“Marten Kluge,” Octagon whispered.
The cyborg reattached the buckle. It turned the magnetic gurney and pushed Webbie Octagon toward the entrance. No fleshy human, Webbie or otherwise, had ever gone in that direction. It was unprecedented.
The pushing cyborg had received an emergency message from the Web-Mind. All the cyborgs on Athena Station had. They were to immediately head for the cargo vessels, the destination Carme. Because of the new command, Webbie Octagon inadvertently avoided conversion. He would join the convoy headed for Carme, to add his feeble muscles to the launching of the Jovian planet-wrecker.
-5-
Patrol boats landed on the Descartes’ shell and on the rock of the second Thales-class vessel. The patrol boats lacked the extended acceleration of a meteor-ship, so they would have to ride piggyback. Unfortunately, their added mass would cut into fuel consumption. But it meant the taskforce would have the benefit of maneuverable landing craft.
Marten and Osadar were in the former Arbiter’s quarters. Omi was presently running a squad in heavy calisthenics as they sprinted through the outer corridors.
Marten studied the latest advance in Jovian ground ordnance: the Infantry Missile Launcher or IML. It was a tube with sights and a trigger and it held a single Cognitive missile. The Cognitive missile gave Marten hope. The warhead was red and the electronics in it were better than anything he’d used before. Normally, the Cognitive missile gave a foot soldier the ability to destroy tanks or other heavy vehicles. A soldier aimed, fired and ducked like mad. The missile’s sensors took over after that, guiding the missile to the target. It used secure neutrino receivers and had the added benefit of a passive designator.
Marten lowered the IML. It weighed nine and half pounds with the missile loaded. Each salvo weighed five and a quarter pounds.
Next Marten picked up something called a PD-10. It was a passive designator. It looked like a heavy Gyroc rifle, but with a large dish antennae on the barrel. The user needed to keep the dish on target. Through secure communications, the PD-10 sent targeting coordinates to any nearby IML-launched Cognitive missiles.
“We need to recode these,” Marten said. “Forget about tanks or vehicles, and set them to target cyborgs.”
“I’m not a technician,” Osadar said.
“I don’t mean you have to do it. But what do you think of the idea?”
Osadar glanced at the IML and at the PD-10 before shrugging.
“Technicians will reset the Cognitive missiles,” Marten said, “using you as the prospective target. With you, I can also show the troops the capabilities of cyborgs and hopefully find some weak points to exploit.”
“They still hate me for slapping their faces.”
Marten grunted. He’d chosen his space marines, calling them that now instead of ship-guardians. He’d taken the ones, twos and threes. Most of them were doomed to a quick death. He was probably doomed, too. But he’d chosen them. Now he was trying to figure out ways to keep them alive once they reached Carme. IMLs, patrol boats to land them on the surface, what else could he do? The knowledge that he led these space marines to almost certain death was beginning to weigh on him.
* * *
“How fast does Carme accelerate?” Marten asked Yakov in his wardroom.
“My information says at one-quarter G.”
Marten nodded. The Bangladesh had accelerated at a much greater rate. He wanted his space marines ready for that possibility. There was only one good way to get them ready.
“I need to take my space marines outside,” Marten said.
“We’re accelerating,” Yakov said. “No one goes outside the ship during acceleration.”
“That’s why I need to take them out,” Marten said.
“You might lose men.”
“I might lose space marines on Carme,” Marten said. “But I’m still headed there.”
Yakov drummed his fingers on the computer-desk. At last, he nodded.
The next day began the high-G training. Marten and Omi went out with each squad. It was grueling work. Everyone checked his or her vacc-suit twice. They lacked the spikes of shock trooper suits. Instead, they had hammer-jacks, pitons and block and tackle gear. Marten led the way.
He shot a piton into the meteor-rock and attached his line to it. Slowly, he crawled forward. Piton by piton he neared the curvature of the ship. The G-forces began to tear at him. It caused his mouth to become dry.
Stars and meteor-rock filled his vision. His harsh breathing was all he heard. Then he opened his com-link and instructed those following him.
Slowly, with Omi at the end, the squad crawled across the backside of the Descartes. Terrible G-forces tried to tear them off. More than one space marine shouted curses. Others hissed with fear. Some just silently followed.
It was the fifth time across that the accident occurred. Marten was exhausted. He might have forgotten to give his warnings. There was a scream in his helmet.
“Pelias!” someone roared.
There was a sharp yank on the line. Then there was nothing. Marten’s stomach curled tight. While clutching the gear, he twisted his helmeted head. The sight sickened him.
A space marine tumbled away from the meteor-shell. Her arms flailed as she quickly dwindled.
“Pelias,” Marten whispered.
“Please,” she moaned. “Help me. Send help. I don’t want to die.”
Her flailing form quickly became too small to see. The Descartes and the following meteor-ship burned hard for Carme. They couldn’t afford to halt just to pick her up.
“Pelias,” Marten said, recalling her black lipstick, the way she’d walked. She would last for hours out there, knowing that she was soon going to run out of air.
As Marten clung to the rock with the others behind him, he recalled the awful image of shock troopers dwindling into the blackness, those that had fallen off the Bangladesh’s particle shields.
“What are we going to do?” a space marine asked.
Marten squinted into the starry distance.
“Group-Leader Kluge?” someone asked.
Marten gathered his resolve. Why had Pelias been the one? He shook his head. Then he chinned on his line. He was the shock trooper. He was the hard case.
“This isn’t a game,” he told them. “This is life or death. Pelias forgot that.” He didn’t know if that was true. But he had to use this to train the others.
He heard someone call him a bastard.
Marten shook his head. He had space marines to toughen. He had to do whatever he could so a few might survive the cyborgs. Probably, they were all doomed to die horribly. Or worse, they would enter a cyborg converter.
“Keep moving, people,” Marten heard himself say. “Don’t make Pelias’s mistake. You have to keep your focus at all times.” Then he began to move again, crawling across the surface of the meteor-ship.
* * *
Pelias’s boyfriend went berserk the next day. He attacked Marten with a blade, trying to stab him in the back in the recreation room where they drilled. A shout from Omi gave Marten enough time to whirl, dodge and chop his stiffened fingers into the attacker’s throat. The boyfriend writhed on a mat, clutching his throat.
Afterward, Marten went to his chamber. He broke out a bottle of Yakov’s whiskey, sipping once. It burned going down. He shook his head. He hated this. He hated the Highborn and he damn well hated the cyborgs. What had humanity ever done to receive these twin fates?
Marten took another sip before corking the bottle. He had to keep pushing. Destroying the planet-wrecker—he might be saving Earth or Mars. Either way, billions of lives might be resting on what he did. He couldn’t go soft now. He had to push.
The door opened and Osadar entered. The cyborg stopped, and she looked at him.
He gave her a tired glance before getting up, going to the desk and turning on the computer. He felt a growing need to do everything he could to make sure some of these cannon fodder space marine would survive the battle. H
e knew they were going to need every advantage they could find, or they were all going to die uselessly.
-6-
The debates raged on Ganymede and in the Combined Fleet stationed in mid-orbit there. Chief Strategist Tan held nominal command of the fleet, but that power was slipping.
The warships near Athena Station waited. There was a meteor-ship heading toward them. The assumption was they were cyborg-controlled. They answered radio calls with human officers, citing ridiculous excuses as to why they remained there. But it was obvious they were cyborg ships now. All civilian and commercial spaceships stayed far away from Athena Station. Counting the approaching meteor-ship, the cyborg fleet there contained one dreadnaught, three meteor-ships and many patrol boats.
The terrible meaning of the genocidal destruction of Callisto finally began to seep into the warship-personnel of the Guardian Fleet. Callisto had contained nearly half the Jovian population and well over half the system’s manufacturing capacity. Political, intellectual and monetary power had emanated from the fourth Galilean moon. Now it was gone. That left a gaping hole where the heart of the system used to lie. Worse for the warship-personnel, it had stolen their homes, their wives and children and their base, their reason for being. In a myriad of ways, they had been set adrift. They were like souls without bodies, without a political, spiritual or material anchor.
The two Secessionist warships had matched orbits with them, and a few more patrol boats had straggled in. That gave the new Combined Fleet two dreadnaughts, three meteor-ships and three wings worth of patrol boats.
The Force-Leaders, Arbiters and Governors in the Guardian Fleet-warships realized that no base existed for them. Ganymede had declared itself a sovereign state, as had Europa. The corporate mining-executives on Io were already sending delegates to both moons, seeking protection treaties. The Guardian Fleet had formerly existed to protect the Confederation, but that Confederation had vanished into the splintered sovereign states. Smaller, asteroid-sized moons were already talking about defensive alliances with each other.
Astute politicians on Ganymede and on Europa sensed the opportunities. They’d begun sending open and secret delegates to the various warships, trying to win them over to their particular sovereign state.
Chief Strategist Tan recognized the problem. She had daily briefings with the warship commanders. She also sent orders to various outposts, trying to convince them to hold their positions and monitor the cyborgs. The trouble, however, was that everyone wanted to survive the war. Without the might of Callisto threatening them, and with the crumbling of the Confederation, men and women thinking about their future forget their duty. At least, Tan viewed it that way.
She used half her energy trying to hold the fleet together. The other half she saved for deep thought, trying to pierce the cyborg strategy.
Finally, the warships near Athena Station began a burn that would take them to Io. It had every Jovian in an uproar. Many wanted to intercept the cyborgs and protect the mining properties on Io. Ganymede’s political leaders had other ideas, namely, that the Combined Fleet remain at the third Galilean moon, protecting them from possible bombardment. Soon, the political leaders on Europa clamored for warships. They wanted to know what would happen if the cyborgs headed for their moon.
A meteor-ship with a Europa-born crew planned on heading for home. It was hard to blame their hearts, even if their strategic insight was faulty.
Tan paced down a long corridor on the Kant. Su-Shan was dead. Callisto was a radioactive ruin. Who lived by the Dictates anymore? Could such a philosophically splendid system die that quickly? Was everything she’d learned, everything she’d known, now meaningless? Was mere existence worth all this misery?
Tan slid the sliver ring on her right middle finger back and forth. It had a philosopher-king’s lion symbol on the signet. Sometimes, it felt as if she was the living embodiment of the Dictates. When she felt this way, it was easier. She knew what to do then. First, she must defeat the cyborgs. Then she must return the Jovian System to the pristine state it had so laboriously achieved through the decades. Something as wonderful as reason, logic and meaning—
Tan groaned as she recalled the horrible images from Callisto. Who had ever created such a horror as cyborgs? What had the creators been thinking? What had been the real purpose behind machine-like men? Perhaps the creators had been mad. That seemed like the easiest explanation, or perhaps their dreams had been infested with mad hopes.
Had scientists in the Neptune System observed the massive, military build-up in Inner Planets? Were the cyborgs a response to the Highborn? What had ever prompted the rulers of Social Unity to gene-warp such fierce super-soldiers? Why construct Doom Stars when they’d possessed the SU battlewagons? Well… that was easier to understand. The allied fleets of Mars and Jupiter had defeated a fleet of SU battleships. It had taken Doom Stars to shatter the allied fleet thirteen years ago. Clearly, the rulers of Social Unity had desired Solar-wide conquest. Then again, with such a sprawling political system there must have been and likely still were vast bureaucracies within the structure of Social Unity that fought at cross-purposes against each other. Perhaps one department had created the Highborn and a different department with different insights and goals had built the Doom Stars.
Tan shook her head as she stared out of a viewing port. Mighty, banded Jupiter slowly rotated, and the Red Spot swirled with activity. That Red Spot was a hurricane in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. It had been blowing and swirling for over five hundred years, changing its deepness of color and speed over the long decades. There was no land inside Jupiter to break apart a hurricane as happened on Earth. There, hurricanes rose from the oceans and they broke apart over the landmasses.
Tan sighed. Social Unity didn’t matter now. Highborn, Doom Stars—the cyborg fleet burned for Io. Should she attempt to intercept the fleet? The problem was that compared to the rest of the Jovian moons, the Galilean moons moved in near proximity to each other. What if she accelerated for the cyborg fleet or for Io, and then the enemy made a dash for Europa or even worse, for Ganymede? They could not afford to lose any more Galilean moons or industrial centers. If the cyborgs bombarded Europa or Ganymede—she must defend those two moons at all costs. Io on the other hand….
Tan stared at the great gas giant with its Red Spot. Three Earths could fit into that single ancient storm. Maybe the cyborgs would bypass Io and attempt to destroy the processing centers that floated in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Did the cyborgs need the helium-3 isotopes? No. She doubted the cyborgs would pin themselves so near the massive gravity-well. Going down to Io or to the processing plants was easy. Climbing back up the gravity-well took hard burns.
She let go of her ring, the one she’d been rotating around her finger. She looked back the way she’d come. The corridor curved slowly. She had already walked the outer-corridor circumference of the dreadnaught. Her heart rate quickened then as she considered a critical problem.
Fleet morale had sunk to abysmal levels. The very idea of the Guardian Fleet was nearly dead. Callisto glowed with radiation and everyone else jockeyed for an unknown future. The rulers of Europa and Ganymede played political games when they needed to concentrate on defeating the cyborgs. She needed to cement her fleet role as supreme commander. This move toward Io by the cyborgs—a cunning mind moved that fleet. A cunning mind had sent the missile strike into the heart of the Jovian System.
Tan whirled around and broke into an unseemly trot. She had to use the move against Io to her advantage. She had to wield these new politicians, using them to create a new Confederation. If she was to win the battle against the cyborgs, they had to give her command authority. As it was, they chipped away at her power.
As she trotted, Tan began to breathe hard. She wasn’t used to running and her legs were too short. It was time to speak with the Advisor of Ganymede—the moon’s chief politician—and with the Controller of Europa. She had a good idea about what was going to happen next. Io was
doomed to nuclear bombardment. That was the horrible truth. The Advisor and the Controller would never agree to let the Combined Fleet head to Io to avert disaster. Therefore, she had to use her foreknowledge and her gift at strategy, both military and political, to break their confidence in themselves. She had to show them that only she could save the Jupiter System. It was time to have another three-way. It was time to join the political games, using her strategic insights to win the power she needed to annihilate the cyborg menace.
* * *
The three-way conference between Chief Strategist Tan of the Guardian Fleet, the Advisor of Ganymede and the Controller of Europa. Subjective time: twenty days after the cyborg missile strike of Callisto. Held via a dedicated laser lightguide-link.
TAN: Gentlemen, I’m glad you agreed to meet with me. The situation has become dire. The cyborgs have gathered an appreciable concentration of warships and presently move on a hard intercept course for Io. We cannot afford to lose the mining colonies there.
ADVISOR: I dearly hope this is not another attempt to move the Combined Fleet out of its excellent, defensive position. I’ve already informed you of Ganymede’s total rejection of such thinking.
CONTROLLER: Before we speak about that, let us be clear on one critical certainty. The cyborgs are cunning. We have learned this to our eternal disadvantage. Callisto—it is too difficult to put into words the horrors that occurred there.
TAN: We are the leaders of the Jovian System. If you cannot put the situation into words, I suggest the governors of Europa find someone who can.
CONTROLLER: Have a care, Chief Strategist. There are no more arbiters or philosopher-run spy agencies on Europa. We are thus free to think, do and speak as our hearts wish.
TAN: Perhaps that is so. My question for you is. For how much longer will you enjoy these freedoms if you ignore the cyborgs?
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