With the convoy fleet a mere two weeks out of Mars orbit, and with the sightings of major Social Unity war-vessels, Marten knew they were in serious trouble. He had worried about it for some time. The worst part was he lacked fuel to do anything else other than continue the deceleration.
“Social Unity is going to retake Mars,” Omi said after Marten told him about the situation.
“They’re certainly going to try,” Marten said. “Yet we’ve both served under the Highborn. They gave Mars to the Rebels.”
“The Martian Planetary Union?” asked Omi.
“That’s what the Rebels call themselves,” Marten said, nodding. “I doubt the Highborn gave the Rebels Mars if the Highborn thought the Rebels were going to lose it right away. It’s not reasonable to think the Highborn ran from Mars out of fear. So that leads me to the conclusion that the Highborn gave the Rebels enough war supplies to fight off any Social Unity attacks.”
“If we see those warships,” Omi said, “those warships must see us.”
Marten tapped a red light on the lower part of the vidscreen. “Correct. This means radar is bouncing off us.”
“From where?” Omi asked.
Marten fiddled with the controls. “From that approaching fleet there,” he said, pointing out the blaze that signified the convoy fleet. “And from that warship there.”
“Why doesn’t the warship call us?” Omi asked.
Marten shrugged.
“Why don’t they launch a missile and blow us up?” Omi asked.
“They might already have launched a missile.”
“The radar doesn’t show that,” Omi said.
“Sometimes warships release a drone, leaving it behind like a mine. If we see a sudden bloom of engine-burn, we’ll know we’re in trouble. But the more likely explanation is that we’re a shuttle, so we’re nothing to them. Besides, maybe they believe that our radio is out. If they’re worried enough, they’ll try to capture us later once we’re in near orbit.”
“Let’s head out to Jupiter,” Omi suggested.
Marten stared at the vidscreen, at the controls. He wished his ship were sized for men, not for Highborn. If he could move the pilot’s chair closer and raise it a little higher, that would be great.
Jupiter System, Marten nodded. Going there had been one of his thoughts, too. They had enough fuel to change headings but hardly enough to increase their velocity to anything like the needed speed. That meant a trip to Jupiter would take several more years than it would have if he’d started for there originally. Marten had little desire to spend six years in this cramped shuttle alone with Omi.
“We need to refuel first,” Marten said.
“What do we use for currency?”
“Passage out of the war.”
Omi nodded. “How many people do you think you can pack into our shuttle?”
“A few rich ones would be best,” Marten said, “although I wish we could take more.”
“How do we keep Social Unity from firing on our shuttle? A single missile kills us. So all they have to do is tell us to stop or we’re dead.”
“Ideally, we need to modify the shuttle, attaching anti-missile pods.”
“We lack currency,” Omi said.
“I call that: Problem number one.”
“Would the Rebels be willing to part with war supplies?”
“That’s problem number two,” Marten said.
Omi stared out of the polarized window. “Does the shuttle have reflectors to bounce laser-fire?”
“Reflectors would make us easier to spot, and reflectors won’t bounce a military laser. But the short answer is no, our shuttle lacks reflectors. That would be our next purchase, a warfare pod filled with prismatic crystals.”
“What else do we need?” Omi asked.
“Luck,” Marten said.
The radio crackled, which startled Omi. Marten adjusted the controls, but there was too much static for the speakers. So he put on headphones and listened carefully.
“Mars defense is calling,” he soon told Omi. “They’re asking us to identify ourselves. I’d tell them, but then the SU ship might fire a missile as you’ve been suggesting.”
Marten tapped at the console as he studied the vidscreen and studied the satellites and habitats in near-Mars orbit. “It would be a shame to have escaped the Highborn only to have the Martian Rebels kill us.”
“Can you send them a tight-beam message?”
Instead of answering, Marten slapped a switch. The engines cut out, bringing weightlessness to the Mayflower.
“We’re going to drift in faster and decelerate harder nearer the planet,” Marten explained. “We’ll have to take to the couches for that. Hopefully, that will make whoever is scanning and calling us think we’re damaged. That seems like the best way to buy us an arrival without any missiles.”
“Will Social Unity warships be in range by that time?” Omi asked.
Marten studied the headings. “Frankly, I’m surprised the SU warships and Rebel moons aren’t trading missiles or laser fire.”
“Do you know why not?”
“It must have something to do with this being a three-way situation. It’s not just the Rebels verses Social Unity. The Highborn change everything. Why fight if you don’t have to?”
“You said before that the Highborn helped the Rebels.”
“They did,” Marten said, “but that doesn’t make them friends.”
“It should make them allies.”
“Temporary allies,” Marten said. “The Rebels aren’t fools, and they probably have long memories. The Highborn crushed the Martian Rebels and the Jupiter Confederation Fleet back in 2339.”
“Maybe if we’re lucky, we can slip in and slip out before the shooting starts.”
Marten grinned. “Now you’re talking.” He pushed out of the pilot’s chair.
“Where are you headed?”
“All this thinking is making me edgy. I’m going to do some rowing. See you in an hour.”
Omi nodded and then continued to stare out of the heavily polarized window.
-6-
The cyborg battle pods traveled silently through the stellar void. Each pod had begun its journey almost a year ago at the Neptune System. Neptune was 30 times the distance from the Sun as Earth or about 4,486,100,000 kilometers away. It took sunlight traveling 300,000 kilometers per second four hours and fifteen minutes to reach Neptune.
The pods had long ago accelerated and now decelerated much harder than anything a human could have survived. Each was an ultra-stealth pod, with a ceramic hull that gave the lowest sensor signature of any vessel in human space. Each pod was also crammed with the latest Onoshi ECM equipment and decoys.
All the pods were as black as night and spherical. Within all the pods but one lay a cyborg platoon in cryogenic stillness. The cyborg known as OD12 was in pod B3.
The designation OD12 referred to her lost humanity and machine code number. OD had once been Osadar Di, the female pilot with the perennial bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As the battle pods decelerated, an electrical impulse surged through OD12’s frozen body. At the same time, cryogenic heaters began the painful defrosting of the cyborg cargo.
OD12 awakened, but her mental facilities were kept offline. Instead, she was hooked into the Web-Mind. There, Osadar Di practiced a hundred combat evolutions. It was similar to a human playing intense hologames while wearing a virtual imaging suit. The difference was that her reflexes gained one hundred percent conditioning as if she physically participated in each action. These Web-Mind combat drops, bunker assaults, storm attacks and sniper targeting took place at an accelerated rate. She thus gained ‘years’ of practice.
There was a glitch, however, in six out of every one hundred simulations. The Web-Mind noted this malfunction in OD12. Accepted anomalies were one tenth of a percent, not six percent. Because of the extreme distance to the Master Web-Mind in the Neptune System, the Web-Mind in Tol
l Seven’s command pod initiated a phase two diagnostic.
In the simulator, OD12 bounded across a moon in the Saturn System. She wore a vacuum suit churning at full heat. She knelt in frozen ammonia, lifted her laser carbine and hesitated instead of firing the two-kilometer distance to pick off the retreating battleoids. OD12 glanced around her and then scooped a handful of the orange ammonia in her gloved hand.
The diagnostic program froze the image. Then it confronted OD12’s personality.
Why did you hesitate?
“The expanse of orange snow struck me as beautiful. I had to feel it.”
Explain beauty.
“The sight filled me with longing, with pleasant memories.”
Describe these memories.
“…I’d rather not.”
Computer.
Something in OD12 clicked into life. It was the computer inserted into her and connected with her brain.
Administer level three pain sensations.
In battle pod B3, OD12’s online cyborg body jerked as she opened her mouth and screamed metallically.
A Web-Mind code caused the pain to cease and OD12’s body was taken offline with the others.
Describe these memories.
“…why did you do that?”
In a nanosecond, the Web-Mind ran through a possibility of options, the primary of which was to delete OD12. It decided on option two instead, as the supply of cyborgs for this campaign was limited.
The Web-Mind resumed running OD12’s combat simulations until it came to another anomaly. This time, OD12 used a thruster pack as white particles of hydrogen spray propelled her toward a slowly rotating torus. Behind her followed the rest of the cyborgs in vacuum suits. They assaulted a Jupiter Confederation Habitat, with the vast gas giant beyond the torus.
OD12 twisted her head and looked back at the other suited cyborgs. Each used white particles of hydrogen spray. Each had breach bombs and rocket carbines. Each fixated on its targeted landing location. The only cyborg body movement was the occasional twitch of their fingers as they adjusted their flight paths to perfection. Only OD12 looked back. Only she saw the awesome spectacle of individual cyborgs ‘jetting’ through cold space to the human habitat.
The Web-Mind froze the scene. It caused OD12’s dark visor to turn clear. Within the helmet, the solid black, metallic-seeming eyes stared with infinite sadness as tears streamed down the plastic cheeks.
Why are you crying?
OD12 answered with a blunt profanity.
This time, the Web-Mind issued level seven pain sensations.
OD12 thrashed in the eerily dark battle pod. Beside her lay the perfectly motionless cyborgs, each mentally engaged in combat simulations. None of the other cyborgs had experienced more than one tenth of one percent anomalies.
Cyborgs do not cry. You were crying. Explain what caused emotions to override your programming.
“…I remembered how we tried to escape the alien.”
The answered confused the Web-Mind for two seconds. Then it understood OD12 meant Toll Seven.
“We wanted to live.”
You are alive.
“Live, not just breathe.”
Computer.
The computer in OD12 awaited further instructions.
You will monitor your host’s emotions. If category two emotions are employed, you will initiate immediate shutdown procedures and pulse me a report of the situation.
The computer logged the order in its command override logic core.
You must suppress these emotive anomalies, OD12, if you wish to continue functioning. Noncompliance will result in your termination.
“I want to function.”
Then proceed within the guidelines.
“Affirmative.”
The Web-Mind wasn’t certain. It thought it might have detected sarcasm. It was impossible, however, for a slaved cyborg to exhibit sarcasm at a deeper level than the emotion sensors could detect. So, it marked the observation and sent a lightguide message to the Master Web-Mind in the Neptune System. Then it proceeded to link with Toll Seven as they continued to refine the subterfuge plan of the conquest of Inner Planets.
-7-
In the Mayflower, Marten and Omi braked hard for Deimos, Mars’ smallest and most distant moon. The radio crackled with strident messages from the Planetary Union Space Force. The messages had been ongoing for the past five hours. Red Mars had grown before them until the planet dominated the heavily polarized window.
“We are now targeting your shuttle with Laser Port Seven,” the radio crackled. There was a ping-ping from the controls as it alerted them of a radar lock-on.
Marten licked his lips, scooted forward and reached up, pressing the comm button. “Mars Union, this is the free ship Mayflower requesting permission to dock.”
“Why haven’t you answered until now, Mayflower?”
“We’ve noticed the military situation and feared a missile attack from either you or Social Unity, depending on who we answered. So we waited until we were too close to you for Social Unity to fire without causing an incident.”
“…mayflower, your code registers as a Highborn vessel. Are you Highborn?”
“Negative, Mars Union. We are the free ship Mayflower.”
“Are you a Social Unity vessel, Mayflower?”
Marten glanced at Omi before he said, “Negative, we’re a free ship, requesting permission to dock, to buy fuel and then to be on our way.”
“What is your ultimate destination, Mayflower?”
Marten hesitated before he said, “The Jupiter Confederation.”
“…where did you originate, Mayflower?”
“We request permission to dock and speak with the commanding officer of the Deimos Moon Station,” Marten said.
The radio fell silent.
Omi said, “We should have told them we were Highborn and demanded the fuel.”
“It would never have worked.”
“Mayflower,” the radio crackled. “You have permission to dock. Follow these coordinates…”
* * *
Marten slowly eased the shuttle against a docking module and then shut off the fusion engine. He soon heard the clank from a docking tube attaching to the outer airlock.
“Now it gets tricky,” Marten said. “Do you remember what to do?”
Omi nodded and he slapped the sidearm attached to his belt.
Marten formerly shook hands with Omi before entering the airlock. The inner hatch swished shut behind him. Marten recalled the struggled he’d had with Training Master Lycon in this very airlock. He recalled the reflection of Lycon’s eyes as they bulged, and the disbelieving look as Lycon shot into space.
Eager to be out of the airlock, Marten squeezed through the outer hatch as it swished open. Because Deimos was smaller than many asteroids, it had a negligible mass. It was hardly different from weightlessness as Marten float-walked through the docking tube.
His skin tingled from his shower a half-hour ago. His clothes smelled clean and nervousness boiled in his gut. He was about to face the big question. Omi and he had escaped Social Unity and they had escaped the Highborn. Now he had to interact with people again, this time with the Martian Rebels. Would the Martians try to steal his shuttle? If so, he had to outwit the Deimos commander. Marten heaved a deep sigh. He had to keep his wits about him and he had to be ready to act decisively.
In all the Inner Planets, there was probably no one in his situation. Three governments struggled for existence. Everyone had to belong to one side or another. Now he and Omi were their own side, free agents who were much more common in the Outer Planets. He had to get fuel. He had to purchase warfare pods if he could. He had to keep the Mayflower out of the hands of desperate people.
Marten reached the hatch that led into the docking bay. The door open and Marten glided out of the tube to see three thin soldiers with drawn weapons aimed at his chest. The pitted gun-barrels pointed at him looked dark and deadly, but the soldiers holding them
seemed too slender to be military men. The fourth person was a woman, an officer by her shoulder boards. She was as thin as the others.
“I’m sorry for the guns, Mr. Kluge. But you must give us your weapon and then come with us.”
Marten nodded curtly. He’d expected this. It’s why Omi had remained onboard. He’d expected this, but he’d hoped for something better. He had reentered the struggle for life.
“This way, Mr. Kluge,” the officer said.
* * *
A Martian Unionist with pinched features glared at Marten. The man was tall and slender, with a beak of a nose. He was also pale and had oiled his dark hair into ringlets. Marten judged the man to be in his mid-forties.
The female officer remained in the office. It overlooked a hanger stacked with metal boxes, a shuttle under repair and arc-welders flashing their blue glows as men fixed a multitude of articles. The office itself seemed more like a shed, with masses of equipment shoved into the corners and piled on top of each other. There was a vacuum pump, a magnetic lifter and a wrist communicator with a tiny, flashing red light lying on the desk.
The Chief Unionist at the desk stood behind a vidscreen. He hadn’t offered Marten a chair, but in this almost nonexistent gravity, it didn’t matter.
“I demand that you declare who you’re spying for,” the Unionist said. “I would assume Social Unity. But you have a Highborn shuttle. This leaves me wondering.”
“How can you tell it’s a Highborn shuttle?” Marten asked.
The Chief Unionist drew himself straighter, which had seemed impossible. “You could have simply painted the Highborn symbols onto it. I understand. Why would a PHC officer do that, however?”
Marten glanced back at the Planetary Union military officer. She wasn’t taking chances and had a needler trained on him. It was smaller than the Gauss needlers used on Earth. Hers was compact, with a short and very thin barrel, and it was shiny, likely meaning it was newly unpackaged. He hoped she knew how to use it and didn’t accidentally shoot him.
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