Much like how many of his men were now behaving and thinking.
Victory disease… Becoming sloppy…
The Grand Admiral read about the staggering Japanese defeat off the Midway Islands. Prime carriers destroyed one, two, three. It was most amazing. The mighty Admiral Yamamoto forced to flee from the very foes he had come to annihilate.
Grand Admiral Cassius sat up and tore off his VR-goggles.
The premen weren’t stupid. They were inferior, yes, but still with the ability to bite. Hadn’t he almost lost the Genghis Khan to them on May 10?
This X-ship, the Bangladesh, it could very well be dangerous. And it approached the one location the Highborn could not afford destroyed.
The Grand Admiral pulled on his boots and strode out the door.
26.
The Grand Admiral’s laser-beamed orders took immediate effect, even as the massive booster ships built up speed orbiting Mercury. Each booster ship appeared to be little more than an asteroid with a flock of missiles perched on its forward surface. X-ray Pulse Bombs, EMP Blasters, ECM drones and the SA Missiles were all ready to launch. Meanwhile, massive engines fed on hydrogen and left a white exhaust behind the booster ship. It looked like a comet’s tail. Faster and faster went the booster ships, automated vessels, increasing velocity in as short a time as possible.
The Grand Admiral’s orders brought a burst of activity to the Sun Works Factory. The horde of repair pods zoomed from the Doom Star Genghis Khan. The giant warship’s engines were warmed. Soon the mighty spacecraft pulled out of the cradle that had been so carefully built around it. The Grand Admiral had ordered the Genghis Khan behind Mercury, in relation to the approaching Bangladesh. There it would stay until they discovered what the X in the X-ship actually meant.
The majority of the repair pods flew into storage and shut down, while the millions of tons of warheads, laser juice and other combustibles and military explosives went into their special emergency compartments on the Sun Works. The Grand Admiral didn’t want the SU military catching the Sun Works Factory the way the American pilots at the Battle of Midway had caught the four Japanese Carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu. He didn’t know how the Bangladesh could possibly do any damage to the Sun Works, but—why were they flying by at 30 million kilometers, why not much farther out or much nearer in? There was a reason for the 30 million-kilometer range, and he didn’t know what it was. He felt certain about what the SU could and could not do—but he would not allow himself to become arrogant. Pride went before the fall. It was an ancient proverb, well proven by history. And in yet another area, he would show the Highborn superior to the premen. He would actually learn from history.
As the Sun Works Factory went into emergency war-drill, the five booster ships reached boost velocity.
The first asteroid-ship changed the direction of its thrust and shot from Mercury’s orbit. The white hydrogen tail billowed behind it. It sped toward the first cone of probability. Then the first missiles launched off the boost ship. The Law of Motion was immutable. For every action, there is a reaction. So the launching of these missiles slowed the forward motion of the boost ship by the amount of their mass, which was the reason why these boost ships had been built so massively. Then the next set of missiles lifted off the asteroid, the hunk of rock turned into a ship.
As those missiles launched, the second boost ship altered orbit. It sped toward a different cone of probability.
* * *
“Do you feel that?” Vip asked, sounding worried.
“We’re launching,” Marten said. His VR-goggles were set on the missile’s viewer.
Then his suit’s gages wobbled. It felt as if he was being flattened. He found it hard to breathe.
“This is horrible,” Lance said in a choking voice.
“The tachyon drive has kicked in,” Marten said. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing. Would his internal organs rupture?
“Are we accelerating at twenty-five Gs?”
Marten didn’t know who said that. “Yeah,” he said. He wondered if he could ever get used to this feeling.
“How long is this trip gonna last?” Vip asked, with a tremor in his voice.
“Watch a video,” Marten suggested.
“I don’t know how.”
Marten had to concentrate before he explained it one more time. He wondered if he was going to die like this, squeezed in a suit and buried in goop, or would they reach the Bangladesh and start the automated drain procedure?
Maybe it was time for him to watch a video. Anything to get his mind off this grinding pressure and off Nadia and the ultra-stealth pod waiting in the Sun Works Factory for somebody to use.
Bionics
1.
Earth—Joho Mountains, China Sector
General James Hawthorne paced in his office as he spoke with Commodore Tivoli, who ran Military Intelligence.
Tivoli was a small woman with compact shoulders and hard crinkles in the corners of her hazel eyes. She played a dangerous and constant game with PHC. In the scheme of Social Unity, three prime movers comprised the State: the Military, the Party and Political Harmony Corps, the State’s secret police.
Ever since 10 May 2350—six long months ago—the game had turned nastier than usual. The asteroid impacts had hurled millions of tons of particleized debris into the air. The previous pollution together with the new additives had created a heavy, greasy cloud of reflective dust. Temperatures dropped rapidly, creating hurricane-strength winds that whipped across the planet in ever-increasing power. That, combined with the billion deaths, had created an intolerable strain on Earth’s social fabric. News of the disaster had leaked over the planet.
Six months ago Greater Hong Kong had vanished, and Beijing, Manila, Taipei and Vladivostok. The million-ton meteors dropped on them had left vast smoking craters.
The numbed inhabitants of Earth wondered how it could have happened. Their holosets had daily informed them that the Supremacists were on the run, soon to be defeated. Yes, Antarctica had fallen because of a treacherous sneak attack by the specially bioengineered soldiers. The neighboring islands of Tasmania and New Zealand had also been snatched up by the self-styled Highborn. Perhaps the loss of Australian Sector soon thereafter shook a few alarmists, but a stint in the slime pits had cured those.
But on May 10 enemy Doom Stars had actually entered the stratosphere. That could only mean the Social Unity Space Fleets had been defeated. No person on Earth, no matter how deep in the mantle he lived, was safe from more million-ton meteors raining down from the heavens.
At that realization, forty billion people knew gut-wrenching fear. Most lived in the vast underground cities, human hives that often sank more than fifty-five levels down. Social Unity gave them harmony, guidance and solace, and had turned them into a sheepish, submissive horde. They believed in humanity’s manifest destiny, and worked for the good of the whole. Now the truth dawned. They’d been given propaganda swill.
One billion people dead in an instant, slain by asteroids maneuvered into Earth orbit and then rocketed down. It meant they were all defenseless.
On the holosets six months ago, the Social Unity familiars urged caution, that the latest disaster had been studied and was now well in hand. Be assured that it couldn’t happen again. The mere idea of a repeat attack was ridiculous and anyone who suggested otherwise should be reported to the nearest hall leader. In memory of those so tragically lost on May 10, a planet-wide hum-a-long would commence in one hour. Anyone not participating would be given ten demerits to his profile.
It should have worked. The people had been well trained and loved the hum-a-longs.
Instead, in one hour, as if psychically connected as a mass organism, the hordes of Social Unity went mad with rage and grief. In the seventy major megalopolises, riots broke out. Billions smashed stores and looted. In some places, the peacekeepers fought back. Sometimes they were stripped of shock batons and beaten, elsewhere they joined the looting.
The South American masses turned vicious. There the hordes wielded bricks and recklessly slew the police. In North America the opposite occurred. The peacekeepers went berserk and slaughtered thousands of rioters, thereby gaining temporary control.
Naturally, from their newly conquered Pacific Basin Stronghold, the Highborn gained wind of what occurred.
“Send in the FEC Armies,” urged several ground commanders. The FEC Armies: Free Earth Corps, composed of captured and reeducated Social Unitarians from Antarctica and Australian Sector.
“Nonsense,” said other Highborn. “This is a trap, crudely fashioned by the premen to get us to split our forces and be overwhelmed in detail.”
As the precious days slipped by, the SU peacekeepers regrouped, reinforced by army units and PHC shock squads. They waited for orders from the Directorate. The six surviving members of the Directorate were too busy jockeying for power in the absence of the late Lord Director Enkov. Into the vacuum stepped General James Hawthorne, the man who had almost destroyed the enemy Doom Star Genghis Khan. He steeled himself to issue savage orders. Control must be regained or the war was lost.
Then Highborn electronics broke into the world-wide datanet. If the premen had truly lost their grip, and this wasn’t a Social Unity trick, the HB psychologists said this broadcast would slip the masses over the edge. So Highborn Command beamed images of the former fighting that had gone on in the Japanese home islands, unedited shots of what had really happened on the battlefield before May 10 and the crushing asteroid attack.
Grown weary by several days rioting and thus returning to their cramped apartments, where there was little to do other than watch the holosets, almost the entire populace of Earth witnessed the Japanese Kamikaze assaults: men, women and children hurling themselves at the nine-foot tall, battle-armored Highborn and uselessly dying. The billions in front of their sets were already emotionally drained, fatigued and beginning to wonder what their wild behavior would cost them. They wept as they watched the merciless super-soldiers, the giants in their black battle-armor, butchering inept amateurs. They seethed with a gut wrenching hatred as space-borne lasers devoured transport after sea-transport trying to reach Japan Sector and help their brothers in need. 700,000 SU soldiers died in less than two hours. Thousands of SU fighters, bombers and space interceptors exploded on screen. The last of Earth’s navies were annihilated before their eyes in the blast furnace of 10 May 2350.
“Resistance is illogical. Surrender therefore and serve the New Order.”
Grand Admiral Cassius himself spoke on the holoset. For most of humanity this was their first close-in shot of a Highborn, a bioengineered soldier, originally fashioned to fight for Social Unity, not against it. The giant Grand Admiral had pearl-white skin, with harsh features angled in a most inhuman manner. His lips were razor thin and his hair, cut down almost to his scalp, was like a panther’s pelt. He had fierce black eyes, and an intense, almost pathological energy. He smiled, and to those billions it seemed that he mocked them.
“Come, let us end this useless war. Submit and live. Resist—”
The pirated link was cut at that precise moment, not in canny timing, but because the SU technicians had finally found the Highborn frequency.
Several hours later General Hawthorne gave the order. All over the planet the peacekeepers with army escorts and PHC shock squads reentered the riot zones and then onto the residential levels. They had prepared for bitter battle. Instead, they found a subdued and repentant populace. A chilling glance at Earth’s conquerors had sobered the billions out of their madness. After all, better the government you knew than the one who thought itself your genetic superior.
It should have been the moment of greatest unity. The army and PHC had worked together to save the State. Instead, the head of PHC and certain directors grew alarmed at the military’s newly gained powers. They feared General Hawthorne, and they hated the fact that they had so desperately needed him.
That had been six long months ago. Today… General Hawthorne paced in his office.
“General,” said Commodore Tivoli, “I wish you would look at these figures.”
“What’s that?” said the General, taking the proffered report and scanning it.
“MI has lost too many operatives lately.”
“Eh?” asked the General, as he sped-read the report.
“I think PHC is behind those losses,” Commodore Tivoli said. “They’re assassinating my operatives in a secret war against you, against the military.”
“Hmm.”
“They’re some of my best men, General. Keen agents. Slaughtered like pigs. PHC is poking out our eyes and making sure that we’re blind in intelligence matters.”
The General shook the report. “These aren’t the proton beam figures I asked for.”
“It’s a list of all the slain MI operatives in the last three months.”
“I can see what it is, Commodore.” Hawthorne handed her the report. “That’s your department, your worry. If you need more personnel just ask.”
“It isn’t that, General. PHC—”
“We’re late,” interrupted the General, checking his chronometer.
Commodore Tivoli frowned. “I believe this is critical.”
“Can’t it wait until after the meeting?”
“I—yes, sir.”
General Hawthorne put on his military cap and viewed himself in a mirror, tilting the hat, giving himself a bit of a rakish appearance.
“Sir, have you thought about my other suggestion?”
“Which one?” asked Hawthorne.
Tivoli said, “That any officer or soldier entering your presence should first surrender his sidearm.”
“Ridiculous.”
“But I have reports—”
“No, no,” said Hawthorne, waving his bony hand. “The officers would view it as an imperial gesture. It would alienate too many.”
“But it would make things much easier on your security detail, on keeping you alive from assassination.”
“That’s why I have the best.”
Commodore Tivoli’s frown deepened.
The General knew she had problems, worries, but so did he. He had to keep on conjuring up victories, at least until the cyborgs from Neptune arrived. His throat tightened. Few knew about that secret project, not even the Commodore. What would she think if she did know?
Hawthorne shook his head. It ached all the time. Problems everywhere, burdens dumped onto him. All the domes of Mars had re-rebelled. Terraformed Venus was under orbital blockade. Mercury. He didn’t even want to think about the armaments the Sun Works Factory churned out for the enemy.
Why couldn’t the Highborn gloat in their victory? Instead, they continued to move with their customary speed and brilliance. In six months of blitzkrieg invasions, they had snatched the rest of Earth’s islands. The Philippines, the Indonesian chain, Ceylon, Madagascar, the Azores, England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Cuba and Haiti and the Hawaii Islands, all had fallen.
During the ensuing months since May 10, he had struggled to correct the strategy of the late Lord Director. But despite his best efforts, many blamed him for the loss of the islands. To his detractors he pointed out his lack of oceanic vessels, and that he’d saved three-quarter a million trained troops, desperately needed troops that now bolstered the Eurasian Continent.
The Directorate had fired back and told him that his statement was illogical. If he could slip troops out, surely he could have put enough in to hold somewhere.
“That is imprecise,” he’d written back. “Enemy laser stations ring the planet. Any of our military craft flying higher than fifty meters are targeted and vaporized. Meanwhile, Highborn orbital fighters routinely buzz any merchant marine we have left. If military men or material are spotted or analyzed to be aboard ship, the vessel is sunk.”
“How, then, did you extract the troops?” returned the query.
“Ah. Now you begin to understand the magnitude of my accomplishment.”<
br />
Several on the Directorate had bristled at his tone. He should have used more tact. He knew that now. But he had become so tired.
“General?”
“Hmm?”
The Commodore tapped her chronometer. “It’s time for your staff meeting.”
“The proton beam report?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded. Despite heavy PHC interference, he’d begun a crash proton beam-building program. Everyone feared to use them. They said the Highborn would simply drop more asteroids and take them out again. He disagreed. They needed many proton weapons and enough merculite missile batteries to support them. Fortress Earth was his new strategy.
“What about my meeting with Yezhov?” he asked.
“I hadn’t heard about that,” she said. “When was it supposed to take place?”
“Tomorrow, I think.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it will happen now. The Chief of PHC is in New Baghdad. There have been riots in the capital.”
Hawthorne swung open the door.
The Commodore followed, saying, “I still suggest that you should order anyone entering your presence—”
“Please, Commodore, save it until after the meeting.”
2.
Surprise was complete.
The Supreme Commander of Social Unity Armed Forces stood with his staff around a holoimage of Earth. The dark headquarters deep in the Joho Mountains of China Sector provided a safe haven from the space-borne invaders. There the officers studied the red dots circling the softly glowing, blue-green image of the planet. The dots indicated enemy space-laser platforms, orbital-fighter stations and two enemy Doom Stars, one of which orbited the Moon. Grimly, they pointed out to one another the much fewer yellow dots on the Earth: the proton beam installations and the merculite missile batteries.
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