Battle Pod ds-3

by Vaughn Heppner

  Toll Seven studied the handscanner. He turned around and took several steps back. He adjusted the scanner. The skin-chopper with its many blades that removed human epidermis—ah, he saw the problem. He had misplaced a decimal in his configurations. He adjusted and reread the scanner. Then he continued down the line.

  He needed cyborgs down here and he needed them in space, ready to implement the stealth-attack tactic that would win them the Battle for Mars. If only there was some manner to speed up converter construction—but there wasn’t now. Later—

  His inner nanonics dumped more chemicals, keeping stress out of his system. He needed to send a message to Earth soon, to Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps. That particular Homo sapien had been invaluable with his warning. The original ploy to assassinate James Hawthorne had not only failed, but had also alerted the general to the real danger. If not for Yezhov’s timely lightguide message—

  Toll Seven halted and his silver eyeballs swiveled in their plastic sockets. Reminiscing would not improve his efficiency. He must concentrate and extract every ounce of effort from himself during these critical weeks.

  Against the Highborn—

  Toll Seven longed to plug into Web-Mind and reconfigure the statistics one more time. He would have to use the half-cyborgs, the ones converted in his command pod. It was yet another risk in this daring stab for Solar System-wide conquest. With three Doom Stars approaching, the odds were 62.34 percent in cyborg favor.

  Those odds would fall fifteen points, however, if the bio-forms of the Battlefleet discovered that key Homo sapiens had been jacked into the Web-Mind. If only he could capture Commissar Kursk or even better, Commodore Blackstone. The time might come, but so far, they had each proved too cautious by training or by instinct. They would soon make an error, however, for that was the way of free bio-forms. Once he gained control over those two, the odds for space-battle victory would increase another 3.22 percentage points.

  -4-

  Marten Kluge felt trapped and was depressed, as if he had never escaped out of the punishment tube in Sydney, Australian Sector. It felt as if the blue water still gushed over his head as he pumped and pumped the red handle.

  He had lived as a meaningless cipher in an underground megalopolis on Earth. Now he lived again in a sprawling subterranean city, but this time on Mars. Only this time the city was a titanic slum compared to Sydney.

  A little over three weeks ago, they had skimmed from Olympus Mons and had made it to New Tijuana, 343 kilometers away. That was much too near the giant volcano, too near the terrifying nest of cyborgs.

  Marten tightened his back muscles so they wouldn’t quiver. He and Omi were in an underground firing-range, practicing with genuine Gauss needlers. Others of his commando troop practiced here. Secretary-General Chavez had given him permanent command of them.

  Marten hefted what Major Diaz had called ‘a combat needler.’ It was bulky, but light. He suspected it would prove useless against cyborgs or against battle-armored drop-troops. Marten settled a pair of goggles over his eyes, lifted the needler and sighted the human-shaped target one hundred feet away. He fired a burst, listening to the cracks of noise and listening to all the other cracks from the other compartmentalized lanes. The hit area glowed red, showing dots on the target’s forehead.

  “Let me try,” Omi said.

  With his thumb, Marten flicked the safety, set down the weapon and stepped back. Omi picked it up and fired burst after burst. The glows showed in the head, the chest and in the genital area. When the needler clicked empty, Omi slammed in another clip and methodically emptied it, too. He picked up a third clip.

  “That will do for now,” Marten said, putting a hand on Omi’s shoulder.

  Omi whirled around, and there was something dangerous in his dark eyes. That something settled down as Omi seemed to realize who touched him and where he was.

  “It’s getting to you, too, eh?” Marten asked.

  Omi took a deeper breath than normal and gave a minimal shrug. “Is this why we escaped the Highborn?”

  “Meaning?”

  “To die on Mars?” Omi asked. “It’s only a matter of time before they unleash those cyborgs on us.”

  “Right,” Marten said. It was as if Omi’s words had flipped a switch in him. Marten knew what he had to do. He’d been playing the long shot for a long time now. Until they were free of the Inner Planets, there was no sense in trying to play it safe.

  “You’ve finally thought of something,” Omi said.

  “What gives you that idea?”

  Omi made a softly deprecating noise. “I’ve seen that look on your face before. You’re psyching up to charge through a wall. But whatever you’re planning, I’m in.”

  “Good,” Marten said. “I’m going to have a word with Major Diaz. Then we’re off to see Chavez.”

  * * *

  Major Diaz continued running the commando troop through the target-practicing drills. In the lobby, Marten and Omi donned bulky spylo-jackets and hurried onto the cold street.

  There were on the tenth city-level of New Tijuana. Instead of high-arching levels with bright sunlamps and well-modulated temperatures like Sydney, the Martian city had a claustrophobically low ceiling a mere twenty feet high. Many of the glass buildings reached that high, making it seem even more cramped. Instead of sunlamps on the ceiling to simulate sunlight, streetlamps provided dim lighting. Worst of all, both men could see their breath as the cold seeped into their bones.

  Martian children ran screaming past. They wore sythi-woolen caps, spylo jackets and ragged shoes. They chased a bouncing ball, and theirs were the only bright faces. The adults all looked haggard, were amazingly thin and moved with slouched shoulders. They all shuffled out of Marten’s way and avoided making eye-contact, treating him as if he were some escaped beast.

  Omi had complained before that wherever he went, he felt eyes staring into his back like needles.

  The Red Planet was closer to Luna’s density than to Earth’s density. What it came down to was that Mars lacked a large, molten core like the Earth. It also lacked the richness in metallic ores. Although it was a shorter distance to drill a deep-core mine here, the type of planetary mantle and other factors had mandated against planet-deep drilling. Too, the Social Unity government had never granted the necessary funds for such work. Thus, the Martian cities used nuclear fusion plants to power everything. That meant they needed sufficient fissionable ores to feed the hungry reactors. That meant mines and in the past, it had meant importing massively from the Jupiter Confederation. Mars also lacked sufficient water. The Jupiter cartels and the Martian Water Corporation had combined to scour the Jupiter System for ice asteroids and to import from Saturn. Saturn’s rings contained a treasure in movable ice, one that had been mined for decades.

  These and other factors had contributed to Martian squalor, at least in Earth terms. Marten felt constricted in New Tijuana and at times found it difficult to breathe. Until reaching New Tijuana, Marten and Omi had received a false impression about Mars. As Marten had said, “We only saw the best, the military people and the defense facilities.”

  With fusion plants instead of deep-core mines, the need to import water and the struggling food domes, the Martian economy wavered on permanent disaster. Likely, the constant rebellion had heavily contributed to that. Too many glass buildings in New Tijuana had blast holes that had never been repaired.

  “I’d hate to see the slums here,” Omi had said their first day down.

  “Mars is the slum of Inner Planets,” had been Marten’s observation.

  The two ex-shock troopers now showed their special passes to the elevator police and rode a lift up two levels. Then the lift stopped and police in black-visored helmets asked them to step out. Levels one through seven were the best lit and the best heated. They contained the government buildings and the homes for the highest ranked in the Planetary Union.

  Only after placing a call through to the Secretary-General’s office did
the police grudgingly let them enter the prized levels.

  Marten might have grumbled to Omi about it, but both of them knew the lifts were monitored. They knew because Major Diaz had warned them about it. Soon, the two hurried down a cleaner street. And here, all the broken streetlamps and buildings had been fixed. In time, Marten and Omi waited in a plush office, each half-sunken in a soft chair.

  A little over three weeks ago, they had fled from Olympus Mons with the cyborg in their skimmer. None of them had trusted her, if such a thing could be called female. Marten had used several opportunities to talk with Osadar Di. The one fact that had stuck in his mind was that originally she had been from the Jupiter System. She had been a pilot that had escaped to Saturn and then to Neptune. She used to be human. Someone named Toll Seven had captured her and her ice-hauler crew, and on a Neptune habitat, she had been turned into a cyborg. It was a horrifying tale.

  As Marten sat waiting for Chavez, he realized that Osadar Di had been trapped worse than he ever had been. No one had ever ripped his humanity from him. Yet the more Marten thought about it, the more he wondered if that was so. She wasn’t like Blake, the Bioram Taw2. Blake’s mind had been sliced and rearranged. It sounded as if Toll Seven had left Osadar her original mind, reprogramming it in certain ways and vastly changing her form. But if she had her brain, wasn’t she still Osadar Di, still the human from the Jupiter System? It was hard to decide. The interesting point was this: She knew the Jupiter System. She had lived there before escaping to the Neptune System where the cyborgs had caught and transformed her. He knew nothing about Jupiter, or almost nothing. If he was ever going to find Nadia Pravda there, he could use a native Jovian. But if he was ever going to reach his shuttle, the Mayflower—

  Marten’s head twitched. He didn’t even want to think about that right now. It was his secret. He hadn’t even told Omi.

  There was a truth about secrets. If you told them to someone, others soon learned about them. The only way to keep a secret was to keep it secret. And that meant to tell no one. Marten knew that, and he was the only one who needed to know about the secret—for now. Besides, he couldn’t make a stab for the Mayflower just yet. Mars orbit swarmed with a Social Unity Battlefleet. The fact there hadn’t been any space bombardments or city invasions or food-dome invasions meant the rumor must be true. Major Diaz had told him about the rumor a day ago. The Highborn were heading to Mars with three Doom Stars.

  As Marten sat waiting, he brooded. Three Doom Stars would keep the Battlefleet busy.

  His mood shifted and Marten lurched to his feet. He hated slouching in the soft chair. He began to pace. A plush carpet covered the floor and strange, no, bizarre paintings hung on the walls. He could feel Omi’s eyes on him. Marten wondered if hidden cameras recorded his actions.

  Marten needed Osadar Di. He needed the cyborg because what he planned was madness. Getting the cyborg out of Unionist hands would be hard, however, if not impossible. The Unionist scientists had taken Osadar Di and according to Major Diaz had run her through a battery of tests and asked her thousands of questions. Also according to Diaz, the cyborg had become stubborn and now remained silent.

  Would Chavez continue to feel grateful that the cyborg had saved his life? Marten was grateful. Maybe as importantly, he sympathized with Osadar’s extraordinary resolve to gain freedom. Despite the metallic quality of her voice, the few times he’d talked with her, he’d felt connected. He’d understood her. Marten suppressed a shudder. If Osadar Di hadn’t killed the other cyborgs, would Omi and he now be cyborgs? The thought was terrifying. Whatever else happened, Marten knew he had to get off Mars. He had to get out of the Inner Planets. Cyborgs verses Highborn verses Social Unity—the Inner Planets might become cinders before such a war ended.

  When faced against overwhelming odds, one either had to fight for honor or run away. It was time to run away to live to fight another day. But to do that, he was going to have fight better than he ever had in his life. He could have used Kang, Vip and Lance. He would have loved to see Stick or Turbo again and hear their voices.

  The door opened. Marten whirled around. A stunningly beautiful woman stood there. Her hair was done up in an appealing style and her lips were glossy. She wore a wraparound dress, the hem all the way to the floor, even hiding her feet.

  “The Secretary-General will see you now,” she said. “But he can only give you five minutes. So it will have to be brief.”

  “I understand,” Marten said.

  She gave him a quick study, nodded pertly and said, “If you would follow me, please…”

  * * *

  “That’s insanity,” Chavez said, “pure insanity.”

  Marten and Omi sat in low chairs before the Secretary-General’s huge desk. Red smoke drifted through the room. The walls held a hundred plaques, photos and more of the bizarre paintings of swirls and thick ink. Chavez leaned back in his swivel chair, a stimstick dangling from his lips. Several bronze busts of old Unionist leaders rested on his desk. Outside the door to the spacious office waited a five-man security team.

  Chavez took a deep drag on his stimstick. “We have one cyborg. One! The scientists need it for study.”

  “She saved our lives,” Marten said quietly, trying to keep calm.

  “Did she?” Chavez asked.

  “Do you remember being tangled?” Marten asked.

  Chavez snapped forward and placed his elbows on the desk. He mashed the stimstick in an ashtray, and from his greater height, he looked down at Marten sitting low in his chair.

  It reminded Marten too much of Hall Leader Quirn, and that made his stomach queasy.

  “The scientists have postulated an interesting theory,” Chavez said. “Did the cyborgs plant a spy among us? Did this Osadar Di destroy the other machines in order to win my gratitude?”

  “They’re not just machines, sir, but living things.”

  “They were living things,” Chavez said.

  “They still have brains.”

  Chavez frowned. “I’m not here to argue with you, Mr. Kluge. Your five minutes were up some time ago. I appreciate all that you’ve done for us, but—”

  “Tell me this,” Marten said. “Why would Social Unity put a cyborg spy in your midst?”

  Chavez’s frown deepened. “The answer is obvious.”

  “Mr. Secretary-General, from what I’ve seen of your military, you have nothing that can stand against the cyborgs or against a full military attack. The only reason you won your freedom before was that the Highborn defeated Social Unity for you.”

  “That is quite enough, Mr. Kluge.”

  Marten stood up. He hated sitting in that low chair. He hated looking up at the skinny Secretary-General.

  “Where are your military weapons?” Marten asked. “My commando team has Gauss needlers. Those are a joke.”

  Looking stricken, Chavez sank back in his chair. “The enemy has already defeated and retaken our military equipment. I refer to the space stations, the orbitals and the proton beam. All we have left are the needlers, a few gyroc rifles and some plasma cannons. It stings our pride, but the truth is the Highborn freed us the first time, as you said. Now we’re depending on them again to free us.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to change,” Marten said.

  Chavez stared at him. “Your plan is suicide.”

  “Freedom only comes at the price of blood,” Marten said. “The Highborn paid last time. I know. You’ve fought a guerilla war against PHC for years. And that meant you had pride because many of your noblest fighters had fallen. The pride allowed you to man the space defenses and fire the proton beam. Just like last time, you can’t solely rely on the Highborn. You must hurt Social Unity. You must help the Highborn and thereby stake your claim to freedom. Otherwise, sir, the Highborn might decide to remain as your masters.”

  “That would be intolerable,” Chavez said. “We would fight for a thousand years to prevent that.”

  “Then you must show the Highborn and Social Uni
ty that you still have fight left. As importantly, you must show them that you can still hurt your enemies.”

  Chavez folded his thin hands on the huge desk, and something seemed to leak out of him. His eyes become hollower and there was that Martian slouch to his skinny shoulders.

  “What happens if Social Unity begins to beam our food-domes? What happens if they unleash the cyborgs on us?” Chavez wearily shook his head. “We must wait for the Highborn to appear.”

  Marten stepped up to the huge desk and planted his knuckled fists on it. He learned toward Chavez so the Secretary-General leaned back in his swivel chair.

  “I can understand that,” Marten said. “At the same time, you can still allow me to train the commandos. And now I’ll have time to train them in unit tactics. If they’ll fight as a team, they’ll be five times as deadly.”

  “You’re talking about pitting men in EVA suits and gyroc rifles against cyborgs.”

  “Yes!” Marten said.

  “That’s suicide,” Chavez whispered.

  “Not if we learn what the cyborgs can and cannot do.”

  “That’s what the scientists are finding out.”

  “In the lab,” Marten sneered. “What we need to know is in the field where it counts. Even better, Mr. Secretary-General, you will be honoring the woman who saved your life. Despite what your scientists tell you, unless Osadar Di had showed up, you and I would be cyborgs now.”

  With a trembling hand, Chavez opened a drawer, tore open a new pack and popped another stimstick between his lips. He took a deep drag, inhaling it into a red glow. He began to cough and blew out a stream of smoke.

  “The men fear her,” Chavez whispered.

  “That’s another reason I need her for training,” Marten said. “I need to accustom my commandos to them.”

  “Why do you want to throw away your life?” Chavez asked.