Marten glanced back at the Planetary Union military officer. She wasn’t taking chances and had a needler trained on him. It was smaller than the Gauss needlers used on Earth. Hers was compact, with a short and very thin barrel, and it was shiny, likely meaning it was newly unpackaged. He hoped she knew how to use it and didn’t accidentally shoot him.
“Okay,” Marten said, “I’ll tell you what happened. But I suspect you won’t believe me.”
“Why bother lying?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“I haven’t said anything yet,” Marten said.
“I’m a university professor by occupation,” the Chief Unionist said. “Because I understand physics, they put me out here. They’re hoping I can perform a miracle and make Deimos useful again. My point, Mr. Kluge, is that my students always tell me I’m not going to believe something when they’re getting ready to lie.”
“Have it your way,” Marten said, and he shut his mouth.
“…well?” the Chief Unionist asked. “Let’s hear it.”
“I hate being called a liar,” Marten said.
The man lofted thin eyebrows. “A bit touchy, are we?”
“I think you’re the liar. I think you’re a sanitation scrubber, not some scholar.”
The man’s lips tightened. “Explain the situation then. How did you come to possess a Highborn shuttle?”
“I earned it,” Marten said. “I paid for it through my sweat and blood. It’s mine.”
“For the moment, you’re here in my office, Mr. Kluge. And my patience is wearing thin.”
“The Highborn used me,” Marten said. “They used my friends. We were shock troopers.”
“I never heard of them.”
“How about Free Earth Corps, you ever heard of them?”
“The Earth traitors who fight with the Highborn?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“You Mars Rebels helped the Highborn,” Marten said, knowing he was becoming too angry. But he couldn’t help it.
The Chief Unionist lightly placed his fingertips on the desk. “We are the Planetary Union, not the Rebels. We did what we had to in order to rid ourselves of Social Unity.”
Marten nodded curtly. “If you’d lived in Australian Sector when the Highborn conquered it, you’d realize that most Free Earth Corps volunteers joined at the point of a gun. I fought in the Japan Campaign. Afterward, the Highborn pinned medals on my friends and me. They called us heroes. Then they said they could use good soldiers like us. So they took us into space and retrained us into shock troopers. Our specialty was storming habitats or spaceships and taking control.”
“That doesn’t explain the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said.
“Our masters packed us into Storm Assault Missiles and fired us at the X-ship Bangladesh. It was a new type of warship, able to fire its beam many millions of kilometers.”
“That’s impossible!” the Chief Unionist declared. “Everyone knows the Doom Stars have the longest-range lasers of any military vessel.”
“That’s why the Highborn wanted the Bangladesh. That’s why they fired us at it. We took it. But SU missile-ships destroyed our hard-won prize. A few of us escaped the destruction. Later, Highborn picked us up in the shuttle.”
“If true, that’s highly interesting. It still doesn’t explain how you came to possess the shuttle.”
“I killed the Highborn and took their shuttle for my own,” Marten said.
In frank disbelief, the Chief Unionist stared at Marten. The officer behind Marten snorted in derision.
“You don’t expect us to believe that?” the officer asked Marten.
Marten shrugged. “That’s the trouble with you soft-timers. You fear the Highborn too much. If you’d been a shock trooper, you’d know that everyone has weak points, even super-soldiers. They made a mistake and thought me a mere preman. Well, this preman spaced them. Now I’m here. Now I want to buy fuel, a spare-warfare pod if you have it and I’ll be on my way.”
“You’re mad!” the Chief Unionist shouted.
“Then you explain to me how I’m in possession of a shuttle.”
The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten with incomprehension. “You killed Highborn?”
“Three of them,” Marten said.
“You pirated the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said. “I understand that.”
“Just as you pirated Deimos,” Marten said.
“He has a point,” the officer said.
The Chief Unionist shot her a dirty look. “The Planetary Union is confiscating the shuttle, Mr. Kluge.”
“I don’t think so,” Marten said.
The Chief Unionist lofted his eyebrows. “You’re here, Mr. Kluge, as you pointed out earlier. Officer Dugan has a needler pointed at your back. You are in no position to stop me.”
“You have a gun pointed at my back. I have a bomb attached to your docking bay.”
“Are you threatening me?” the Chief Unionist demanded.
“With certain death,” Marten said.
“You would die, too.”
Marten shrugged.
“He’s bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Officer Dugan.
“Maybe,” the woman said.
“You’re bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Marten, although a faint sheen of perspiration had appeared on the man’s forehead.
“I rode a Storm Assault Missile at 25-Gs to the Bangladesh,” Marten said. “I spaced three Highborn. If you think I did all that to meekly hand over my shuttle to some piss-whelp of a university professor, then you’re mad.”
Outraged, the Chief Unionist groped for words.
“I’m finished playing by other people’s rules,” Marten declared. “I’m finished being a slave. I’m a free man now. I’m going to remain free or die trying. If that means blowing the Mayflower and taking you and me down, okay. I’m fine with that.”
“He’s not bluffing,” Officer Dugan said.
The Chief Unionist blushed as anger washed over his features. “Just what are you suggesting then?”
“Let me buy fuel,” Marten said.
“Buy how?”
“With my services,” Marten said.
The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten. “That’s out of the question. You will order the remaining people on the shuttle to come—”
“I’d reconsider that,” Officer Dugan told the Chief Unionist.
“You be quiet,” the Chief Unionist said, pointing a long finger at her. The finger quivered and its ring reflected the lights overhead.
“He’s like us,” Officer Dugan said. “He fought free and now he plans to keep free, even dying for it if he has to. We can’t steal his shuttle without fighting to the death for it, just as Social Unity can’t have our planet back without a death struggle. If nothing else, sir, call the Secretary-General and ask his advice.”
“I can’t call about this,” the Chief Unionist said.
“Then give this man fuel.”
“Give it to him?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“You’ve been talking about getting the sick personnel off station and back to Mars,” Officer Dugan said. “Here’s your chance.”
The pinched features to the Chief Unionist’s mouth tightened so his lips began to whiten. He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Go! Take this madman outside. I have a call to make.”
***
Ten hours later, Marten and Omi left the tiny Martian moon of Deimos. A warfare pod had been welded to the Mayflower’s underbelly. It contained five anti-missile missiles, Wasp 2000s. Aboard ship were twenty injured and ailing personnel. Like the other Martians he’d seen, they were thin and under-muscled. In spite of that, Marten had frisked each and had helped them to various sleep cubicles or into the medical facility. Then he had closed each hatch and secured the hatches with emergency clamps.
Marten had received only a miniscule amount of fuel, however. It was enough to allow them system maneuvering as they headed for an orbital launch station. Apparently, Secretary-General Chavez
was intrigued with them. The ruler of the Planetary Union wanted to speak in person with Marten.
As Marten and Omi sat in the control module, they planned.
“It’s a trap,” Omi said.
Marten had just told him how Chavez couldn’t take time from his busy schedule to go to the orbital station. Thus, Marten would have to go down to Mars, to Olympus Mons to be exact, and meet the Secretary-General there.
“It could be,” Marten admitted. “That still leaves you in control of the Mayflower.”
“How long must I stay here?”
“How long can you last?”
“Several more months if I have to,” Omi said grimly.
“Social Unity will attack before that. I doubt, however, it’s a trap.”
“Why not?” asked Omi.
“Would the Secretary-General of an entire planet stoop to lying just to get us out of the shuttle?”
“It depends on how badly they need the shuttle.”
“No,” Marten said. “If they need it that badly, then they’ve lost already to Social Unity and they would know it. He wants something else.”
“What?”
“What can I offer him?” Marten asked. “Information. He’s curious. Why he’s curious, I don’t know. But I need to use his curiosity to buy us fuel and more warfare pods.”
“You won’t be able to bluff him like you did the Deimos unionist.”
“Omi, do you realize who we are?”
The Korean gave him a blank look.
“We’re the shock troopers. There’s no one tougher than us. There’s no one who could have done what we did. I don’t mean for that to sound arrogant. But I do mean to recognize what we have. Think about it. We’re the toughest military men on Mars and the toughest in all Social Unity. Yeah, there are only two of us. But we survived the Storm Assault Missiles and we survived the Bangladesh. If that doesn’t give us something powerful, I don’t know what would.”
“What’s your point?” Omi asked.
Marten studied the flight path and made a small course correction. “We can’t let anyone or anything overawe us. After slamming into the Bangladesh’s particle-shield and storming onto the beamship, I don’t know of anything else more frightening. My point is that maybe I can intimidate the Secretary-General. How many of them could have slain Highborn?”
Omi let a tight smile slide onto his face. “You’re saying that all we have left are our balls. So we might as well maximize that. Yeah. You’re right. Go see the Secretary-General. But remember that even Highborn can die. We’re not invincible.”
“We are hungry, though,” Marten said. “Hungry to taste our freedom. Hungry to live and act like free men.”
“Free,” Omi said. “I like the sound of that.”
Marten made another small course correction. Then he tried to envision why a planetary leader in the midst of a looming war would want to speak face-to-face with an ex-shock trooper.
-8-
As they journeyed toward Mars, Marten debated with himself about trusting Secretary-General Chavez. The man had guaranteed their shuttle, quite a concession from a planetary leader.
Besides, Marten could seal the shuttle and make it difficult for the Martians to enter. His father had taught him about explosives and his mother had taught him about computer codes and overrides. Her computer cunning had kept her, Marten and his father alive and out of PHC hands for three years in the Sun-Works Factory.
Omi might go stir-crazy waiting in the Mayflower. There were psychological tricks the Unionists could try if they wanted the shuttle badly enough. The bomb threat against the Chief Unionist on Deimos likely wouldn’t work a second time. The Unionists could just have him dock at an armored area and call his threat.
Instead of Omi staying onboard, Marten could set up a complex entrance code. If anyone tampered with it, he’d set the shuttle to explode. The trouble was that given time, a tech-cracker could break the computer code.
He asked Omi about it.
“You’re only going to be gone a few hours,” Omi replied.
They neared the orbital launch site. It was torus-shaped and rotated, creating artificial gravity for those within. The station had heavy particle-shields, but it hadn’t deployed any prismatic crystals or aerosol gels. There were a few visible shuttles docked. One of the shuttles was open and a small pod with a mechanical arm placed a long tube into the waiting spacecraft.
“We hope it’s only going to be a few hours,” Marten said. “I’m going down there.” He pointed at the rust-colored planet. “If something bad happens, it’s a long way to get back up here.”
“What are you worried about?” Omi asked.
“Getting tricked for one thing. Remember what the Highborn used to tell us? Two guns are greater than one plus one. Meaning, it’s easier for a soldier to act cowardly when he’s by himself, but much harder with another person he knows watching.”
“You want me to come along?” Omi asked.
“It would be the smarter move,” Marten said.
“We risk losing the shuttle then,” Omi said. “It’s our ticket out of Inner Planets. With it, we have bargaining power. Without it, we’re just two grunts.”
Marten’s chest tightened as they inched toward the orbital launch station. He’d spoken with Officer Dugan before they’d left Deimos. She’d let slip some critical information. For one thing, the size of the SU Battlefleet hiding on the other side of Mars. It was at far orbit, about the distance the moon was from Earth, about 384,000 kilometers. It was obvious Social Unity was planning an attack on Mars. Social Unity was losing the war against the Highborn. So they had to do something. Yet if they were losing to the Highborn, why bother attacking Mars and adding to their enemies? It would make more sense making allies of the Mars Rebels if they could.
Whatever the case, the important thing for Marten was the presence of the SU Battlefleet. According to Officer Dugan, the convoy fleet was two days from rendezvousing with it. That made Marten wonder. Suppose the Rebels granted them fuel. Would the Battlefleet ignore them as they headed for the Jupiter Confederation? It seemed highly unlikely. So until the SU Battlefleet left Mars orbit, the shuttle wasn’t going to help them escape Inner Planets. That meant it was wiser to keep together. Every Horror Holovid he’d watched in Sydney with Molly had the actors splitting up so the individualist villains could pick them off one at a time.
“We should definitely both go,” Marten said.
“What about the Mayflower?”
Marten began to type control keys. During the long journey here, he’d set up several coded defenses. Now it was a matter of choosing the best one and engaging it with the fusion engine.
***
As Omi and he exited the shuttle-tube, no one tried to take their sidearms. The space-station commander nodded curtly when Marten explained about the coded lock and what would happen if anyone triggered it by trying to enter the shuttle.
The space-station leader, Commander Zapata, was lean, but he wasn’t too thin like the other Martians. He wore a crisp uniform and had a badly burned face. He had an eye-patch over the left eye. Why he didn’t have a skin graft and a glass eye or an optical implant seemed strange. Maybe PHC had put him on a blacklist when the accident had occurred. That seemed likely the more Marten considered it. Commander Zapata had likely once been an agitator, at least according to Political Harmony Corps’ view when it ran Mars. Marten assumed it because now Zapata ran this important orbital launch satellite. So that logically meant Zapata had already been highly placed in the Rebel Movement. The Rebels had only controlled Mars for less than two years.
Commander Zapata escorted them down narrow steel corridors and to a hanger with a dozen orbital fighters on the main deck. The orbitals were atmospheric attack-craft from a Doom Star, the one that had been here six months ago. The black-painted orbitals had stubby wings and armored plating with harsh red numbers on the sides. They were squat, ugly and deadly when flown by Highborn, who could take high
er G-forces than regular humans could.
“Why’s everyone staring at us?” Omi asked out of the side of his mouth.
The hanger wasn’t as cluttered as the one on Deimos. It still had arc-welders flashing, personnel pushing trolleys, and personnel creating bangs, clacks and other metallic noises. There were also deck sergeants shouting instructions. The Planetary Union uniform everyone wore was gunmetal gray with a single red star and two crescent moons. Most of the personnel had longer hair than Marten was used to, making them look like civilians in military garb. Like Zapata, each was lean without being as anorexic as those on Deimos.
As Omi and Marten marched to the farthest orbital, people stopped what they were doing, straightened and turned toward them. Some pointed. Most grew quiet. The stillness was like a wave in a pond, and soon the booms, bangs and the shouts all stopped.
Commander Zapata gave them a hideous grin. “You’re already famous. That’s why they’re staring.”
“Famous for what?” Marten asked.
“You killed Highborn, didn’t you?”
Marten nodded sourly, wondering if it had been a mistake bragging about that. In time, the Highborn would hear about him. That kind of information always leaked out to the wrong ears. The Highborn wouldn’t like the idea of premen running around bragging about fragging Highborn officers. If nothing else, the Highborn would put a bounty on his head.
“We’ve seen the Highborn,” Zapata was saying. “We’ve seen what they can do.”
“They helped you against Social Unity,” Marten said.
Commander Zapata snorted. “Didn’t you hear me? We’ve seen Highborn. I’ve spoken to several. I’ve never met people that were more arrogant in my life. They’re not really people. I would call them scary giants on the edge of going berserk. I always got the feeling the Highborn wanted to rip my head off. It’s like they were juiced.”
“Juiced?” Marten asked.
“It’s a Martian term. The deep planetary crews drink too much vodka and get in fights. They’re juiced.”
“You sound as if you don’t approve of your allies,” Marten said.
Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod Page 11