Cyborg Assault ds-4 Page 23

  “Is that why you have lined them up?” Osadar asked. “Can shock troopers tell a fighter at a glance?”

  “No,” Marten said, “not at a glance.”

  “Then why have you staged this?” she asked.

  “You didn’t tell her?” Omi asked.

  “Tell me what?” asked Osadar.

  “The Highborn are bastards,” Marten said. “We know that. But they’re also betters soldiers, better fighters. They had a way to find the tough ones, the battlers.”

  “What way?” asked Osadar.

  Marten cracked his knuckles as he stared at the ranks of ship-guardians. “We know the ones we choose are going to be fodder for the cyborgs. That’s the truth of this war. It will be a quick trip to Carme, two or three weeks. There isn’t much I can teach them in that time. But I can make sure I take the tough ones along. I can increase our odds a few percentages. Why is it then that I feel like such a bastard doing this?”

  “The answer’s simple,” Omi said. “You’re choosing those who are going to die.”

  “Yeah,” said Marten. He set his features. “You tell her what’s going on, okay?”

  “Sure,” Omi said.

  “Tell me what?” asked Osadar.

  “Okay,” said Marten. “Here we go.” He left them and strode alone toward the ranks of waiting ship-guardians. Those who had been staring at Osadar now looked at him. It was an animal response to glance at things that moved.

  Marten adjusted his collar as he halted before them. He switched on an amplifier there, which would help project his voice.

  “So you’re the sorry rejects they’re giving me to destroy the cyborgs,” Marten said, letting contempt fill his voice.

  Ship-guardians blinked at him. Many scowled. More than a few stirred.

  Marten shook his head. “I fought in the Inner System, both on Earth and in space, capturing an experimental beamship near Mercury. Highborn trained me because they discovered I have an innate ability to kill. I also survive where others die, and I accomplish the missions given me.” He pointed at Omi. “We’re shock troopers, which means we’re the best soldiers in the Solar System, at least the best among humans. You ship-guardians—” Marten laughed with contempt.

  More angry scowls appeared in the ranks.

  “Some of you are going to have a chance to prove your worth,” Marten said. “You’re going to prove if Jovian space training is anything like Highborn training. I doubt it, frankly, but you’ll have the chance to show me.”

  “Yeah!” a blue-uniformed guardian shouted. “And who the heck are you anyway?”

  Marten stared at the guardian, a blocky individual. “I’m going to choose who goes and dies and who stays to live under the coming cyborg domination.”

  “Are all shock troopers arrogant pricks like you?” the guardian asked.

  “Ask me an hour from now,” Marten said.

  “I’m asking you now!” the angry guardian shouted.

  Marten drew his needler and fired, making crackling sounds. Guardians shouted in surprise. Many hit the deck. A few screamed as the bulky guardian flopped onto the floor.

  “Stay where you are!” shouted Marten.

  Pelias from the Descartes appeared, the tight-faced woman with black lipstick. She and three other guardians had drawn hammer-guns, aiming them at the crowd.

  “I shot him with drugged ice-needles,” Marten said. “He’s still alive, but his mouth isn’t flapping anymore. And that’s my first lesson. I know many of you were expecting me to challenge him to a fistfight, to prove how superior my fighting technique was against his. A shock trooper uses overwhelming force when it’s at his disposal. You’ll do the same, or you’ll die to the cyborgs.”

  Many guardians glared at him. Others stared at the fallen man.

  “I will begin the interviews in three minutes,” Marten said. “Guardian Pelias will now instruct you.”

  As Pelias stepped forward and began to shout orders, Marten moved to where Omi and Osadar watched. Omi had been whispering to Osadar.

  “Are you ready?” Marten asked her.

  “I will interview all of them?” she asked.

  “Can you do it?” Marten said.

  Osadar raised a reinforced hand and then slowly nodded.

  * * *

  The first guardian entered the room. He was a short man with scarred features and a watery left eye. He stopped at seeing Osadar sitting behind a small table. He glanced around at the otherwise empty room.

  “Where’s the shock trooper?” he asked.

  Marten stood in the next room, watching the proceedings with Omi. They watched on a vidscreen.

  “It’s different this way,” Omi muttered.

  Marten nodded.

  On the screen, Osadar arose without a word. She came around the table, approaching the short guardian.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Osadar slapped him across the face, whipping his head to one side.

  Marten winced. “She isn’t supposed to main him.”

  “I told her,” Omi said.

  The short guardian clutched his face, backing away from Osadar. “Why did you do that?” he whined.

  Osadar stared at him. Cowed, the man looked down. Osadar turned her back on him, returning to her chair. The guardian glanced up slyly.

  “If he’s going to do anything…” Omi said.

  The guardian bit his lip, and he rubbed his cheek. As Osadar regarded him from the table, he looked down once more.

  “He’s a five,” Marten said, writing down the number beside the ship-guardian’s name on his computer slate.

  Omi pressed a button.

  A door opened on the opposite side of the room. Pelias was there, motioning for the slapped man to exit the room.

  “I thought I was going to be interviewed,” the man objected. “The cyborg just slapped me.”

  “Hurry,” Pelias said. “Come this way.”

  Avoiding the table and Osadar seated there, the short guardian slunk for the exit.

  “I hope some of them show more guts than that,” Omi said.

  Marten recalled the day he’d entered a room like this. A huge Highborn had slapped his face. He’d attack the HB for it and he’d found his hand stamped with a “2”.

  The first door opened and another ship-guardian entered the room. Marten readied his computer-stylus. Like Omi, he hoped there were enough Jovians who fought back. They were going to need the tough ones to have any hope of defeating what awaited them on Carme.

  -4-

  In a low chamber on Athena Station were countless rows of pallets containing twitching bodies. On the seventh pallet in row two, lay Webbie Octagon. Like the other subjects, a synthi-flesh tube had been inserted into the jack at the base of his neck. It surged every seventeen seconds, expanding as if pumping blood. Pseudo-nerve endings were linked in him, sending the Web-Mind monitored impulses.

  Like the other humanoids, Octagon wore a black skin-suit. It showed every gaunt limb and the sunken curvature of his stomach. He had lost weight. The skin was slack under his jaw, giving him jowls for the first time in his life. It also showed the rigid state of his sex organ. Drool spilled from his mouth, and every time the synthi-tube expanded in the neck-jack, Octagon gave an obscene moan of pleasure.

  During his stay on the pallet, Octagon had undergone massive brain retraining. The Web-Mind reconditioned him, although there was a stubborn core of hatred in Octagon. The hatred pulsed as two words in mind-numbing repetition. Pain sensations, fear, loneliness and erotic pleasure hit against the hatred like feathers against lead. The words made little sense to the Web-Mind. To Webbie Octagon, they were like a holy creed, a litany of promised revenge.

  Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge, Marten Kluge—only the highest dosages of pleasure momentarily thwarted the inner chant.

  Because of the stubbornness of the memory-clot, the Web-Mind had chosen Webbie Octagon as the next human to head to the cyborg converter. His pallet had originally been
slated for conversion five days from now. Instead, a door slid open, and a cyborg pushed a magnetic gurney into the low-ceilinged chamber. The repulsers caused the gurney to hover. The melded biped with highly-controlled brain functions glanced in short, high-speed jerks of his head from right to left. The red-dotted pupils fixated on pallet seven-two. With the whine of knee-servos, the cyborg headed to Webbie Octagon’s pallet.

  The cyborg waited until the synthi-tube pulsed and Octagon moaned. With a deft twist and a slight sucking noise, the cyborg removed the plug.

  Octagon’s eyes flashed open. He turned his head, regarding the tall cyborg. Then he cringed as his sex organ began to shrink to normal size. It hurt badly because the organ had been in a rigidly erect state for forty-three hours.

  The cyborg slid Octagon’s inert form onto the gurney and efficiently strapped him down. Without a word, and with the quiet ever-present whine of servos, the cyborg turned the hovering gurney and pushed Octagon toward the exit. No other cyborgs entered the chamber. No other twitching humanoids left their pallets. From this bin-room, only Octagon was slated for conversion. Only he possessed the stubborn memory-clot, which had reduced his efficiency as a Webbie.

  Octagon’s awareness returned as the cyborg pushed him deeper into Athena Station. He had no idea that he was heading toward the converter deep in the core of the asteroid-moon.

  * * *

  Gharlane stood on the bridge of the Locke, the single dreadnaught of his battle group. He was a thousand kilometers from Athena Station, near the three meteor-ships and a wing of patrol boats that completed his fleet.

  Cyborgs had replaced the former crewmembers. Several on the Locke had jacked into the modified controls, while Gharlane used a smaller version of the holographic display deep in Athena Station. He stood among the holo-images, carefully studying data on the Jovians.

  Gharlane clicked his hand-component, changing the display. Should he summon the dreadnaught at Carme, enhancing the power of his fleet here?

  The superiority of Genus Cyborgus versus Homo sapiens was most apparent on the ground, when individual cyborgs faced humans. Combat in space lessened the differences, although a cyborg taskforce still possessed certain advantages over the humans.

  As Gharlane debated strategies, a signal arrived from the Web-Mind. The biomass brain still resided in its original stealth-capsule, parked in a deep hanger on Athena Station.

  I have correlated several new factors, the Web-Mind told him in lieu of an introduction.

  “Yes?” Gharlane asked.

  I have monitored signals and broken several of the Jovian codes. More importantly, I was able to tap into a laser lightguide message.

  Gharlane’s head lifted. “Is that possible?”

  Through a third phase induction, yes, the Web-Mind said.

  “Are there new enemy warships?”

  Negative. However, enemy action has led me to reevaluate our strategic concentration.

  Gharlane didn’t like the sound of that. It was usually wiser to keep to a single strategic goal instead of switching goals midway through a campaign. “What could be wiser than gathering into a single battle group and annihilating enemy concentrations one at a time? Afterward, nuclear bombardment and cyborg occupation of the major moons will garner us millions of recruits and nearly unlimited raw resources. In time, we can construct a massive strike-force composed of multiple planet-wreckers.”

  Time and Saturn-coordination mandates a speed-up of our planetary strike-force.

  Gharlane used his hand-component, changing the holo-images and studying the Jovian moons and the various positions of warships, corporation craft and the largest pleasure liners. The Web-Mind retained control of the lightguide lasers linking them to Saturn and to Neptune. Thus, Gharlane had no way to argue the point or know precisely what occurred outside this system.

  Prepare to receive data, the Web-Mind told him.

  Gharlane stiffened as images and codes flashed into his modified brain. He learned that the conquest of the Saturn System had been swift, brilliant and overwhelming. The Saturn planet-wreckers and accompanying meteor-craft already built up speed, circling the ringed gas giant. The Web-Mind pulsed times, schedules, distances and the orbital positions of Mars, Earth and Venus as compared to the Saturn-launched strike.

  We are behind schedule, the Web-Mind said.

  “At this point in our campaign, is it wise to change our strategic goals? Ultimately, we have the advantage in ship tonnage and now possess the strongest base: Athena Station.”

  Our old strategy was based on unlimited time. The Prime Web-Mind of Neptune has decided to accelerate our schedule. We must complete our planet-wrecker and match the target date of the Saturn-launched strike. Even a twenty percent increase of tonnage from us to the Saturn total will ensure annihilating victory. A ten percent tonnage increase from Jupiter will bring an obliterating enemy defeat ninety-three point six-five percent of the time.

  Gharlane changed the holographic sights. An image of Io filled the bridge, as the sulfur volcano-clouds became the center of attention. Strong volcanic eruptions on Io emitted as much as 1000 kilograms of matter into space each second. When holographic Ganymede appeared on the bridge, blue dots indicated the enemy fleet, with the brightest blue indicating the hated dreadnaughts. The Jovians still retained two of them.

  Gharlane only half-noticed the images. His mind raced as he absorbed the Web-Mind’s data. He could understand the Prime Web-Mind’s thinking. Several cyborg stealth campaigns were in operation. Once one proved successful, all effort should be funneled to heighten its success. Strategically, one should concentrate effort to any breakthrough in order to achieve even greater victory rather than worrying about the failed or struggling endeavors. They had not failed here. The Saturn Campaign had simply achieved overwhelming success first. Therefore, the Jovian Campaign now became secondary to them and needed to bolster their attack sequence if possible. The question was—what was the best way to shift the strategy here to aid the Saturn-strike?

  The Web-Mind broke into his thoughts. I am leaving Athena Station.

  Gharlane stiffened.

  I am headed to Carme.

  “Why there?” asked Gharlane, relieved at this news.

  It is our priority planet-wrecker, soon to begin its acceleration. I have recomputed odds, warship tonnage and strategic goals. The present conquest of the Jovian moons no longer takes precedence. Therefore, you will strike the Galilean moons, using nuclear bombardment to obliterate population concentrations. That will fix Homo sapien attention onto the inner moons. To achieve this goal, you are permitted to accept cyborg fleet annihilation.

  “Wouldn’t it be wiser to destroy the enemy fleet first?” Gharlane asked.

  Obliterate population concentrations and industrial capacities of the Galilean moons. All analysis gives high probabilities that the Jovian warships will insert into moon orbits to halt your genocidal tactics. There you may lay tactical ambushes.

  “You are relying on panic factors?”

  I rely on probabilities and known Homo sapien reactions. They foretell a fixation on genocidal tactics, your fleet and Athena Station, in that order. During their fixation cycle, we shall complete the planet-wrecker. Then we shall build up velocity as we coordinate with Saturn on an Earth-strike.

  “You plan to join the planet-wrecker?”

  I will for ninety-eight percent of the journey, the Web-Mind said. Eventually, I will abort and return to the Jovian System as the ruling entity.

  “Do your probabilities foresee the cessation of my existence?”

  There is an eighty-three percent chance you shall face obliteration in the coming campaign. Yet you must endure in your task. Your faulty six-percent bio-reactions may take comfort in this knowledge: In time, I shall search Jovian space for lingering pieces of your DNA. With it, I will initiate a clone reconstruction of Cyborg Gharlane. You will live again in the eternal process of Web-Mind.

  Gharlane’s head twitched. Eighty-thre
e percent chance of obliteration meant a seventeen percent chance of continued existence. He would increase those odds, as he was Gharlane, the prime unit in the cyborg assault of Jupiter.

  I will sweep the station for workers and equipment, the Web-Mind informed him. The Jovian planet-wrecker must strike to ensure annihilating victory. Therefore, you must begin to implement your strategic task in the quickest timeframe possible.

  “I hear and obey,” Gharlane said, his strange, red pupils fixed on the swiftly changing holo-images around him.

  * * *

  Webbie Octagon’s nostrils twitched as he lay on the magnetic gurney. Harsh chemical odors assault him. The cyborg continued to push him as they entered the main conversion chamber.

  Even to Octagon’s altered brain, this was a place of horror. A vast machine stood before him. On it were twenty-four naked humanoids. Some bellowed. A few stared in shocked silence. All were strapped down securely and moving headfirst toward a small chute. Beyond that chute chemicals sprayed as skin-choppers began the hideous task of removing the outer layer of epidermis.

  Octagon croaked a sound of protest. That caused the hatred to flare within him. Marten Kluge had caused this horror. Marten Kluge must die. Wait! Marten Kluge must not die, no, no, not die. Marten Kluge must suffer horribly for the wrongs he’d committed. The barbarian—

  Octagon cocked his head and blinked. Barbarian… barbarian… that was a difficult concept. The Web-Mind mandated obedience in the new thinking. There wasn’t such a thing as barbarians in Web-Mind terminology. Why then did he concentrate on such a topic?

  “Marten Kluge,” Webbie Octagon hissed. He began to squirm as the gurney neared the end of the conveyer. Octagon bitterly realized his fate. He would ride the belt into the choppers as he was transformed into a cyborg. He would become strong. He would no longer possess any of himself. He might even lose his hatred of—

  “Marten Kluge!” Octagon screeched.

  As titanium-reinforced fingers began to unbuckle him, the cyborg stiffened. It stood motionless as the conveyer belt fed the screaming, protesting humans into the machine. The cyborg remained unmoving until the last human entered the chute.