Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod Read online

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Marten said. “Maybe. Does that mean I’m going to accept it? No. But it means I know when to run.”

  “There is no place to run,” Chavez said.

  “Not for an entire planet, no,” Marten said as he began to pace before the huge desk. “Look. I’m going to be honest. I’m not going to lie to you. I wanted to bypass Mars. But I couldn’t. I needed fuel. We bought fuel with our service. Now I want to get to my shuttle and head to Jupiter.”

  “Your shuttle has been destroyed,” Chavez said.

  Marten stared Chavez in the eye. “You can give me diplomatic power. I’m willing to represent you. I’ll go to the Jupiter System and see if I can drum up support. If terror of the cyborgs can’t unite humanity, nothing can. We need a fleet of freemen to face… these aliens.”

  “Your shuttle was destroyed,” Chavez said.

  “No,” Marten said. “I sent it a coded signal a week ago and received one back, just one single beep. My shuttle is up there, floating like debris. You said Zapata filled the tanks with propellants. I plan to reach my shuttle and head to Jupiter.”

  “How can you reach your shuttle?” Chavez asked.

  “I’ll need an orbital fighter.”

  “You can fly one?”

  “Osadar Di can,” Marten said.

  Chavez blinked at him. “And you think there are orbitals at Olympus Mons?”

  Marten nodded.

  “You want me to loan you Martian commandos so you can flee and stay alive?” Chavez asked in disbelief.

  “You buy my service by providing me a service,” Marten countered. “I hit the enemy for you when the Highborn attack. I show the Highborn and the cyborgs that the Planetary Union can still strike. Your men provide me with my one chance of returning to my spaceship. In return, I train your men to the best of my Highborn-training. That training is more valuable to your Union than plutonium.”

  “We attempt to take out the proton beam and help the Highborn,” Chavez said thoughtfully.

  “You give them something they can really appreciate.”

  Chavez swiveled around and stared at one of the bizarre paintings. He slowly shook his head. “We must fight like men if we hope to be treated like men.”

  “That’s part of it,” Marten said. “The other is that you kill your oppressors.”

  “Or run away,” Chavez said.

  “Give me diplomatic credentials and it might turn my going away into drumming up human reinforcements and allies.”

  “Does that ease your conscience, Mr. Kluge?”

  “Maybe,” Marten said. “It also gives me a worthy goal.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I saw the cyborgs. I’ve been a slave to the Highborn and I’ve worked like an ant for Social Unity. I want to make the Solar System a place where people like me can thrive. That means I need a side, and a side that can win. Maybe that means I’m a seed that begins to link the free human outposts into a grand alliance to save all of us.”

  “That sounds like megalomania,” Chavez said.

  “That’s better than waiting to die.”

  A wintry grin spread across the Secretary-General’s narrow face. “Diplomatic credentials, eh? Yes. I agree. It is a gesture, if nothing else. It says that I believe Martians will always fight to be free.”

  “I’ll need the cyborg.”

  “You’ll need more than that, Mr. Kluge, much more.”

  -5-

  Two weeks after Marten’s meeting with Secretary-General Chavez and many millions of kilometers away, the Praetor’s pink eyes glowed with fierce hatred. His sharply angled face was taut with the unholy zeal that filled him. His thick dark hair was cut short to his scalp so it seemed like fur. He sat in his command chair, a giant of a Highborn, fourth-ranked in the competitive world of super-soldiers. At other consoles sat other Highborn. Like him, they were strapped in. Like him, they had regained their health during their weightless period of flight.

  Five weeks ago, the terrible acceleration around the Sun had ceased. For weeks, they had hurtled through the empty voids of space. The Grand Admiral’s Doom Stars had a much shorter distance to travel to reach Mars, 100 million kilometers. From the Sun, it was almost 250 million kilometers to Mars, since the Red Planet was at aphelion, at its farthest orbital distance.

  Out of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars had the third most elliptical orbit, a 9 percent variation. At perihelion, at its closest point, Mars was approximately 208 million kilometers away from the Sun. It was a difference of 46 million kilometers between the two extremes. For comparison, Earth had a difference of 5 million kilometers between perihelion and aphelion.

  For five weeks, the Thutmosis III had sped at over two and a half times the speed of the Grand Admiral’s Doom Stars. That calculated out to over five million kilometers per Earth day.

  In several hours, the Thutmosis III would catch the Grand Admiral and pass the Doom Stars.

  The Praetor slipped VR goggles over his eyes and slipped on twitch gloves. He used outer video cameras and carefully examined his stealth-ship. It was as black as the voids it hurtled through, with heat shields and an anti-radar coating. For weeks now, Highborn had hunched over their consoles, listening for radar and other detection pings sent by the enemy. To spot the Thutmosis III with teleoptic scopes should be nearly impossible until the stealth-ship was right on top of Mars. And that was something the Praetor had no intension of doing. The engines were silent so there was no telltale engine burn. Since leaving the Sun’s orbit, they’d moved on velocity alone. Since no enemy probes or vessels had been anywhere near the Sun, it was impossible that Social Unity even knew the Thutmosis III had circled Sol to build up speed.

  Until they fired missiles, fired the engines or lasers, it was unlikely Social Unity would ever realize the stealth ship was there.

  The Praetor twitched his fingers, using his VR goggles to peer through the ship’s teleoptic sights. Mars was brighter now than any other object in the scopes except for the Sun, which was presently at the Praetor’s viewing back. At Mars waited the last SU fleet worthy of the name. In a little over two weeks, as the Doom Stars neared to within 1-million kilometers, huge prismatic-crystal fields would begin to spew into existence at Mars, along with aerosol-gel clouds. Those fields and clouds were supposed to protect whatever needed protecting from heavy lasers or possible Highborn proton beams.

  The Praetor’s lips peeled back to reveal strong white teeth. The false smile concealed his nervousness. Because of its stealth-mission, the Thutmosis III would not send any radio or lightguide signals until the very last minute. Despite its impressive size, the stealth-ship was less than a tiny mote in the voids of space. As an almost microscopic speck, it still held life, energy and missiles. Compared to the planets, the stealth-ship was next to nothing. Compared to the SU warships, its stealth-missiles and drones would hopefully be thunderclaps out of the blackness. Yet because of the nature of his mission, the Praetor now had to wait for the next critical move.

  If the Grand Admiral had miscalculated—

  The Praetor let out a hiss, sounding like an angry snake. The Grand Admiral had calculated it to a nicety. The Doom Stars’ engines burned brightly and massively ahead of the Thutmosis III. The gargantuan warships poured out energy and began hard deceleration. That should conceal his actions.

  Immediately, the Praetor spoke loudly but calmly to his command crew. It would not do at this recorded moment to show emotion. He must present the picture of the perfect soldier. From his command chair, with the VR goggles firmly in place, he struck a martial pose and gave the order.

  The Praetor hid his smile as the command crew began to move with practiced ease. The Praetor used the VR goggles to watch through a recording device to see how they all looked. He and the crew had literally gone through a hundred and seventeen dry runs of this procedure. They were Highborn, the greatest soldiers in the Solar System. They, however, would not re
ly just on their excellence, but on dedicated training.

  Huge stealth-missiles and drones were now magnetically ejected from the ship’s tubes. For the next twenty minutes, every warhead must exit the ship. Time passed, and everything went off perfectly. The Praetor gave another calm order. Highborn ran their big hands over various controls. Magnetic coils cooled down and firing tubes closed.

  Each of the stealth drones and missiles were cold black objects, difficult to detect until the last moment. They would reach the Mars System as the Doom Stars reached the one-million kilometer range. Because of the angle of the approaches, as the stealth weapons reached the Mars System, the Thutmosis III would already be flying past Mars, no longer toward it. The Praetor’s ship would thus be able to use its teleoptic scopes to see behind whatever prismatic-crystal fields and aerosol-gel clouds the enemy had. It could lightguide and radio-message that targeting data to the Doom Stars. Just as importantly, the Thutmosis III could send targeting data to readjust the flight of its drones and the stealth-missiles so they struck the most militarily worthy objects.

  It was the Grand Admiral’s surprise stroke, and it would likely open the Last Battle for Mars.

  Pride surged through the Praetor. They had much to do in the coming two-and-a-half weeks. For now, however, each Highborn of his command had done splendidly.

  “We have them,” the Praetor said, using, he thought, the perfect pitch in which to say it. He spoke toward a video-recorder, knowing that his words were something that future Highborn would likely replay on files for generations to come.

  -6-

  The new cyborg LA31, once known as Lisa Aster, climbed into a stealth capsule. She was different from the tall cyborgs with the skeletal limbs. She still had a fleshy human face, although with a steel dome in place of her former bone-skull. Bionic parts had replaced her arms and legs, and her spine had been reinforced with graphite rods. A Neptune-made cyborg could likely defeat any four emergency-made cyborgs from Toll Seven’s command pod. Still, these models fulfilled a needed function, at this, the most critical hour of the Inner Planets assault.

  LA31 had undergone speed programming. She had less hardware governing her emotions or actions than Neptune-made cyborgs. Thus, as she settled into the stealth-capsule, a prearranged command forced her to jack a plug into the slot for her brain. Immediately, a lightguide laser linked her to the controlling Web-Mind. Toll Seven and the Web-Mind had decided that it—the Web-Mind—should remain in the command pod instead of coming down in sections and being rebuilt in Olympus Mons. That would happen later as Mars received its Web-Mind Master.

  LA31 jacked the plug into the slot for her brain. She frowned for a moment. She’d had a mother once, someone very important. She shrugged. She couldn’t remember who that had been, although she did recall that she’d been a clone.

  LA31 went rigid as a training reprimand surged through her. The plug into Web-Mind caused chemical reactions in her bio-form brain. Her face contorted and tears leaked from her eyes. Unknown to her, she had received a harsh emergency brain overlay. It sought to expunge old memories and lay down new ones, false ones generated by Web-Mind.

  LA31 groaned and her throat became unbearably dry. Pain made her head throb, and it almost caused her to open her eyes. Another impulse-surge went through the prong in her jack. It caused soothing chemical reactions in her brain, along the nerve endings.

  LA31 twitched once. Then she relaxed. She would sleep now as an SU stealth-ship carefully maneuvered her capsule into position. Her capsule contained a modified vacc-suit, hand weapons and an abundance of ammo. The capsule’s outer skin was asteroid rock. Soon, the capsule would float alone near Mars, as if the Red Planet had long-ago captured a piece of space flotsam. There were more like her, and they would be sprinkled at strategically and psychologically reasonable locals. They were the secret cyborg weapon, the one that was supposed to defeat the Highborn.

  LA31 knew nothing about that. She sighed, remembering a happier time as a cyborg dropping on Triton, a moon of Neptune. It was a false memory. Most of her old ones had been chemically raped away. Like a mental vulture, Web-Mind watched for any resurgence of them, ready to expunge the last of the personality of the clone Lisa Aster.

  -7-

  The next week rapidly passed as Marten Kluge trained the commandos on the sands of Mars. Osadar Di practiced with them. She demoralized the men with her amazing bounding leaps like a Highborn battleoid, her uncanny reaction time and precision, long-range shooting.

  Near the end of the week, Marten spoke to her in an EVA tent. It was larger than the survival tents they’d used for the raid into Valles Marineris. He preferred the tents to remaining in New Tijuana. Marten hated the black-visored police there, the similar city strictures as practiced on Earth and the possibility that Chavez could change his mind at any moment and imprison them.

  Marten sat on a folding chair, with a folding table between them. On the table was a rollout computer-sheet. It showed Olympus Mons, its various entrance points and the orbital hangers.

  Osadar Di stood, with her head near the tent’s ceiling. It was still hard for Marten to look at her. It was like looking at a living mannequin or at a statue that had supernaturally come to life. Her face was so immobile. Her arms and legs were more like metal rods, with bigger, motorized joints that moved them. It was unholy, a cruel joke against the living and a mockery of humanity. Marten had to tell himself constantly that inside this mostly mechanical machine was a living being, a person just like himself with hopes and dreams.

  “Osadar,” he said, lifting his gaze from the map, forcing himself to stare into her strange eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  There was no change of expression on her face. He had no idea what she was thinking.

  “Go on,” she said in her metallic voice.

  Marten kept himself from flinching and kept his eyes from darting away. “Mars is doomed,” he said.

  “We’re all doomed,” Osadar said. Her voice was like a heavy bell, a gong of certain defeat.

  “I don’t believe that,” Marten said.

  “What you believe makes no difference.”

  “…if you think we can’t win,” Marten said, stung, “why do you help us?”

  “Shooting gyroc rounds out here is better than those fools asking me a thousand questions in the labs. Do you know they kept me in a sealed vault, only speaking to me via a screen?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” Marten said.

  “Do you think I belong in a vault?” she asked.

  “I know you terrify my men.”

  “Do I terrify you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Marten admitted, “but I’m trying to learn to control that.”

  She nodded, and she tapped a metal finger on the map. “What you propose with this attack, it’s a suicide mission.”

  “Do you want to escape Mars?” Marten asked.

  Her longish head moved fast, faster than a human could twitch, and she nodded yes.

  Marten broke eye contact, and he felt relief doing it. On the computer-map, he indicated an orbital hanger high up on Olympus Mons. “The commando raid’s secondary objective is to reach here. Here we will take an orbital and you, hopefully, will fly us into space.”

  “The SU Battlefleet will target and eliminate any stray orbitals,” Osadar said.

  “I’m hoping they will be too busy right then,” Marten said.

  “How can one orbital affect the battle for—” A grim smile moved her plastic lips. “You wish me to ram the orbital into Toll Seven’s command pod?”

  Marten shivered. Osadar Di usually seemed emotionless like a computer. For the first time, Marten felt her hatred, her intense desire to hurt Toll Seven and likely Web-Mind. That expressed hatred coming from an emotionless machine was unnerving.

  “There is a better way to hurt the cyborgs,” he said.

  “How?”

  The single word had sounded metallic and emotionless. But Marten wasn’
t fooled. A lifetime of pain, of hope, of bitterness seemed rolled into that one question.

  Marten began to tell Osadar his plan and his hope. He also had a new idea. It had sprouted a week ago as he’d accepted the diplomatic credentials Chavez had handed him. Marten had shoved the credentials into a special pouch in his suit. He now told Osadar about his new idea.

  When he’d finished talking, she said, “Your plan is impossible.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he said.

  “No. It is impossible.”

  Marten slammed a fist against the computer-map and almost broke the fold-up table. He glared at her, glared into her strange eyes. For those seconds he forgot that she was a cyborg. He forgot to be squeamish or afraid of her bizarreness.

  “What does impossible have to do with anything?” he shouted. “We fight until we’re dead! Nothing is impossible until you shrivel up and quit. Then it is impossible. If you want out, tell me. I’ll pilot the damn orbital myself, or I’ll die trying.”

  “If Toll Seven or any other cyborg captures you—”

  “Are you in or out?” Marten asked.

  Osadar Di broke eye contact as she stared at the roll-up computer-map. “A madman to lead us and a damned thing to pilot his orbital fighter, we are doomed before we begin. It is the law of the universe, an inexorable truth.”

  “Your gaining freedom from Web-Mind was also against all the odds.”

  Osadar turned away. “You have a beautiful dream, Marten Kluge. To find the Neptune habitat and burn it—I can conceive of nothing more worthy to do with my miserable existence. Yes, I am in.”

  “You won’t regret this,” Marten said.

  Osadar regarded him. She had the saddest smile Marten had ever seen. It hurt his heart to witness it. “I hope you don’t live to regret it,” she said. “For it is very likely that sooner or later you will become a cyborg like me.”

  Osadar turned away abruptly and hesitated. Then in silence, she began to don her EVA gear. It was time to get moving.