What did Yakov see in him? Marten wondered. He fought for freedom as hard as anyone did. True, it had always been personal freedom and freedom for the friends around him. His larger goals had always been on the horizon, to flee to a better, safer and easier place. Chavez and Yakov stayed in their bitter situations and fought with others to improve it.
Marten nodded slowly. Chavez and Yakov were superior to him. They had more guts. They stood their ground and they defied their enemies by battling head-on, trying to kick their enemy in the teeth. Maybe it was time to do the same. Maybe it was time to stop running and start advancing. Maybe it was time to realize that there was something more than just personal freedom.
As Yakov adjusted the desk-controls, bringing the outer Jovian System into view, Marten gripped his edge of the desk.
Should he run to Saturn? What if the cyborgs were already there? Would he run to Uranus then, and then run to Neptune? Why stop there? Why not run to Pluto? And then why end his flight at the edge of the Solar System? If his enemies were so powerfully strong, why not board or build a starship and flee to Alpha Centauri?
Marten squeezed the synthiwood edge. The Solar System had become too crowded. Social Unity, the Highborn and the cyborgs… there were too many sides, too many powerful forces all desiring to subjugate free men. He had run out on the Martians. He had been running for a long time, practically since birth if one counted his rat-like existence on the Sun-Works Factory. It was time to stop running. It was time to plant himself on a spot and say as the German Reformer Martin Luther had: Here I stand.
Marten looked up. “I’m in all the way,” he said.
Yakov gave him a quizzical glance.
Marten placed a palm on the computer-map. “I fled the Sun-Works Factory. I fled Social Unity. I fled from the Highborn and then I fled from Mars. Now I’m done running.”
Yakov leaned back as his dark eyes measured Marten. “We could use a soldier with your skills.”
“You mean my shock-trooper training?”
“Who else has stormed aboard a warship as you did? By the account, you absorbed more of the Highborn training than anyone else I know.”
“It was hell,” Marten said. “I never want to do that again.”
“No soldier does,” Yakov said. “But are you willing to say that you could do more as a slave than as a free agent?”
Marten grinned tightly. “That’s why I like you, Force-Leader. You cut through the crap and strike into the heart of a thing. What are you suggesting?”
“At the moment,” Yakov said, “nothing. I’m speaking about priorities.”
“Yeah,” Marten said. “I get it.” He squinted at an upper corner of the cramped room. He flexed his hands. Omi and he were the last of the shock troopers. Maybe that’s what he should do: train Jovian hard-cases into shock troopers. No one could match Osadar. No one could match the cyborgs, or match the Highborn for that matter. But that didn’t mean you should curl up and die. He had killed Highborn before. He’d even killed cyborgs. If free men were going to rise up, if they were going to win, then they needed the best space marines he could train.
He regarded Yakov. The silver-haired Force-Leader watched him. Those dark eyes were too knowing. Marten understood then why Yakov had been the hussade captain.
“If I have to go through Hell to be free,” Marten said, “I’ll do it.”
Yakov remained quiet.
“And if I have to do that so others can be free, yeah, I guess I’ll do what every soldier knows is the stupidest thing of all. I’ll volunteer for the shitty job because no one else can do it better than I can.”
Yakov said, “Being a Force-Leader sometimes means you have to understand that you’re the best man for the task, or that you’re the best at hand to do a thing.”
“Yeah,” Marten whispered.
Yakov’s lips tightened. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a bulb and two shot glasses. The Descartes was under acceleration, headed for Ganymede. Because of that, there was pseudo-gravity. Yakov squeezed clear liquid into each glass. With a knuckle, he slid a glass to Marten.
Marten waited until Yakov had filled his. They raised their glasses and touched them, causing them to clink.
“To victory,” Yakov said.
“Victory,” Marten said. He tossed the Jovian whiskey into his mouth and swallowed fast. It hit in his stomach with a blast of warmth. Then his face flushed with the heat of alcohol. This was better than the synthahol he used to drink in Greater Sydney.
Yakov swept up both glasses and the bulb, depositing them back into the bottom drawer. His grin was wider than Marten had ever witnessed. That’s how Yakov must have looked on the day Ganymede U won the hussade trophy.
“In a fight,” Yakov said, “I’ve noticed that you’re a man that stands. You’re one I want on my side.”
“I’ve thought the same about you,” Marten said.
“We are guardians,” Yakov said. The grin vanished as an inner fire lit his eyes. “The philosophers who wrote the Dictates believe they should rule. They are wrong. The ones who dare should rule.”
“Men should rule themselves,” Marten said.
Yakov snorted. “You’ve fought long enough to know that most men cannot rule themselves. They need others to tell them what to do.”
Marten didn’t want to argue, not now, not with Yakov. Besides, he wasn’t going to change Yakov’s opinion today. And he was learning that maybe only he among humanity knew that freedom for everyone was the greatest prize. The time to preach that would come later. First, humanity had to survive. The people of the Jupiter System had to live through the cyborg assault.
“I just want you to know that I’m staying until we win or die,” Marten said. “If that means going down to Ganymede with a laser carbine, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You’re too valuable for ground action,” Yakov said.
“Come again?” Marten asked.
“That’s part of your skills. You’ve fought through terrible perils more than once. You know more about Social Unity, the Highborn and possibly the cyborgs than anyone else here does. That knowledge is vital.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because knowledge of your enemy is always vital,” Yakov said.
“Yeah,” Marten nodded, “the HBs have a maxim about that.”
“Who are these HBs?” Yakov asked.
“It’s what the shock troopers called the Highborn.”
Yakov ingested the information before he bent toward the computer desk and began to adjust controls. They had been studying known warship locations.
“The first phase of our strategy is to keep the Guardian warships from attacking Ganymede,” Yakov said.
Marten agreed with a snort, meaning, that was obvious.
The two of them had been carefully studying the strategic situation. It wasn’t just about who had the most ships. Position was critical too.
Marten pointed at the red cluster of the so-called supply vessels that had launched from Athena Station. “This shows us the cyborgs are frightened.”
“An open attack shows that?” asked Yakov.
“Their stealth campaign indicates they would have preferred to strike Callisto with a secret attack. Now, they’ve launched an open strike.”
“Most sensor date indicates they are supply vessels of the Montesquieu-class,” Yakov said.
“Osadar did some checking. Montesquieu-class vessels are similar in tonnage to Voltaire Missiles.”
“I am well aware of that.”
“Good ECM could be masking some sensor data.”
“I have radioed Su-Shan again,” Yakov said, “arguing the same thing.”
“What did she say?”
“That she would relate my words to Callisto High Command,” said Yakov.
“I believe the cyborgs are striking openly instead of in secret for a reason,” Marten said. “The reason is fear.”
“Can cyborgs fear?”
&nbs
p; “Maybe not as men fear,” Marten admitted. “So call it something else. The point is they’re striking now, probably before they were ready to do so.”
Yakov adjusted the controls, bringing the fourth Galilean moon into sharper focus. Heavy laser satellites ringed Callisto. On its surface were large missile installations and point-defense cannons.
“If the cyborgs can smash Callisto, they will surely attack Ganymede next,” Yakov said. “If they can destroy Callisto… they will have gone more than halfway to achieving victory.”
“Would the cyborgs have launched an open strike if they believed it would fail?” Marten asked.
“Are the cyborgs infallible?”
“Their destruction in the Mars System would say no,” Marten said. “But I’d hate to bet against them in their first open strike here. They will have studied the matter in depth. If they didn’t believe they could smash Callisto, I doubt they would have attacked.”
“Did your Osadar cyborg suggest these things to you?”
Marten nodded as he said, “You have to call Su-Shan again. You have to convince her to target the so-called supply vessels.”
“You and I know it is the most rational course,” Yakov said. “The philosophers will believe otherwise.”
Marten bit his lip, wondering how you woke a blind man to his doom. He recalled an ancient quote his father had used. It was from an ancient philosopher named George Orwell. Orwell had said, ‘It would take a Ph.D. to believe something so stupid.’ The High Command of Callisto seemed to be hard at work proving the adage.
-8-
As the Jovians and cyborgs readied for the next round of battle, the Highborn ship continued its desperate circuit around Jupiter. Unfortunately for them, things were going badly, and it had forced the Praetor to act directly to save the warship.
In his battleoid armor-suit, the Praetor clanked through the hard decelerating vessel. Deck lighting flashed erratically, creating strobe-light conditions. One light shattered, showering sparks onto the gunmetal-colored battleoid. The suit’s servos whined at full power and still the Praetor found it difficult to move through the corridor, as the intense Gs made every step miserable.
The ship’s engines had burned at ninety-seven percent capacity for days. One of the dwindling crew had died because of it. Radiation had caused an embolism in his brain. The Highborn had bled to death before anyone discovered the problem.
In the corridor, the Praetor breathed heavily as he slid another armored foot forward. Sweat bathed him even as the suit’s conditioner blasted his flesh with cold. In such a battleoid-suit, he could have made one hundred-meter leaps on Earth. With such a suit, he could have taken out a company of SU soldiers or a squad of cybertanks. In the gut-wrenching, decelerating ship, with the murderous Gs pummeling him, the suit could barely move.
The Praetor yearned to halt and rest. His lungs labored for air and his side ached horribly.
“You have three minutes and forty-three seconds to overload,” a harsh, Highborn voice said in his ears.
The Praetor snarled, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He wasn’t going to have made it to Uranus and back to die as an unsung hero in the Jovian System. Grand Admiral Cassius had thought to trick him, to sweep him from the board like a pawn. He—the Praetor—had won the Third Battle for Mars, launching the missile strike that had opened the way for the Doom Stars. Now he was going to conquer the Jupiter System with a single warship—and a badly crippled ship at that. It was going to be the greatest military exploit in the annals of war. Only Francisco Pizarro of Old Spain would have done something in league with what he planned.
The Praetor wasn’t a historical expert like the Grand Admiral, but he recalled his lessens from the crèche-school. Even for a Highborn, he had a phenomenal memory. He’d climbed to Fourth Rank for a reason.
The Praetor laughed madly and wheezed, utterly exhausted. His throbbing limbs threatened to rebel. He would soon be reduced to a quivering lump, unable to move. Then he would die as a loser. Grand Admiral Cassius would have defeated him. Cassius would have won.
“Never,” the Praetor whispered, as he forced another foot forward.
The Praetor concentrated until his mind became like a ball of energy. He willed his legs to shuffle forward. He clamped down on the pain, on the exhaustion.
Will… iron will….
“I am the Praetor,” he whispered. “I will conquer the Jupiter System.”
He remembered a lesson from his crèche-school. It had thrilled him with its daring, with its sheer ruthlessness. In his strange state of mind, which was like a feverish dream induced by the constant declaration and his straining effort to cross the ship, the Praetor hallucinated. For a time, he believed he was Francisco Pizarro.
Pizarro had been a Spanish Conquistador, perhaps the greatest of that daring breed. In 1531, Pizarro had set out on the most improbable conquest of history.
Luckily, Pizarro had Hernan Cortez’s fabulous conquest of Aztec Mexico before him as a guide. Pizarro knew that Spanish swords, gunpowder-propelled arquebuses and horses combined with Spanish courage could triumph over the hordes of Indian warriors with their stone-edged swords and hatchets. On first sighting horses and their riders, many Aztec and Incas had believed that the horsemen were some odd creature like centaurs. Thus, the horsemen had fiercely intimidated the natives. That didn’t mean the Indian nations were primitive in a quantitative sense, at least not compared to the conquistadors. The golden city of Mexico had awed Cortez and his men with its beauty, its teeming population and cleanliness, being bigger and more orderly than any Spanish city of that time. The same held true in the case of the Inca cities and for Pizarro’s expedition.
Pizarro had heard wondrous stories about a vast empire in the interior mountains. For years, Pizarro searched for this elusive empire. Then in the fateful year of 1531, he landed at Tumbes, what was now the smoldering ruin of San Miguel. From there, Pizarro marched with a minuscule army into the towering Andes Range. He set off with one hundred and two infantry, sixty-two horsemen, two cannons and a pack of savage mastiffs. He marched toward the Inca Empire, which boasted a standing army of over a hundred thousand veteran warriors.
The Inca Empire was the largest that primitive humanity had ever constructed at such a high elevation. They had gold-laden cities on mountaintop locations, richly cultivated fields on the mountainsides, rope bridges spanning amazing gorges and a powerful veteran host of victorious warriors.
Inca scouts watched the pitifully small Spanish force wind its way through the mountains. The Inca, the Emperor Atahualpa, scoffed at any noble who told him to fear such a weak force of white men. At any time, it was obvious, hardy warriors could ambush the Spaniards and annihilate them.
So Emperor Atahualpa allowed Pizarro to march to Cajamarca, where he waited with an army of over 40,000 warriors. Pizarro and his seemingly frightened men huddled in a walled village, surrounded by the seething mass of highly decorated warriors.
A day passed, and Emperor decided to go see these strange men with white skin and shining armor. He entered the walled compound with five thousand Incas armed only with ceremonial axes. They bore him on a litter into an empty square.
All the Spaniards waited in the buildings, gripping their swords and priming their clumsy arquebuses. Each gun weighed ten to fifteen pounds, the gunner needing to rest the barrel on a hooked stick in order to fire. Finally, a Spanish priest walked alone to face the Inca. With an outstretched Bible in hand, the priest demanded the Inca surrender to them. When the Emperor was given the Bible, he threw it down in disgust. The priest backed away horrified, and with a shout, he gave the signal.
The Spanish erupted from their buildings. On horse and using lances, the cavalry waded into the masses of Inca nobles. The swordsmen hurried after them. The two cannons boomed and the savage mastiffs tore into Indian flesh.
The astounded Incas died as they tried to defend their emperor. The Spanish went berserk, filled with terror at the numbers of their
enemies and filled with greed because of promised treasure.
The only Spanish blood spilled that day occurred when Pizarro grabbed a Spanish sword that slashed at the Emperor. It cut Pizarro’s palm, but it saved Atahualpa’s life. With the emperor’s capture and hustling into captivity, Pizarro paralyzed the massive host waiting outside the walled village. As in the Aztec Empire, the Inca or Emperor was considered semi-divine and his person sacrosanct.
The shrewd Spaniards understood this to a nicety. And that spelled the end for the Inca Empire, which had effectively fallen to the gold-crazed, God-besotted and glory-mad conquistadors of Spain.
Francisco Pizarro had conquered an empire of over ten million with sixty-two horsemen, one hundred and two infantry, two cannons, a pack of savage mastiffs and inspired daring.
What a mere preman could do among his fellow subhumans, a Highborn could outdo. The Praetor was absolutely certain of this. First, however, he must survive. Second, he had to end the terrible velocity that had nearly sent him to an inglorious oblivion in the void. The Praetor returned to reality then and realized that he had been standing still in his battleoid-suit for several long seconds.
“One minute and thirty-one seconds,” a Highborn said in his ears.
The Praetor hissed a litany of curses as he struck the hatch before him. The battleoid armor supplied him with exoskeleton power. The open palm caused steel to crumple and the hatch to tear from its moorings. It clanged in the conversion chamber as a fierce red glow bathed the Praetor’s ten-foot battleoid suit.
Covered in sweat, trembling from exhaustion but driven by a greater will than Francisco Pizarro had ever possessed, the Praetor entered the deadly chamber. Radiation bathed him. He heard the clicks in his suit and knew what it meant, too many rads, far too many. He would have to endure a chemical bath later and ingest many anti-radiation pills. He still might die. But unless someone came in here and fixed the malfunction, they were all doomed.
“I am the Praetor,” he whispered.
He shuffled ten more meters and then he un-shouldered the welding unit. Groaning, he sagged to his knees. It was hard to see, and his skin prickled horribly. The warning clicks nearly drove him to despair.
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