Doom Star: Book 02 - Bio-Weapon Read online

  “Then the rumors aren’t true,” said Gannel.

  “Rumors?” asked Hawthorne.

  His jowls wobbled as Gannel smiled, showing big white teeth so obviously false that they made him look like a vampire.

  You want to suck my blood, you obscene old plotter.

  “Why, General, it’s been said that you were shot.”

  “How very interesting,” said Hawthorne. “And who was the supposed shooter?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” said Director Gannel.

  “You do seem surprised to see me alive.”

  The holo-image shimmered. HB jamming and the incredibly bad storms since the asteroid attacks had adversely effected communications. Soon the image settled down.

  “Yes! I am surprised,” Gannel said. “Surprised that anyone would be fool enough to joke with me. To tell me you were dead.”

  “Well, then, Director, if that’s all. It’s been a pleasure, of course, speaking with you.”

  “Wait a minute, General. Now that I have you online there’s something, well, I hope I haven’t heard two wrong rumors in one day. But there’s talk that you plan to prematurely order the Bangladesh to break off its attack.”

  And who leaked that? Hawthorne wondered. Oh, of course, the Air Marshal.

  “Yes, Director. It’s time to cut and run.”

  In his communications studio in New Baghdad, the big Venusian hunched forward, his brawler’s fists clenched, showing off the heavy brass rings. “Now look here, General, that’s just the sort of talk I’m sick of hearing.”

  “Of a successful hit and run?”

  “You know that isn’t what I mean. This entire… I’m going to use a word I hope you don’t find offensive, General: Cowardice.”

  “Why would I find a charge of cowardice offensive?”

  “I’m not calling you that, of course.”

  “Ah, splendid.”

  “But what else can one say to this suggestion of running away when we’re finally hurting these bastards?”

  “I see. Then maybe you should consider this, Director. Three irreplaceable spacecraft didn’t cut and run in the Venus System. They stuck around to trade fire with the enemy. Those three missile ships were destroyed.”

  “Of course they were!” said Gannel. “These piecemeal attacks of yours, General, are suicide.”

  “A strategy dictates the tactics, Director. Our present strategy is the death of a thousand cuts, to bleed the enemy to death one Highborn at a time. There are only two million of them. Thus, one hits hard and runs, to fight another day. What one doesn’t do is trade blows with the Highborn or get greedy and go for more than is reasonable. Because their one great advantage is the ability to win any sustained engagement, usually with spectacular style.”

  “Don’t lecture me. I know all about strategy and tactics. How do you think I achieved my rank?”

  “We’re dealing with Highborn. Not Venusian rabble.”

  The cold calculating stare of Director Gannel seemed to measure Hawthorne. “I’m going to be frank, General. We don’t like this splitting of the Fleet, this nipping at our enemy’s heels. Our battleships should be together and used to strike at one precise point, to break the grip of the Highborn one at a time at each of the four planets.”

  “After we’ve sufficiently hemorrhaged them, yes, I quite agree.”

  “We don’t have that kind of time, General. We must strike now! We must crush this rebellion before the Highborn gain allies from the Outer Planets.”

  “It is we who should be seeking allies,” said Hawthorne.

  “No!”

  “Director—”

  “You’d better listen to me, General. The Directorate is weary of your defeatist talk. Boldness! We want boldness in our planning.”

  Hawthorne pursed his lips. With his cold clarity, he analyzed the situation. He nodded. “Very well.”

  “Furthermore—what did you say?”

  “I agree.”

  “You agree to what?”

  “Boldness.”

  “If this is some verbal trick, General.”

  “No. You’re right. This is a time for boldness.”

  Director Gannel leaned back. “Uh, yes, yes, good. Very good, General. I’m glad to hear you say that. You are a man of reason after all. I just hope… Well. I’m glad we could have this talk.”

  “As am I, Director Gannel.”

  Gannel glanced at something in his room that was out of sight of his holo-projector. “I must beg your pardon, General, my agenda forces me to cut the conversation short.”

  “Good bye, Director,” said Hawthorne.

  The communications ended as the holo-image collapsed into a tiny dot of light and winked out.

  It left General Hawthorne silent and thoughtful. He finally rose and began to pace around the holoset. What had Commodore Tivoli told him before her untimely death? There was rioting in New Baghdad, in the capital.

  He whirled around and strode for the door.

  13.

  No one would remember later who ordered the autopsy. But Air Marshal Ulrich’s corpse lay on an operating table deep in Bunker Command’s Medical Facility. Doctor Varro, the two technicians and a nurse discovered an odd reading from Ulrich’s skull. An x-ray showed tiny filaments running through the frontal lobes and a strange little lead device embedded near the pituitary gland.

  “Can you make any sense out of it?” asked Doctor Varro. She showed them the x-ray.

  The two technicians shook their heads.

  “Nurse?”

  “It’s ghastly. Sticking things in a man’s brain. Who did it?”

  “Yes,” said Doctor Varro, a slender woman, who had helped create over twenty bionic men. “Who indeed?”

  “Should we run more tests?” asked the more cautious technician.

  Doctor Varro studied the x-ray. What was that little lead device beside the pituitary gland? Her green eyes shone with curiosity. “Get the cranial saw,” she said.

  The nurse picked it up, a small circular saw, and handed it to Doctor Varro.

  The more cautious technician grabbed the x-ray off the tray and peered at it again. He didn’t like it, not one bit.

  The cranial saw whirred into life. Doctor Varro leaned over the skull.

  “Excuse me,” said the more cautious technician. He hurried out of the operating room, heading for the lavatory.

  Thus, only he survived the explosion that obliterated the corpse’s skull and killed Doctor Varro, the other technician and the nurse. For the next two-and-a-half hours, the more cautious technician retold his story to the MI operatives grilling him on what exactly had happened. Don’t leave out any facts. Do you understand?

  He did understand, and he didn’t leave out any facts. Not even the one that he practiced mediation and firmly believed in gut level instincts. Didn’t they trust their own?

  They did, so they drugged him, and were surprised to find out he was telling the truth—So much for the instinctual theory.

  14.

  General Hawthorne paced. The reports lay thick on his desk. A spontaneous riot, they called it. Several directors had fled the city. Their location was presently unknown. Nor had he been able to get through to the Madam Director, who was said to be under siege in the Directorate Complex, on New Baghdad’s ninth level. Her communications were tied up, or else it was very good jamming.

  His door swished open and in rushed his wife, Martha Hawthorne. She peered at him, her eyes worried and she came into his arms.

  “James,” she whispered.

  They kissed and he released her, looking into her face. She was small and in her mid-forties. Still a beautiful woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and deep dark eyes, she wore a modest executive outfit. Their only daughter went to school in Montreal, Quebec Sector. Martha ran financing for Data Corp., but she’d joined him at Bunker Command ever since May 10.

  They spoke tenderly, and he unburdened himself. In time, she sat at his desk, scanning the reports.
She picked one up, her eyes narrowing.

  “Did you see this, James?”

  He stopped his infernal pacing to frown at her.

  “Cybertanks in the capital,” she said.

  “In New Baghdad?”

  She nodded.

  “That seals it then.”

  “James,” she said. “You must tread carefully. You know that PHC is already purging the army units you brought over from England Sector.”

  “They tried to kidnap me, Martha. Turning Air Marshal Ulrich to do their filthy deeds! They even put electrodes in his brain.”

  “But they failed to take you, my dear.”

  “Only because of Captain Mune. The rest of the military—” He shook his head. “They’re paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.”

  She set down the cybertank report and took to worrying a fingernail with her teeth. Despite his love for her, he disliked watching her do that. It annoyed him, but he’d learned to keep quiet about it. He resumed pacing.

  “The bionic men are different,” she said.

  “Quite.”

  “No. I don’t mean the obvious difference of their bionics. They’re… Everyone hates them.”

  He shrugged.

  “They hate their strength, their power and bravery.” Her eyes widened. “They hate their individuality.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The bionic men are different, James. They’re not SU. Consider: Each has been carefully crafted into a devastating fighting man. He’s unique, a one of a kind. Other people fear them because of that. Because most people are… aren’t unique. Thus, the bionic men avoid the masses, staying among their own. And as if to heighten their differences, the late Lord-Director gathered them into a single unit and gave them vast discretionary powers.”

  “Police powers,” said the General.

  “No, more an imperial guard power. They were loyal to him, guarded his interests when he wasn’t there.”

  “Hmm,” said the General, recalling the horrible asteroid attack on May 10, how Captain Mune had stopped him from launching the nukes that might have broken up the incoming asteroids enough so that the proton beams could have annihilated the separate and much smaller chunks. But the late Lord Director had given a no-nuke launching order without his express permission. They hadn’t been able to contact him, and Captain Mune’s men, bionic warriors, had watched then in the Command Center to insure complete obedience to the Lord Director and his dictates.

  The General grimaced. “I take your point.”

  “Do you?”

  “I can’t do without Captain Mune now.”

  “No, dear, you’re missing the point. They’re loyal to you, to you personally. They know they’re hated. And they know you’re the one who saved them from the tribunal. They’re no longer Social Unitarians in thought, if they ever were to begin with.”

  The General considered that.

  After the late Lord Director’s death, and when Madam Blanche-Aster took over, there had been a tribunal. Someone had to take the official blame for the billion deaths. The bionic guards at the Command Center that day had seemed like the perfect choice. Hawthorne had lobbied hard otherwise, and for good reason.

  Before Lord Director Enkov had died, Captain Mune had taken the General to the Director’s HQ. There the captain had shot and killed the Lord Director, because during the trip Hawthorne had convinced him that the Lord Director would sacrifice him, the captain, in order to shift the blame of the stupid no-nuke launch order. Hawthorne had had been certain that he too would be scapegoated, which was why he’d talked so persuasively that day.

  When the members of the tribunal had wished to question the bionic security teams, Hawthorne had taken them under his protection. Right after May 10, when he’d quelled the planet-wide riots, his authority had been vast. He’d simply vetoed the tribunal request. He didn’t want to lose his special forces to a witch-hunt, and of course, he’d wanted his role in the… removal of the late Lord Director kept quiet. Later he’d come to incorporate the bionic warriors into his own security arrangements.

  “I don’t intend to sacrifice them, dear,” said the General. “I didn’t do so then and I won’t now.”

  “I’m not suggesting you sacrifice them.”

  “But you called them un-SU.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Don’t you realize that’s tantamount to signing their death warrants?”

  “James, I’m telling you that here is the answer. You need loyal troops, isn’t that right? Everyone else thinks like good, card-carrying Social Unitarians. Even your elite troops do. They’re all terrified of PHC.”

  General Hawthorne saw her point, and then he saw deeper. A chill swept through him. Did he really have the nerve? For several seconds he stood frozen, trying to consider the angles. He couldn’t. This had to be a gut thing. A tight grin forced its way to his lips. Do it, a deep part in him whispered. Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.

  He strode to the desk. His wife moved aside so he could sit down. He picked up the cybertank report, reading it thoroughly. Finally, he slapped the report onto the desk and pressed his intercom button. “Get me Colonel Manteuffel. And tell him to bring the cybertank codes. All of them! What? No. Don’t argue. Just do what I order.”

  “What are thinking, dear?”

  “Um,” he said, picking up another report, one that gave the positions of the army units nearest the capital.

  “James,” she said, touching his shoulder.

  He glanced up.

  “Are you…” Fear had drained the color from her cheeks.

  “They struck first, Martha.”

  “Maybe that’s what Yezhov is planning for. An overreaction on your part.”

  The General smiled coldly. “Maybe. But I doubt he expects a coup d’etat from me.” A harsh laugh slipped out. He rose, and turned as the door swished open. Captain Mune, with his new hand bandaged, entered and saluted.

  “Excellent timing, Captain. Come with me.”

  15.

  The tube-train whisked toward New Baghdad at 400 kilometers an hour. It rode a cushion of polarized magnetism, a mechanical worm hidden from the HB space-laser stations. Seven cars were linked together, holding less than a battalion.

  Sitting together, General James Hawthorne conferred with Colonel Manteuffel, the younger brother of slain Commodore Tivoli. The Colonel was an inch over five feet, a terrier of a man with a keen, alert bearing and a shiny bald head. He wore the black uniform of a tanker, and was the General’s expert on cybertanks. On his lap lay a thin computerized briefcase full of CT codes.

  The cybertanks were the latest in the dehumanization of war. Human brain tissue from criminals who had been liquidated for the good of the state or purchased from Callistoian brain thieves had been carefully teased from the main brain mass. All former personality was carefully scrubbed from the tissue, embedded in special cryo-sheets, and surrounded by programming gel. Several kilos of this processed brain tissue could replace tons of specialized control and volitional systems. As important, military virtues encoded into these biocomps gave them a human-like cunning and bloodthirstiness. Naturally, emergency override codes had been built into such a deadly war-machine. The entirety of Social Unity cybertank codes lay in the briefcase propped on Colonel Manteuffel’s knees.

  Ten other normals surrounded the General, the only volunteers from Commodore Tivoli’s MI (Military Intelligence) section. Each had lost a friend or relative to PHC in the last few months of undercover war. They worked out schedules of arrival and wrote out movement orders for the General’s troops nearest New Baghdad. The troop commanders were given no explanations for the movement orders. To them it would appear all very innocent.

  As Hawthorne had said, “The most important thing is that they move. It will send the PHC assessors into their think tanks to figure out what it all means.”

  “And what does it mean?” asked a MI operative.

  “Misdirection an
d time,” said Hawthorne, and then on that subject he would say no more.

  The rest of the seven train-cars contained bionic men, big, bulky warriors with bionic body-parts and commando-style weapons and training.

  Less than a thousand men to take over the rule of forty billion, mused Hawthorne. But hopefully it was the right thousand, at the right place and at the right time. Otherwise… Maybe they’d stuff a mini-bomb into his cortex as they’d done to Ulrich, or maybe they’d just line him up against a wall to be shot.

  “One hour to New Baghdad,” said a MI operative.

  Hawthorne rose, with his military cap set at a rakish angle. He grinned, exuding confidence. To add to the pose he clutched his belt with both hands. “Boldness,” he said, using a parade ground voice. “Absolute assurance of victory, that’s what I expect from each of you.” And he continued to bolster them as the tube-train zoomed toward his destiny or destruction.

  16.

  The very audacity of the raid aided General Hawthorne. And he had also predicated it upon the fact that none of the megalopolises, the super-cities, could remain self-contained for any appreciable amount of time. New Baghdad wasn’t any different. The city’s population of over 200 million needed billions of different items, the majority of which arrived via tube-train. Clothing, food and water made up the bulk of the needs, and manufactured goods. Tube-trains thus arrived around the clock and from many varying directions. PHC had taken control by manning critical rail posts and switchyards with armored shock squads. General Hawthorne’s answer had become routine by the time they reached the last checkpoint.

  The tube-trained stopped because cannons trained on the line would, at PHC orders, have destroyed it. The front train doors slid open and a five-man squad in red plastic body-armor stormed aboard. They bore carbines or lasers. Usually a sneering, arrogant PHC major followed, a man or woman used to obedience and seeing others cringe in fear. Waiting bionic men plucked the weapons from the surprised shock squad members and then threw them to the floor. The bionic strength always won against human muscles. Another bionic man slapped the major’s communicator from his hand and put a vibroblade under his chin. At a nod from the MI operative who did the talking, the bionic soldier flicked the blade. Its awful hum and vibrating power so very near the major’s throat had a debilitating effect on the previous arrogance.