Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod

by Vaughn Heppner

  The Red Planet rotated and moved through space, both in its orbital path around the Sun and in the Sun’s orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Secondly, as negligible as the Martian atmosphere was, it still caused minute diffraction. A man looking at his foot in a pool of water would notice that his limb didn’t seem to be exactly where he knew it should be. The same problem occurred with the targeting system on Olympus Mons. Unfortunately, long-range beam-fire called for intensely accurate shooting. Thus, the Mars proton beam wasn’t used for truly long-distance fire, which in this case meant anything over 10,000 kilometers.

  The SU Battlefleet was in far orbit, at a distance of 350,000-kilometers from the surface. That was well out of the proton beam’s range. The closer moon Phobos was within the proton beam’s range, but Deimos was well out of reach.

  There was only one deep-core mine on Mars, and it was situated under the mighty volcano. It powered everything on Olympus Mons and it would power the proton beam.

  There were several merculite missile sites here. But the Martians lacked anything like the barrage of missiles that could fire from the Eurasian landmass on Earth.

  Marten asked the security chief about that.

  The security chief, Major Diaz, was lanky, but had more muscles than most Martians. He’d admitted to heavy growth hormonal use and as a heavy an addiction to weight training. Major Diaz scowled most of the time and was darker-skinned than the rest of his men. His face was sharp and angular, with his dark hair was swept back hard. He had a beak of a nose and suspicious brown eyes. He’d muttered something earlier about being almost full Aztec, but Marten hadn’t any idea what he’d meant by that.

  It turned out that the elite Special Forces team was made up of Chavez’s security people. There were about fifty picked men from five hundred or so gunmen. They were able fighters, but Marten was less than impressed.

  Diaz spoke about Mars’ planetary defense as he walked with Marten and Omi around an open-topped skimmer in a vast underground garage. The lights in the underground facility were at low power and the air was cool. Marten could see his breath, and the air here tasted strange.

  The skimmer was rectangular. Its open area in the center could hold four men and their backpacks. It was silver, had triangular wings and possessed jet power to give it VTOL abilities: vertical take-off and landing.

  Marten didn’t like the open tops. He would have preferred enclosed, pressurized hovercraft. But this was Mars, and the Planetary Union was poor. Marten rapped his knuckles against the skimmer and was surprised at the aluminum sound. “It isn’t armored.”

  Major Diaz shook his head.

  “We need armored skimmers,” Marten said.

  “Don’t have them,” Diaz said.

  “I don’t get this. You hardly have any defensive missiles, almost no attack aircraft and now you lack armored skimmers.”

  “PHC has them,” Diaz said.

  “You’d better explain that.”

  Diaz told Marten, and his story made sense. After the suppression of the first Mars rebellion twelve years ago, PHC had made certain Mars lacked military equipment. There were a few laser platforms, a few launch stations and the two moons. But there were no planetary defenses other than the proton beam, a small scattering of merculite missile sites and some point-defense guns. If the Jupiter Confederation attacked again, the stated plan had called for the SU Battlefleet to arrive and destroy the invaders in space.

  “In other words,” Marten said, “Mars was left open to attack.”

  Major Diaz nodded.

  Marten rapped the skimmer again and kept walking. He’d been surprised to learn that Political Harmony Corps had supplied the peacekeeping occupation force. It should have been the military.

  Later in the day, Omi and Marten inspected the fifty elite soldiers they were supposed to lead to the Valles Marineris. They were Major Diaz’s people, security-trained these past six months. Before that, they had been the chief Rebel enforcers and gunmen.

  The fifty security people were lined up in an underground gym. They were lean, tough-looking and to a man wore needlers.

  Marten nodded slowly, asked a few questions and then took Diaz aside. “Were do you keep the heavy weapons?”

  “Meaning what?” asked Diaz.

  “Mortars, plasma cannons and heavy gyroc rifles,” Marten said.

  Major Diaz shook his head.

  “You haven’t been trained with them?” Marten asked, incredulous.

  Diaz said nothing, just frowned in an uglier manner.

  “You have those weapons, right?” Marten asked.

  “The grunts use them.”

  “You’re not grunts?”

  “We’re Special Ops.”

  “You’d better tell me what that means,” Marten said.

  It took time and more questions, but Marten finally extracted the truth from Major Diaz. His security people had been the assassin squads that had murdered PHC personnel during the long years of simmering rebellion. They were experts at city ambush. They knew how to draw their needlers, spray surprised cops and governors and then disappear into alleys or safe houses. They’d killed squealers, had planted bombs and had enforced union discipline on the wavering or against traitors.

  “You didn’t beat back the occupation police using assassins,” Marten said.

  “We are the elite,” Major Diaz said stubbornly.

  It was beginning to dawn on Marten that he didn’t understand the complete situation. He was beginning to suspect that the Mars Rebels only possessed a few true military men. Those few were likely in strategic locations, in space guarding the planet. From the sounds of it, the Martian military had personal weapons but not much more than that.

  “How did you Rebels ever take over?” Marten asked.

  “We killed the police. In the past, more police always arrived. After the Highborn attacked Earth, however, Social Unity couldn’t send anymore police to take the place of the dead ones.”

  “Right,” Marten said. “Wait here.” He grabbed Omi’s arm and pulled him away from Major Diaz. He walked Omi to a large net for some sports activity he’d never heard about. The net hung limply and the knots in it seemed ragged. Here they were out of earshot of the waiting security people. The selected fifty mingled in groups, glancing at him and then looking at a frowning Major Diaz.

  “What do you think?” Marten whispered.

  “Where’s the army?”

  “Political Harmony Corps’ army?”

  “PHC’s and the Planetary Union’s,” Omi said.

  “Do you know what I think?”

  Omi shook his head.

  “I think there never was an army,” Marten said. “It was a vast police force pressing down the masses, with SWAT to congregate and slaughter anyone who resisted too well. The Martians fought back the same way.”

  “It’s like a planetary cop-gang war,” Omi said.

  “There you are. So it makes sense why the Highborn could leave the Martian so few orbitals, a few space platforms and expect them to hold onto what they have. The surface is a barren red desert. You need pressurized suits or Environmental Combat Vehicles to move in the open. By the sounds of it, the war—if you want to call it that—took place in the underground cities.”

  “Just like Stick, Turbo, you and me in Sydney,” Omi said.

  “It was mostly small-arms fighting, remember?”

  “By what these people have here, I’d say the Martians mainly fight with needlers.”

  “There should still be some plasma cannons and heavy gyroc rifles,” Marten said.

  Omi shook his bullet-shaped head. “Those are stand-up weapons. Major Diaz and his security detail were assassins and enforcers. Those types hate trading gyroc-rounds with the enemy.”

  “The enemy has pilots and aircraft. I bet they also have some true soldiers guarding those fields.”

  “Maybe,” Omi said.

  Marten scratched his jaw. “There must be a few real Martian ground-pou
nders. I’m beginning to think Chavez wants his security detail trained into something more deadly than what he already has. I think that’s why he has us here, not to raid airfields in the giant canyon.”

  “Why not tell us that?” Omi asked.

  “Wherever there are people, there are power struggles.” Marten grunted. “Or maybe I’m wrong about a tougher security detail. Maybe Chavez wants to gain points by having his men knock out those airfields.”

  “What does it matter to us why Chavez does anything?” Omi asked. “Let’s train these killers and get our fuel.”

  “It matters because it tells us how likely the Martians are to win. If they lose, they’re not going to give us anything.”

  “So what are you saying?” Omi asked.

  “That I wish I’d chosen to head straight to Jupiter,” Marten said. “It would have been better to sit out a few years in the shuttle and finally get out of Inner Planets. We’re in a bind now and our shuttle is up there, with a Battlefleet in our way once we try for Jupiter.”

  “Tell Chavez we’ve changed our mind.”

  “You know what they say about Martians,” Marten said. “They’re clever. Chavez is on top so he’s likely trickier than the rest. Maybe the reason everyone thinks we’re so deadly is that Mars hardly has any real soldiers.”

  “Vip wasn’t much of a soldier to start with,” Omi said. “But the Highborn turned him into a standup fighter.”

  Marten grinned. “There you are. That’s the answer.”

  “What’d I say?”

  “We’re going to take… ten of these assassins. Yeah, I’m going to weed them carefully. Then I’ll use the ten on a practice strike into the giant chasm.”

  “And?” Omi asked.

  “And I’m going to fashion me a small combat team that’s fought under fire and survived together. You know how everything changes once you live through a firefight.”

  “These are Chavez’s chosen people. They’re here because they’re loyal.”

  “I understand,” Marten said. “They’re loyal. But we’re going to build a different loyalty, one forged in battle. I’m not looking to shift all of them, just a handful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m recruiting,” Marten said. “I’m recruiting for a small combat team so we can take a lift up to the launch station, storm it, grab our fuel and get the heck out of this system before that Battlefleet decides to move in.”

  Omi slowly shook his head. “That’s a wild long-shot.”

  “You have a better idea to get us out of here?”

  “…no.”

  “Then that’s our plan,” Marten said. He was thinking about Nadia Pravda as he turned around and hailed Major Diaz, asking the Aztec Martian to have the men line up again for a second inspection.

  -12-

  Several days after Marten spoke with Omi in the gym and 350,000 kilometers away, the clone Lisa Aster leaned back and massaged her eyes.

  She had a small cubicle aboard the supply ship that had brought her to Mars orbit. It was cluttered with computer equipment, tactical body-armor, vibroknives and various guns. For the past few hours, she had been studying screenshots of the cyborgs and processing known data. The Toll Seven cyborg was different from the others.

  Lisa had been trying to figure out the differences. It was the meld, she decided. Toll Seven was heavy like a robot, more like a cybertank with two legs than flesh melded with machine. The elongated cyborgs—Lisa shuddered as she examined a screenshot. Their limbs were skeletal and their frozen faces a mockery of their former humanity. It seemed obvious the cyborg masters must have converted criminals into these horrible machine-things. Lisa had used Bioram computers before, the thin sheets of human brain tissue surrounded by programming gel and aided by processors. The brain tissue came from incoercible criminals against the State, those who insisted on committing antisocial acts. Such criminals died justly, giving their body parts to the State they had insisted on robbing during their lives.

  What crimes had the elongated cyborgs committed? Lisa knew little about the conditions in Outer Planets. Yes, she’d watched the reality shows, but she’d always suspected they had overplayed those strange, capitalist notions. If everyone spent their money as they wished, chaos would ensue. That was so logically obvious that Lisa couldn’t accept that free capitalism existed in the Outer Planets.

  Lisa leaned forward in concentration, switching screenshots, studying them closely. Maybe the cyborgs were built-up like a Bioram, the organic parts shaved from various criminals and melded with machines.

  Lisa adjusted the controls on her vidscreen until the battle pods appeared. She zoomed in. They were shaped like bullets and they had dark ceramic hulls, with a blizzard of antennas on the front and the back. They seemed unbelievable small. General Fromm had suggested the cyborgs had been switched off for the journey. Lisa doubted that. You couldn’t just switch off flesh. Maybe they had been frozen. That struck Lisa as gruesome and made the battle pods seem like flying coffins.

  There was one larger battle pod. Toll Seven had exited it and no one else. Its greater mass indicated it was loaded with cyborg devices. Lisa had also discovered that it sent and received lightguide messages to and from the Neptune System. It was impossible to snoop on a lightguide message, as it was a communications laser shot to an exact receiver. It was also incredible the cyborgs could fire a laser that distance and hit the receiver. It was so amazing it seemed supernatural.

  Lisa’s narrow face tightened as she ran her fingers across her buzz-cut hair. The cyborgs had done something to Rita Tan, the Blanche-Aster clone sent to the Neptune System. That something had cost the clones their Mother. Had the Neptune cyborgs implanted obedience devices into Rita Tan?

  Lisa stared at the larger battle pod, Toll Seven’s ship. Supreme Commander Hawthorne suspected that PHC on Earth had communicated with the battle pod. Hawthorne suspected the cyborgs had an agenda all their own. He wanted to confirm that or he wished to gain hints about them the cyborgs didn’t want known.

  There were various plans, all much too dangerous in Lisa’s opinion. One plan called for her secretly contacting the chief cyborg as she pretended to be Rita Tan. Lisa had already ruled that out. She dreaded being alone with Toll Seven. Maybe the cyborg could inject her with cyborg converters or with obedience drugs. No, she wouldn’t take any foolish chances. Another plan called for her spacewalking to the battle pods in a chameleon-suit and planting listening devices on the vessels.

  Oh yes, she was going to do that, and find herself face-to-face with a suited cyborg who would drag her into a battle pod to convert her into one of those. No, Lisa rejected such dangerous plans. She would watch, study and wait for a chance when a safe one came. If a safe chance never came her way, well, then she would return to Earth having failed, but still very much alive as the clone Lisa Aster.

  ***

  A day later, Commodore Blackstone listened to Toll Seven. He, the cyborg, Commissar Kursk and stout General Fromm from the supply convoy stood around a holographic map-module.

  The Vladimir Lenin’s command center was cramped, red-lit and circularly-shaped. A dozen officers sat around them behind vidscreens. The officers passed orders and information between the Battlefleet’s warships and monitored Mars.

  Powerful probes and detection satellites watched the voids of space, those most likely to contain enemy Doom Stars on secret maneuvers. They also watched Mars for new Rebel satellites trying to spy on the Battlefleet. As quickly as the Rebels sent up new probes, the Battlefleet launched drones. With stealth technology, those drones crept upon the satellites, eliminating them and hopefully keeping the Martians ignorant about exact fleet dispositions.

  The holographic map-module showed a large, burnt-orange image of Mars, with a dotted line around the planet placing the Battlefleet in far orbit. The green dots near the planet were the known Martian space-defenses.

  Toll Seven had clumsily adjusted the controls the first few seconds. Now he worked
them flawlessly, making the blue Battlefleet symbol dance for him as he outlined possible adjustments to Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s operational plan.

  Once, General Fromm looked up from the holographic map and stared at Toll Seven. “That’s brilliant,” the stout Earther said hoarsely.

  “Your approval is noted,” Toll Seven murmured. “Further adjusts might be made here…”

  As he listened to Toll Seven, Blackstone silently agreed with Fromm. The big cyborg was frighteningly brilliant.

  Yet Blackstone currently wondered about something else. Why was this cyborg so different from the long-limbed ones that made metallic purring sounds when they moved? Those cyborgs never spoke. Those cyborgs radiated menace and they managed to emanate a terrible sadness.

  Who would ever volunteer to become a cyborg?

  Blackstone shuddered. The idea was mind-numbing. He noticed as Toll Seven talked that Commissar Kursk never looked at the cyborg. She stared fixedly at the holographic map. She never agreed with anything Toll Seven said and she never spoke up in praise of Social Unity. That was unlike her and odd.

  “Further, if we modify the attack vector…” Toll Seven said in his alien way.

  With his twitching features, stout General Fromm avidly noted each new detail of Toll Seven’s refinements. The man kept muttering in amazement. “Yes, yes, that’s masterful.” Fromm frowned later, absorbed, his nods quick little twitches. “That’s diabolically clever. The Rebels will never notice.”

  “The probability that they will notice is five point sixty-two percent,” Toll Seven murmured.

  Commodore Blackstone wondered how the cyborg could make such a precise, mathematical judgment. The variables needed to be cataloged, correctly analyzed and then weighted against other elements… it was too daunting to think the cyborg had given the right percentage.

  Blackstone tore his gaze from the holograph. Did the cyborg hypnotize them with his words? He studied Toll Seven. The silver eyes moved like machine parts. The steel-colored teeth seemed as if they should have shredded the cyborg’s plastic lips. Were those lips truly plastic or were they some weird synthetic flesh? Who had ever conceived the need to build Toll Seven? And why had Social Unity done so in the Neptune System? Surely, it would have made more sense to make the cyborgs on Earth or on the Sun-Works Factory.