Doom Star: Book 06 - Star Fortress

by Vaughn Heppner

  Knocking would imply a choice on her part. The little minx had no choice. He pulled out a key, unlocked the door and let himself inside.

  It was a tidy apartment, as one would expect from a deep-core engineer, and it was quiet. A light flashed from the living room. There was darkness, and another flash.

  Curious, Quirn investigated, moving quietly. He spotted Ah Chen on her sofa, with her pretty legs curled up under her. She held a clicker, wore loose clothing and she had cut her black hair into a bob around her elfin head. A holo-unit sat on the floor, with a holo-image of the Sun above it. There were Chinese symbols on the wall, a few paper-made art pieces and a half-full glass of liquor on a stand beside the sofa.

  Three things about the situation angered Quirn. The nights he visited, Ah Chen was supposed to paste sequins on her body in erotic swirls. He had told her to buy extensions and wear her hair long. Lately, he wanted music playing as he entered the apartment. He did not want her to be working on something.

  “What are you doing?” he said in a querulous tone.

  She screamed, twisting around as terror contorted her features.

  That mollified him a little, as he limped toward the sofa.

  “What…?” she whispered. She stared at the holo-unit and clicked it off so the Sun disappeared. Another click and the living room’s lights came on.

  Until that moment, Quirn wasn’t curious about what she was studying. He stopped, and he blinked at Ah Chen and frowned at the holo-unit.

  “Was that the Sun?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” he said, his professional senses alerted. “Why do you have a holograph of the Sun?”

  “Would you like a drink? Are you thirsty?”

  “Why are you nervous?” he asked.

  She shook her head, her lips firming.

  “Put the hologram back on,” he said.

  Something he hadn’t seen before swirled in Ah Chen’s eyes. It looked like determination or stubbornness. Just as quickly as it came, however, it disappeared. Demurely, she lowered her head. If she had been wearing sequins and nothing else, the motion would have been very erotic.

  As it was, Quirn licked his lips in an obscene manner. “Hurry,” he said, in a husky voice. “Put it up. Let me see what you were looking at.”

  Ah Chen weighed the clicker in her tiny hand. Everything about her was petite and pretty. She glanced up at Quirn. It was so artfully done. She bobbed her head in acquiesce and pressed a button.

  The living room’s lights dimmed. The Sun hologram returned.

  Quirn frowned as he examined it. “I don’t see—” No, wait. There was a dot, several dots in fact in front of the Sun. “Give me greater magnification.”

  Reluctantly, Ah Chen pressed the clicker several times. Each click produced a larger Sun hologram. Soon, it encompassed the entire living room. Now the dots had become mirrors. Since they appeared to be very close to the Sun, the mirrors must be gigantic.

  “What am I looking at?” Quirn asked.

  “That is what I am attempting to learn,” Ah Chen said.

  He stared at her, at the blank look on her face. “You’re lying,” he said. “Tell me what I’m seeing.”

  She hesitated a moment longer. Then she said, “It is a prototype, I believe.”

  “Of what?” asked Quirn. “What are you trying to hide?”

  She lowered the clicker. “I am being reassigned in several weeks.”

  Quirn hid his dismay. It wouldn’t do to let her know how much he needed these times with her. That could possibly give her an advantage over him. “Where—” He studied one of the mirrors. “Are you going there?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re a deep-core engineer. You work with magnetic forces…” He turned back to the Sun mirror. His gaze tightened. Without looking at her, he said, “You work with the great temperatures of the core.” He pointed at the dot, the mirror. “What is that exactly?”

  “I believe it is a weapon,” she said.

  Quirn shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  “What if one could focus the Sun’s energy into a single coherent beam?” asked Ah Chen.

  “Those mirrors can do that?”

  “I cannot see how. Yet I think the Highborn are setting up mirrors to focus some of the Sun’s heat and energy. Perhaps such a beam could reach the Earth.”

  “Tell me why that matters,” Quirn said.

  “I am not a military person.”

  “Neither am I,” Quirn said. “But you are an engineer. I think you have an idea of why it’s important. In fact, I’m certain you do.”

  “I have an idea, yes.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve all read news-blog releases of the incredible range of the Doom Stars.”

  “One million kilometers,” Quirn said. He’d watched an illegal Social Unity show on it, and the incredible victory at Mars. The show had highlighted the impossibility of facing the Highborn and surviving.

  “The Sunbeam should easily be able to outrange a million kilometers,” she said.

  “By how much?” asked Quirn.

  “That is what I’m trying to determine.”

  “I still don’t understand why you’re taking such an interest in it.”

  Ah Chen dropped the clicker and let a smile appear. “I’m tired, Quirn. I need to go to bed early tonight.”

  He laughed. It was an ugly sound. As he advanced upon her, he said, “I have a different idea. Take off your clothing, and be quick about it.”

  She hesitated a moment. Then she began to strip. Their couching was short and vigorous, at least Quirn’s part of it was. He became red-faced and shouted at the end, his hands clutching her smooth skin.

  Afterward, as they lay on the sofa, Quirn began to talk. He rambled after his sessions with Ah Chen. Sleepy-eyed, he complained about Molly, going on and on about her many faults. He even told Ah Chen how he hated Molly speaking about Marten Kluge. Then Quirn lapsed into a moody silence.

  “Would you like a drink?” Ah Chen asked. “I have brandy.”

  He nodded. She got up. He loved looking at her slinkiness. She was so trim and fit. He could spend hours devouring her with his eyes. She poured brown brandy into a snifter and returned with the glass.

  “Make yourself one,” he said. “Tonight, you will drink with me.”

  She nodded, returning with brandy for herself.

  They drank for two hours as Quirn steadily became drunker. He failed to notice that Ah Chen only took the tiniest of sips from her glass. He began to ramble about Marten Kluge, telling Ah Chen what he’d seen on the holo.

  “Marten Kluge is on Earth?” she asked.

  “He’s in the enemy capital,” Quirn said. “Nancy Vance was giving him a live interview. Can you believe that they’re calling him the Jovian Representative?”

  She blinked at him.

  “I was monitoring the Nancy Vance Show for my superiors,” Quirn muttered. “It is one of my duties.”

  Ah Chen waved that aside. “What does it mean that Marten is a Jovian Representative?”

  “I guess that he has his own spaceship. Our Marten Kluge has gone a long way since leaving Sydney.”

  “That is very interesting,” Ah Chen said.

  “Why?” Quirn asked, his small eyes shining with malice. “Why do you find that interesting?”

  She laughed easily. “It shows how foolish the other side is. We have made the right choice in following the Highborn.”

  “Yes,” Quirn said with a sharp nod. “You’re a smart girl,” and he slapped her butt.

  He left the apartment ninety minutes later. She helped him get his coat on. Then he staggered home, showing his pass three different times to curfew guards.

  He went to his bedroom and found Molly snoring on the cot. In disgust, he retreated to his den. He sank into his favorite chair and put his hand in his coat pocket. With a frown, he withdrew his
packet of dust.

  His fingertips were very sensitive. It was one of the reasons he enjoyed Ah Chen’s smooth skin so much and found Molly’s lumpiness so disgusting. It felt as if someone had tampered with the paper.

  Carefully, and with a critical eye, he unfolded it and examined the dust. He had expected some to be missing. Instead, it almost seemed as if there was more. Maybe if he’d been sober…he was still drunk and still desiring a dust-dream.

  One of the wonderful things about dust was that it was just as powerful when taken sober as when drunk.

  With a slobbery grin, Quirn brought the dust to his nose and inhaled deeply. Then he sank back into his chair. Before he entered the dream haze, however, the poison so recently added to the dust began its nefarious task of murdering Chief Monitor Quirn. He went into seizures nine minutes later and cardiac arrest three minutes after that. His days of monitoring for the Highborn and enjoying women like Ah Chen were over.

  ***

  That morning at first lamplight, Ah Chen left her apartment. She carried several money cards, but otherwise went empty-handed. She was on a mission, certain that she had learned various technological secrets for a reason. That the last piece of the puzzle had come from Quirn…it made the many nights in his disgusting embrace less shameful.

  At this point in her life, she had to take what she could get.

  -6-

  Marten seethed inwardly as he pulled Nadia away from a cybertank. The hulking vehicle threatening them was one hundred tons of lethal destruction, with six warfare pods. An anti-personnel turret presently aimed at him. The giant tank blocked the arched brick entrance to the Supreme Commander’s Mansion, where Osadar was presently under house arrest.

  “I can’t see anyone on the grounds,” Nadia said, craning to look past the huge tracked vehicle.

  There was an ominous clack from the warfare pod aimed at them.

  “We’re leaving!” Marten shouted at the cybertank. He yanked Nadia beside him.

  “I have logged your attempt to gain access to a restricted area,” the cybertank said in its mechanical voice. “Now I am radioing the authorities. Do not make such an attempt again or I shall take immediate action.”

  Marten turned away from the giant tank. Nadia and he were in the Governmental Area of New Baghdad, the third level. Here there were monumental buildings set along wide plazas and avenues, while the sunlamps blazed at twice the normal ceiling height.

  In the distance was the octagonal Directors House where debates raged. Hawthorne hadn’t returned from orbit and his “disappearance” had thrown the highest levels of government into disarray.

  Marten and Nadia hurried away from the Supreme Commander’s Mansion. It was an imitation of the ancient Palace of Versailles near Paris. They passed artifacts meant to celebrate various facets of human history: fountains, statues and various plinths and arches. At the end of one promenade, there was even a Sphinx.

  The Nancy Vance interview had shaken Marten from what he now considered as his complacency. He didn’t belong on Earth, not an Earth ruled by Social Unity. He had come down to the surface as the Jovian Representative, hoping to drum up greater support for a united war against the cyborgs. With Hawthorne’s disappearance…

  Marten’s few SU friends were in space with the fleet. His plan was simple now. He would free Osadar, get his space marines at Athens and find Omi. Then he would return to his patrol boats in orbit and join the fleet before it set out for Neptune.

  “Why is Osadar a prisoner?” Nadia asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Marten said. The idea of leaving Osadar behind—he didn’t like it. “We have to get her out of there.”

  “How?”

  Marten strode to a set of fountains, sliding his butt onto the lip of a smaller one. The air was cooler here, although the sounds of tinkling water did nothing to soothe his anxiety. He had to come up with a plan. He needed a way past the cybertank.

  “Oh-oh,” Nadia said. “I think someone took the cybertank’s report seriously.”

  Looking up, Marten spied a tall woman wearing a bright orange, flowing robe of African design. The woman also wore an orange turban, and there seemed to be something familiar about her. She had long, purposeful strides.

  “Director Juba-Ryder,” Marten said, snapping his fingers. “She must have hurried out of the Director’s House. Yes, I think you’re right. She received the cybertank’s report.”

  Behind Juba-Ryder followed three strange humans wearing heavy body-armor. They were big men, with outsized handguns holstered on their belts. The way they walked and the ease with which they carried the armor—

  “Bionic guards,” Marten whispered.

  He slid off the fountain. Social Unity Military altered a very few of its best soldiers, turning them into a super elite. They were all loyal to the Supreme Commander, however.

  “I’ve heard rumors of this,” Nadia said.

  Marten glanced at his wife.

  “Osadar told me about it,” Nadia said, “illegal modifications to select bodyguards. It’s supposedly done in secret.”

  “Cyborg agents would know how to help alter bodyguards,” Marten said.

  “If cyborgs are on Earth, then we’ve already lost.”

  Marten shook his head. “You only lose when you’re dead.” His hand dropped onto the butt of his holstered slugthrower. The bullets might not penetrate body-armor, but they would smash though skull-bone. Only cyborgs had armored brainpans.

  “Juba-Ryder has never liked me,” Marten said. “If she thinks I’m a traitor to Social Unity—” Marten scowled. “I’m done being anyone’s prisoner. Get behind me.”

  “Marten—”

  “Let’s not argue,” he said. “Just do as I say.”

  Nadia moved behind him as Marten took a wider stance. He hated fancy maneuvers, so he kept his hand on the butt of his weapon. If Omi was here with him or better yet Osadar—he shook his head. This was his play, and if he did it wrong, it could be the end of him and his wife. He rolled his right shoulder, trying to loosen it for quick-draw firing.

  Juba-Ryder smiled triumphantly as she strode near. Each of the bodyguards had hard features and cold eyes. Their armor clattered. They wore dark helmets, with forehead and cheek protectors. They watched him closely, intently—predatorily.

  It made the hairs on the back of Marten’s neck bristle. These three meant to kill him or to pulverize his flesh with their fists.

  “Marten Kluge,” Director Juba-Ryder said. “I am here to inform you—”

  Marten drew his .38. The three bodyguards had holstered guns, with flaps over the weapons. Despite their size and the bulk of their muscles, they moved with bionic speed. As Marten aimed at Juba-Ryder, the three guards aimed .55 caliber hand-cannons at him.

  “They can blow me away,” Marten said tightly, “but I’ll still riddle your body with bullets.”

  “I am a director,” Juba-Ryder said, outraged. “I have immunity against violence.”

  “Yeah? Then you shouldn’t have made this tactical error. You should have just sent them, not come yourself.”

  Juba-Ryder stiffened. “Lay down your weapon and submit to my authority.”

  “Not a chance,” Marten said.

  “You will die.”

  “Yeah, but so will you.”

  “I can fire at his gun-hand,” one of the bodyguards said. “I will destroy it before he can shoot.”

  Before Juba-Ryder could answer, Nadia gasped.

  “What is it?” Marten asked, refusing to take his eyes off the director.

  “A fighting robot,” Nadia said, “a floating one.”

  “Those are illegal here,” Juba-Ryder said. “Is this your doing?”

  “Right,” Marten said, feeling a sense of helplessness. Three bionic bodyguards and now a fighting robot—he debated killing Juba-Ryder while he still had a chance. He could get off one shot, maybe two, but no more than that. The .55 caliber bullets would knock him flying.

  Juba
-Ryder moistened her lips.

  “We can destroy the robot,” one of the bodyguards said.

  “I wouldn’t try,” the robot said.

  Marten saw it now out of the corner of his right eye. The robot floated, probably propelling itself through magnetic lifters, using the city grid. The robot looked like an elongated metal egg the size of a man. If he looked closer, Marten was sure he would make out sealed ports. Those could open for a laser nozzle or the tip of a machine gun barrel. The fighting robots belonged to the Cybernetic Corps, presently under Manteuffel’s control.

  A large upper port opened then, revealing a screen. The face of Security Specialist Cone appeared on the screen. She had a sharp beauty and wore dark sunglasses.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Juba-Ryder demanded.

  “Before I answer,” Cone said onscreen, “I prefer to learn your intentions.”

  “They are simple,” Juba-Ryder said with an imperious gesture. “I am here to arrest Marten Kluge. As you can see, he is resisting arrest. I demand that you assist me with that machine of yours.”

  “I would be glad to assist,” Cone said. “However, he is the Jovian Representative and has diplomatic immunity.”

  “He was born under Social Unity and thus remains subject to our laws and customs,” Juba-Ryder said. “Just as important, he is a traitor to the People.”

  “Possibly true,” Cone said.

  “Possibly?” asked Juba-Ryder. “How can you doubt it?”

  “I don’t so much doubt it as I don’t think it warrants any action at this time. Despite his SU birthplace, he has become a Jovian and he is their representative to us. This is the critical factor.”

  “I cannot agree,” Juba-Ryder said. “As my first order of business, I plan to make a clean sweep of traitors.”

  “Could you elaborate please on what you mean by: my first order of business?”

  Juba-Ryder eyed Marten and then the robot. “The Supreme Commander is gone.”

  “Gone,” Cone said, “but we both know he is alive.”

  The director shook her turbaned head. “That is inconsequential. You have read his resignation.”