“But, sir, the Highborn battleoids—”
“Are one of the reasons I’m here,” Hawthorne said.
Colonel Diego blinked with incomprehension.
“The Field Marshal has the same concerns you do,” Hawthorne said. “As I told him, I’ll take care of myself.”
“But General—”
“Those are my orders,” Hawthorne said quietly.
Colonel Diego hesitated a moment longer and then turned back to his communications team. They had set up a data-net under a camouflaged tent.
“Our presence has made him nervous,” Hawthorne shortly whispered to Captain Mune.
“You’re making me nervous, sir,” Captain Mune said.
“Nonsense,” Hawthorne said. He put on the helmet and lowered the visor. Then he strode purposefully into the jungle and toward the enemy lines.
Captain Mune motioned the security team. Several bionic men took off running ahead of Hawthorne. They were much heavier than normal troops and their boots sank deeper into the moist soil. The bionic men held gyroc pistols and were conditioned to sell their lives for General Hawthorne’s safety.
Listening to his labored breathing as he climbed over a giant root, Hawthorne understood why everyone was so uneasy. If he died out here, Captain Mune, Colonel Diego and even Field Marshal Santiago would take the blame. It was unfair, but it was how politics worked in Social Unity. Hawthorne knew he shouldn’t be here. But he absolutely needed to know firsthand how the war progressed.
It had been a political risk coming here as it left New Baghdad to the directors, giving them greater freedom to plot against him. In that sense, being here was unwise.
The real political danger for him was the fact that the Highborn were winning the war. Unless he could achieve a real victory against the Highborn, Social Unity was doomed. The strike on the Sun-Works Factory had hurt the Highborn, but not badly enough. It had cost Social Unity too much to do the damage. They had even lost the experimental beamship.
He needed to know if this was the place to attempt a critical defeat against the Highborn. He needed to know if it was even possible. So he took this risk, and he risked the lives of others.
An hour later, after they’d traveled several kilometers deep into the jungle, they finally made contact with the enemy.
“Get down, sir!” Captain Mune shouted. He shoved Hawthorne from behind.
The bionic captain’s strength was irresistible. Hawthorne found himself hurled against a mossy rise. He grunted, his body-armor rattled and his faceplate mashed against the damp soil. For a second, Hawthorne’s lungs locked as harsh, whooshing sounds streaked over him.
Explosions lifted him from the mossy hummock and his armor rattled again as he slammed back down. Hawthorne grunted as weights fell on him. It took several seconds before he realized two bionic soldiers shielded his body with their own.
More explosions occurred. Then something fast and powerful boomed overhead. Were those the new magnetic lifters?
“Get off,” Hawthorne whispered. “I must witness this.” He squirmed free, wiped muck from his visor and blinked to get rid of the spots before his eyes.
Captain Mune lay beside him. “Sir, we must retreat.”
Hawthorne raised himself higher and peered down into a jungle valley. He used his chin to select one of his helmet’s special features: telescopic sighting.
He witnessed a Hawk Team. They were Free Earth Corps, traitorous humans who fought for the Highborn. They used a rugged, fuel-efficient, battlefield jetpack. Two of them lifted into the air, armed with portable missile-launchers. A burning SU infantry carrier lay on its side two hundred meters ahead of the fliers. Three SU soldiers tumbled out of the wreckage. Two missiles streaked from the Hawk Team. There was an explosion, and then no one moved on the burning carrier.
“The bastards,” Hawthorne said through gritted teeth. Before he could order his bionic men to take aim, one of the newer bio-tanks raced out of the jungle growth.
Bio-tanks were smaller than cybertanks, and were built upon different principles. The bio-tank was low to the ground and had a single silver dome atop its tracked body. A portal opened along the silver dome and a chaingun poked through. The chaingun whirled into life, shredding the two jetpack infantry. Other FEC infantry hidden in the trees opened fire with their portable missiles. As the flaming streaks closed upon the bio-tank, the vehicle activated its defensive armament. It exploded beehive-shaped charges. The shrapnel took out all but one missile. That missile cracked the silver dome, and it appeared to have angered the bio-tank. The engine revved. The tracks churned, causing grass and dirt to fly behind it. The bio-tank roared for the trees, its chaingun shredding leaves, branches, bark and FEC soldiers.
“Excellent,” Hawthorne said.
“Sir,” Captain Mune warned.
Hawthorne saw it: a great, bounding humanoid, a Highborn battleoid. With exoskeleton strength, a battleoid could make fifty-meter leaps.
A second and a third bio-tank appeared. They must have tracked the battleoid. Their chainguns poured rounds at the armored Highborn.
Stricken, the battleoid sprawled onto the ground. Then enemy lasers struck. They stabbed down from the heavens. The giant beams melted one of the bio-tanks’ silver domes, and the vehicle exploded. More lasers stabbed down, striking the other bio-tanks.
Hawthorne’s visor polarized and saved his eyes. The lasers were striking uncomfortably near.
Before Hawthorne could stop him with a command, Captain Mune hefted the general onto his shoulder and ran. The other bionic men followed. As they ran, SU artillery began to pound the area with high explosives, no doubt seeking other battleoids. High command desperately sought Highborn casualties. Due to Hawthorne’s orders, they were not aware of his presence in this combat zone.
The giant lasers stabbed down again. They beamed down to Earth from the orbital laser platforms. Hawthorne and his strategy staff had yet to find a battlefield answer to that tactic. Knocking them down was the only real solution. The cost in merculite missiles was always too high, as the Highborn savagely defended the orbital platforms.
“Set me down,” Hawthorne ordered.
“Respectfully, sir,” Captain Mune said, “I must decline. I just heard over Colonel Diego’s data-net that more battleoids are coming. I think the Highborn know you’re here. I think this is a trap to capture you, sir.”
Hawthorne endured the indignity of being carried until Captain Mune reached a tracked infantry carrier.
After setting him down, Captain Mune said, “It’s time we left the battle zone, sir.”
Hawthorne counted bionic men. About half were missing. Had they died so he might live? Was seeing the jetpack infantry killed worth half his security team?
“We must defeat the Highborn,” Hawthorne said.
Captain Mune hustled him toward the infantry carrier.
“There has to be a way to stop them,” Hawthorne said.
“Right now, sir,” Captain Mune said, “I’d just worry about surviving the afternoon.”
The hatch clanged shut. The engine fired into life. As it roared for Colonel Diego’s headquarters, General Hawthorne was sunk deep in gloomy thought.
-3-
Time ticked away for Marten as he sweated outside the shuttle, and his vacc-suit smelled like fear.
He adhered magnetically to the hull. At its present velocity, the shuttle sailed serenely for the Earth System. The stars shined their beauty, but Marten had no interest in them now. He’d worked hard the past half-hour to remove the final plate and gain access to the sensor system.
He checked his air supply. He had another twenty minutes left. The vacc-suit’s tanks hadn’t been fully charged before he gone outside. Marten shook his head. He couldn’t believe the mistakes he’d made these last few hours. For years, he’d dreamed of freedom. For years, he’d labored under rules set by others. With freedom, came responsibility. He could no longer afford the luxury of thinking some of the time. He needed to engage his wits a
ll of the time.
If he survived this, he vowed to plan each move with care. Maybe he had spent too many dreadful weeks lost in space. Maybe that had played havoc with his senses and dulled his mind. He would now sharpen his mind.
There, he finally had it. Marten licked his lips, clipped his tools back onto his belt and pried the plate loose. He used a magnetic bolt to keep the plate fixed against another part of the hull.
Now came the tricky part. He hooked his suit to the sensor net so he could use the ship’s computer. In five minutes, he’d established a link. If there were some Highborn code—
No, no code was needed. That was a mistake on the part of the Highborn, a lack in their security details. They had probably never envisioned someone else gaining control of their shuttle, with the killer locked outside.
Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Marten used voice activation. He wasn’t used to this, and he had little time left, but he managed to override the airlock controls.
The computer told him the outer hatch was open. Marten swallowed hard and clanked along the shuttle’s hull, hurrying now. Time was running out.
He made it to the hatch with five minutes of air left. He closed the outer hatch, pressurized the chamber and opened the inner one. He only had two minutes left as he cracked the seal and twisted off his helmet inside the shuttle. He stood staring at the wall. That had been far too close.
Taking a deep breath, Marten began to open the vacc-suit. He needed to go outside later and reattach the sensor plate. But he couldn’t go now. He was too paranoid to go now. He had to first figure out why the outer hatch hadn’t opened properly. Maybe Lycon done something to it as he’d fought to remain aboard.
There was a lot to do to make this shuttle his and to make sure it was shipshape for a longer voyage to Mars. Marten floated to the oversized pilot’s chair and he reconfigured the flight path.
“Think,” he whispered to himself.
Once he changed heading… would that bring him to the notice of any Doom Stars or to SU warships? A spaceship was difficult to spot. It was such a tiny mote compared to the vastness of space. A shuttle was even harder to see than a warship. Once he fired up the engines, however, that all changed. In the voids, an engine’s heat signature stood out like a beacon. The trick was to be out of range of any warship’s weaponry. A Doom Star had the longest range and any warship could launch a missile.
“You have to tiptoe, Marten,” he said.
For the next hour, Marten studied his radar and teleoptic scopes and all known positions of all warships. The time came when he had to choose. He was nervous. He wondered what he had forgotten. This was the moment. Once he engaged the engines and used up precious fuel, he wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. What he decided now would affect what happened to him months from now.
He first floated to Omi and rechecked everything. Then he returned to the pilot’s chair, reconfigured his course yet again. His stomach was queasy. This was crazy. He was free and that meant he had to be brave.
Finally, he reached out and engaged the thrusters. The one-G of acceleration returned. It brought back gravity, or pseudo-gravity. Marten laughed. He couldn’t believe it, but he laughed with relief. He had made his decision, his biggest yet as a free man.
Now his destination was Mars.
-4-
General James Hawthorne paced with his thin hands clasped behind his back. He was in a bullet train, a magnetic railcar, and speeding in excess of five hundred kilometers per hour. He was crossing through Peru Sector, he believed, the northeastern corner of it. It was dark outside his window, as the train barreled through tunnels most of the way. Because the Highborn owned the air and owned space, this was the safest and presently the fastest transportation on Earth.
He had left the battle zone some time ago. His ribs were still sore where Captain Mune had thrown him onto the ground.
Hawthorne paced before a desk. On the desk was the gun Ulrich had used to murder so many good people. It was made of nickel-plated steel and shone like a polished mirror. Hawthorne bent close and saw himself in the shiny barrel. He kept the gun as a reminder of the treachery that lurked around him.
He believed himself cagier these days. He’d learned from his political mistakes, and he’d vowed never to be taken unaware again. There had been several attempts on his life. He now knew that more assassins would likely come for him.
It was the message that lay on the table beside the slivery pistol that made him paranoid. Madam Director Blanche-Aster had requested an emergency session with him. She was in Central American Sector, waiting for him. That was strange. She should be safely in New Baghdad, not in Central America. Had she engineered a coup attempt in his absence?
Officially, Madam Director Blanche-Aster ran Social Unity. In reality, she was his figurehead. It suited them both. He needed the pretense of her rule to pacify Political Harmony Corps and thirty-eight billion citizens. She needed his skill and military muscle to survive the other scheming directors and to survive Chief Yezhov of PHC.
Why had she come to Central America?
Hawthorne checked his chronometer. Soon, he would find out.
***
Two hours and fifteen minutes later, there was a heavy rap at the door of General Hawthorne’s railcar.
“Come in,” Hawthorne said. He sat at his desk, reading Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. He felt as if the Highborn were like Caesar’s Roman Legions and the SU Military like the many Gallic warbands that had suffered endless butchery. Hawthorne kept wondering how the Gauls could have defeated Caesar’s crack legionaries. If he could discover the answer, it might help him against the Highborn.
Captain Mune entered, and said, “Madam Director Blanche-Aster is ready to see you, sir.”
“Did she bring her security clone?”
“I took the precaution of having the clone wait in the detention car, sir.”
“Did you disarm the clone?”
“No, sir.”
Hawthorne nodded, glad for Mune’s discretion. It was wise to hide the steel fist of his rule. Lord Director Enkov had never understood that. It made people more comfortable to pretend they had power, even when they knew better. He wondered why that was, and then dismissed it from his thoughts.
“I’ll go to her,” Hawthorne said, rising.
Captain Mune allowed himself a small smile. “I took the liberty of anticipating you, sir. If you’ll follow me…”
***
General Hawthorne entered a plush railcar with red carpeting, hanging ferns, famous portraits and fans gentling wafting about the odor of roses. Those odors couldn’t hide the medicinal smells emanating from Blanche-Aster’s special chair.
The Madam Director was one hundred and sixty-two years old. Longevity treatments had controlled the encroachments of age. Her chair kept her breathing. It was a bulky, gleaming-white unit with magnetic repulsors. It floated an inch off the carpet. Tubes snaked from it into her. Fluids surged through the tubes.
Hawthorne nodded a greeting, took a seat across a white cube from her and crossed his legs, idly smoothing a crease in his trousers.
Her vibrantly alive eyes tightened. Tubes rustled as the Madam Director leaned forward. “You’re no doubt curious as to why I’ve traveled this far for a simple conversion,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“You have my attention, madam.”
She gasped at the effort of leaning forward and sank back against her chair. Her withered fingers twitched over armrest buttons and the floating chair backed away from the cube and turned toward a window. Sunlamps burned brightly in the tunnel outside, showing the granite walls.
Hawthorne waited. The gurgles from her chair were the only sounds in the room. Then a slight whine occurred as she faced him.
“I understand you will think my worry part of a subtle plot to remove you from office,” she began. “It is exactly the opposite. I have learned to fear Chief Yezhov.” Her unnaturally smooth features twiste
d with distaste. “I fear your Captain Mune almost as much. He is inhuman, the wrong direction for humanity to have taken.”
“You may be right about that. However, Captain Mune’s inhumanity has saved my life more than once.” Hawthorne refrained from rubbing his sore ribs.
The Madam Director cackled like a holovid capitalist. Maybe she knew it was a mad sound. She stopped almost the moment she made it. Then her chair floated nearer to her end of the white cube.
“Do you realize that our own arrogance has created this intolerable situation?” she asked.
Hawthorne waited. He had learned that holding his tongue combined with unruffled patience awarded him many advantages. It often made others nervous, and it usually caused them to speak their mind without his having to reveal his position. There was an ancient proverb concerning the matter. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent.
The Madam Director hissed through her teeth. “Our eugenicists created the Highborn in their labs. They spliced genes and tampered with DNA. We wanted the perfect soldiers in order to bring harmony to the Solar System. The capitalists in the Outer Planets recklessly horded the limited resources of our system. Billions live harshly on Earth. With those resources equitably shared under Social Unity, we could have achieved an era of peace and plenty.”
“Ambition often leads to disaster,” Hawthorne said, thinking about the ancient Athenian Empire and its Sicilian Expedition in 415 B.C.
“If we had never created the Highborn,” she said, “we could have averted this war.”
“The past is always more clearly seen than the future.”
The Madam Director scowled. “Aphorisms won’t avert the coming disaster.”
Hawthorne kept his face bland, but she had his interest. She was seldom this agitated.
“We should have understood that altered humans would view reality through altered eyes,” she said. “How could these supermen join us in social harmony? Man is a communal being. In many ways, massed men are like a herd of sheep. It isn’t a complete analogy, but I think you can understand my meaning.”
Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod Page 2
