She looked worn down and obviously worried.
“You need a break,” Jon told her.
For several heartbeats, the mentalist did not respond. Finally, slowly, she shifted her head as if her neck had rusted. It seemed to take her several tries before she blinked.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Just as slowly as she’d turned, the mentalist nodded.
“She’s been like that since you left,” Da Vinci told Jon.
“I have been meditating,” Gloria said robotically.
Jon glanced at the little Neptunian before concentrating on Gloria. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her about the alien transmission.
“Meditation is a mentalist state,” she explained. “We call it shah-lamb. The practitioner allows data to flow into her subconscious. Emotions can flow as easily as any other form of information. It is a mistake to reject feelings, emotions, as the human subconscious often comes to correct conclusions faster than the conscious state.”
“Have you come to a conclusion?” Jon asked.
“Oh yes.”
Jon raised an eyebrow.
Gloria unfolded from what appeared to be a painful cross-legged posture. She straightened, staggered slightly and sat on a chair.
Jon crossed his arms, waiting for her to elaborate.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly, and opened them. She took several rapid breaths before regarding him.
“I will not relate the relevant data,” she said. “Instead, I will give you my conclusion. First, I would like to add that this is mentalist reasoning.”
“So let’s hear it already.”
“Do you understand what speaking as a mentalist means?” she asked.
“I’m guessing it means this is important.”
“You are making light of me. That’s wrong. Mentalist reasoning—”
“I get it,” Jon said. “It’s computer-like thinking.”
Gloria considered that, nodding slightly. “That will do for now. Here is the conclusion. We must increase velocity to a painful degree. If we appear to be anything other than alien-controlled, the enemy will surely annihilate our ship.”
“So…?”
“The other ships—the captured SLN and NSN vessels—are obviously under alien control. That control is likely due to the virus-infested main ships’ computers taking over. If you had observed the other vessels like I have, you would see that they all act in a similar fashion.”
“How many Gs are we talking about?”
“Seven at the minimum,” Gloria said. “Twenty would be better.”
“Seven!” he said. “Some of the men will fall unconscious at such a heavily sustained rate.”
“I know, but we must do it. And we must start immediately. I suspect the aliens are already watching us. There is another facet to my conclusion. We have to reach Triton when the others do. Not every captured ship will reach the moon at the same time, but it appears there is a narrow window for all the captured ships to arrive. We must reach orbital stability during that open window.”
Jon studied the main screen. In its Triton orbit, the alien vessel maneuvered toward a captured battleship. One of the massive alien ship’s hangar bay doors had opened. Spheroid craft presently drifted out of the alien ship and toward the captured battleship.
“Any idea what’s in those spheroids?” Jon asked.
“I do not want to speculate.”
“You’d better damn well speculate,” he growled. “We need all the data we can get if we’re going to destroy them. If you know anything…anything at all…I need to hear it.”
Something went on behind the mentalist’s eyes. It hardly seemed possible, but she sat up straighter. “That is a logical statement. Here is the first point, then. The aliens strike me as cybernetic organisms.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That they are part machine and part biological.”
Jon thought about that, nodding. “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”
“I could say the transmission you witnessed and the original computer assault, but that would not be sufficient evidence. In truth, I cannot point to anything conclusive. Instead, this is the shah-lamb speaking.”
“Huh?”
Gloria looked away. “I’ve already said too much. You’re not a mentalist, nor do you belong to the Sect. You are not initiated into the mysteries. What I’m telling you is forbidden knowledge. Thus, I can say no more on the subject.”
“Cybernetic, huh?” Jon shrugged. “I don’t know that it makes any difference.”
“It certainly does,” Gloria said. “I just don’t know how yet.”
“You keep thinking about it then. I need to contact the sergeants. They need to speak to their men. I’ll go with your seven Gs of acceleration. We have to set up for that first.”
“Don’t take too long.”
“Right,” Jon said, heading for the exit.
***
That had been fifty-one hours ago. Jon lay on a cot in the auxiliary control chamber. The crushing gravities had made the time on the cot one grueling second after another.
There had been injections, but in the end, this was about endurance in body and mind.
The Leonid Brezhnev had accelerated toward Triton at seven Gs. After the time limit passed, the SLN battleship stopped accelerating, rotated one hundred and eighty degrees and began to decelerate at the same rate.
During that time, the giant alien vessel continued to disgorge spheroid craft. Each spheroid was bigger than a lifeboat but smaller than an SLN frigate. Some of the spheroids welded ruptured hulls. Some entered battleship or mothership hangar bays, and did something inside the captured vessel.
The captured spaceships clustered together in Triton orbit. There were two main clumps. Those that had received the spheroids and those that had not. A third group was made up of the incoming vessels.
“Ten minutes,” Gloria managed to whisper.
Jon regarded her from his cot. She looked haggard and ill. The thin Martian didn’t have the musculature for sustained gravities. How she’d lasted this long, Jon had no idea.
The ten minutes passed agonizingly slowly. Finally, though, he used a remote-control unit. As soon as his thumb pressed the switch, the mighty engines quit.
The intense pressure pushing against him also quit. He felt like vomiting. Nearby, Da Vinci sobbed with relief.
Gloria groaned as she sat up. “It begins,” she whispered. “We don’t have much time.”
Jon knew exactly what she meant.
-2-
The Leonid Brezhnev eased into a mid-Triton orbit. The SLN battleship could have opened fire with its heavy weapons. The ship would not have lasted long, though. It was doubtful the battleship could have done lasting damage to the giant alien vessel before the Brezhnev ceased to exist.
The battleship was like a lone fish among a school of sharks. It had to act correctly, perfectly, or the other predators would rend it to pieces.
“I don’t understand why the aliens don’t scan us,” Jon said.
“They lack a reason,” Gloria told him.
“What about simple common sense?”
Gloria laughed. “You’re thinking like a human. The aliens aren’t human. They’re probably not one hundred percent biological anymore, either. Who knows how they think?”
“That’s crazy,” Jon muttered.
“Is it? Or is it just different?”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Jon said.
“The aliens invented an interesting method of attacking our ships. They corrupted the computers, causing our own machines to fight us. You have to admit that was brilliant.”
“You admire them?” he asked, horrified.
“I’m a mentalist. I see things more clearly than others do. You shouldn’t hate me for that. You should use my expertise.”
“Several days ago, you said I was like a mentalist. You called yourself emotional.”
Glor
ia shook her head. “I was having a crisis of faith. I’m…better would be the wrong word. I am full again.”
“What about the Sect sending you as an insult to the Solar League?”
Gloria frowned, turning away from him.
Jon studied the curve of her neck. He wouldn’t mind kissing that neck. He shook his head a second later. He didn’t have time for that. He needed to concentrate like never before. This was the moment.
The sergeants had led their companies into three different stealth boats. The sergeants had also informed him that eighteen effectives had died during the seven-G journey. Eighteen men had perished so they could reach Triton fast enough. That was a bitter price, as the eighteen belonged to the regiment. They had been family.
How many of them were going to die in the coming hours? Worse, how many would the aliens capture and torment?
Through force of will, Jon put all of that from his mind. He would mourn the eighteen later. In the here and now, he had to focus on a single goal. Capturing the alien super-ship meant they would win the Battle for the Solar System. Nothing else mattered.
Inside each stealth boat were space-marine battlesuits. These were the NSN variety, different from the bulky and more metallic SLN battlesuits.
Each mercenary “owned” his suit. That meant the Neptune Navy personnel had fitted the particular suit to each space marine. The individual marine had loaded the suit comp with vids, movies, porn, whatever would help occupy his mind for an extended mission.
A battlesuit could sustain a space marine for a week to nine days. Two or three-day stints were normal. A week would be pushing it. Nine days would be hell.
The NSN had developed the stealth, or insertion, boat for the coming war with the SLN. The insertion boats were small craft with independent maneuvering capability. The key was stealthy movement. The craft lacked all armor plating. Like ancient submarines in Earth’s seas, the stealth boats were supposed to sneak up on their victim, allowing the space marines a chance to reach the enemy ship’s hull.
The NSN designers hadn’t built the insertion boats for deep space battles, but for orbital use around a planetoid or in an area full of debris. In other words, the present situation was supposed to be the perfect time and place for an insertion assault.
This would be grabbing the belt buckle of these supposedly cybernetic aliens.
Jon hurried with Gloria, Da Vinci and his tech assistants. They would have to set this up fast, as they hadn’t had the time to do it before the seven Gs, and they couldn’t have done it during the heavy gravities. That left these few precious minutes to get everything ready.
The Centurion met them in a large hangar bay. The military professional had brought along ten battlesuited mercenaries.
“Figured you’d need the muscle,” the Centurion told Jon.
Jon nodded in acknowledgement.
The hangar bay was huge, but the launching equipment and the three insertion boats made it cramped quarters.
“Where’s the command center?” Jon asked.
The Centurion manipulated a tablet, soon passing it to Jon.
Jon examined the tiny screen, the launch system and the three huge boats. This would be harder than he’d imagined. He passed the tablet to Gloria.
The mentalist scanned it. Once done, she passed the tablet to Da Vinci.
The little Neptunian studied it like a greedy man slipping gold into his pocket at a coin collector’s convention.
“Do you see the problem?” Gloria asked Da Vinci.
The Neptunian looked up. He seemed perplexed.
“I might as well ask.” Gloria turned to Jon. “How are you going to launch the boats?”
“Spell out your question,” Jon said.
“I haven’t checked the launcher’s computer yet,” Gloria said. “I’m guessing the computer system was off during the original alien attack—when the extraterrestrials turned our computers against us. Is the launch computer infected? Will the computer turn against us as soon as we turn it on? Or do we keep the launch computer off?”
“How do we launch the boats without the computer?” Jon asked.
“That’s easy but ugly,” Gloria said. “Someone has to stay behind and do it manually. The hard part, obviously, is deciding who stays behind.”
Jon’s former grimness that had settled down like a beast in its lair now resurfaced. He glanced at the Centurion. By the coldness of the professional’s features, Jon knew the Centurion understood the problem.
“I’ll do it,” the Centurion said.
Jon felt a thrill of gratitude toward the man. A second later, he realized that wouldn’t work. “No. I need you for the assault.”
“There won’t be an assault if we can’t launch the boats,” the Centurion said in a clipped manner.
Jon knew that. He also knew that he wanted the least useful person to remain behind—if it came to that. Yet, that kind of person might screw up the launch. Without a launch, there would be no assault, as the Centurion had said.
“Come with me,” Jon told Da Vinci.
“I’m coming too,” Gloria said.
Jon turned to her.
Something in his eyes must have upset her. She blushed, adopted a stubborn look, and then hesitated yet again.
“If you’ll have me along, sir,” she added.
“Come on then,” Jon said.
The three of them pushed off, floating to the launcher’s control chamber. It was a tight fight inside, barely enough room for the three of them.
SLN personnel or robots must have ripped the launch system from an NSN vehicle. Maybe the SL people had wanted Earth inventors to study the Neptunian system. The reason no longer mattered, just that the Leonid Brezhnev had the intact launch system in a hangar bay, ready to go.
It was a simple system really, a magnetic catapult. In many ways, it was similar to a mothership’s fighter launch system. The few differences were the key, however.
The most basic difference was what it launched. Each insertion boat had a hull of weird ice. Such weird ice formed the outer hulls of many of the older Neptunian habitats or space satellites.
Weird ice had most of the properties of regular ice, but it was harder when frozen and would not melt as easily.
Each insertion boat’s hull was jet black. Ice was difficult to detect even with the best sensors. Black objects were the hardest to see with teleoptic sensors. That made black weird-ice hulls exceedingly difficult to find, even as they crept upon their targeted vessel.
An icy hull, unfortunately, did not accelerate along a magnetic ejector. The launch system had a particular boat holder. The insertion vehicle fit snugly into the metallic holder. At the proper moment, the launcher accelerated the holder, which carried the boat. Once the holder reached the end, it opened. Then, the genius of the Neptunian launcher showed itself. The holder cycled back like a roller-coaster car returning to its station. When the holder opened, it launched the insertion boat into space without any traceable signals to give it away.
“What am I looking for?” Da Vinci asked, as he scanned the controls.
“Do you comprehend the launch system?” Jon asked.
The chinless thief examined the controls more closely. He nodded as he looked up, finally understanding what Jon was really asking him.
“Ahhh…” Da Vinci said. “You know, Chief—”
Jon grabbed the front of the man’s garment, pulling him closer.
Da Vinci paled. “Please, Chief, don’t leave me behind. I can’t stand being alone. I’ll screw up for sure. I know I will. In fact, I’ll do it on pur—”
The Neptunian swallowed the last syllable, possibly realizing it could seriously jeopardize his health.
Jon understood, though. Da Vinci wouldn’t just screw up. He would make sure to sabotage the launching. He would get even with Jon for leaving him behind.
Jon let go of the man.
“I’ll stay,” Gloria said wearily.
Jon closed his eyes because h
e could hear himself accepting her offer.
“You’ll be perfect,” Da Vinci told her. “You have calm nerves. I could only hope for nerves like yours.”
“Shut up,” Jon told him.
The Neptunian seemed to shrink into himself. He began to ease toward the hatch.
“Stay where you are,” Jon said.
The Neptunian froze. His fingers began to do their jig.
“I don’t want you to stay,” Jon told Gloria without looking at her.
“But you’re going to accept my offer anyway,” she said lifelessly.
Jon found that his mouth was bone dry. He summoned his grimness of purpose. Yes, he would accept her offer.
“Why won’t you use the computer to do it?” she asked.
This time Jon looked at her. He owed her that much. He could see the fear shining in her eyes. He could also see that she strove to act logically, rationally—like a mentalist.
“The aliens have corrupted our computers,” Jon said.
“What about your battlesuit computers?” she asked.
He paused before saying, “We’ll have to risk that.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, as a realization dawned. “What about my battlesuit? I wore it earlier. I wore it, and the internal computer didn’t fight against me. It worked. Don’t you see?”
He did see.
“Why didn’t the alien’s virus hurt the battlesuit computer?” Jon asked.
“I have no idea,” she said. “Logically, because mine worked, your battlesuit computers should function. That doesn’t necessarily matter here. Maybe the battlesuit’s computer was too small to infect. The suit was off when I put it on—and that happened after the initial virus attack. Logically, we should be able to use the launch computer.”
“Will the aliens sense the computer turning on?”
“I don’t know,” she said, thoughtfully. “They failed to penetrate the P-Field with their missile beams. They miscalculated. That means they’re not omniscient.”
“What?” he asked.
“They’re not all-knowing. There’s no reason the aliens should be,” she added. “Just because their technology bewilders us, doesn’t mean we have to grant them supernatural powers.”
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