man was about to attack. Then the myrmidon’s head twitched as if an insect had bitten him or perhaps some implant in the black helmet had buzzed.
The myrmidon stepped back, making Velcro-ripping sounds. He twitched his head in a signal to go that way. Then he marched for the door.
Cyborg Assault ds-4 Page 4
