Star Soldier Page 26

  “Shanghai!”

  “What do we have that can stop them?” shouted Hawthorne.

  Space Commander Shell shook his head. Air Marshal Ulrich was speechless. There was nothing.

  “What about nukes, sir,” suggested a staff officer.

  “Target the Beijing meteorite with nukes!” shouted Hawthorne. “Now!”

  A staff officer shouted orders.

  On screen, the meteorites streaked toward Earth, the proton beams washing them unable to destroy enough of them to matter.

  “Sir! We need Lord Director Enkov’s authorization to launch nuclear weapons!”

  “Raise him,” snapped Hawthorne. “You, order them to launch regardless of authorization, on my authority.” Hawthorne found himself spun around to face the captain of the bionic men.

  “Belay that order,” the bionic man said.

  “Look at the screen!” shouted Hawthorne. “Unless I destroy that meteorite Beijing will be obliterated, and so will the other cities. Then Enkov will die. I don’t think he’s going to thank you for that.”

  ”Lord Director Enkov,” corrected the bionic man.

  “You fool!”

  The pressure on Hawthorne’s arm increased painfully. In moments, the bone would break. “Listen to me.” Then it felt as if his bone creaked in complaint. The bone felt like a piece of lumber under terrific pressure.

  “Cancel my order,” whispered Hawthorne.

  The staff officer said, “But, sir—” A bionic guard put a gun against that man’s ribs. “Yes, sir,” said the staff officer.

  In the rest of the command center, the other bionic security men along the walls trained their carbines on the staff officers. A massacre of debilitating proportions seemed only seconds away.

  “I beg you to listen to me,” Hawthorne told the bionic captain. “We have—”

  “Impact in thirty seconds, sir!”

  Hawthorne turned from the shouting staff officer and stared into the bionic man’s eyes. It was difficult to think with that bone-crushing grip on his arm. The bionic man didn’t seem to be straining at all. Briefly, Hawthorne wondered why they didn’t create an army of these bionic men. Then he had to use all his concentration in order to form his words. He said, “Your loyalty and obedience is impeccable, but surely you can see that we must save the Lord Director’s life, not to mention our capital.”

  A sour smile creased the bionic captain’s lips. “Disobedience is not allowed. Termination is the result, both yours and mine. I refuse to be terminated.”

  “Look at the screen.”

  “Yes, unfortunate.”

  “Are you willing that the Lord Director should perish?”

  “Obedience is mandatory.”

  “Look,” said Hawthorne, trying to turn and look at the screen.

  “Negative,” said the bionic man, using his infinitely greater strength to keep Hawthorne from turning.

  “Ten seconds!”

  “I have to order a nuclear strike,” General Hawthorne shouted.

  “Eight seconds, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… impact.”

  From the various screens, bright glares filled the room. The seconds ticked by. Then a rumble, a quake, caused the underground bunker to quiver. Soon the shockwave passed.

  “Beijing is gone,” whispered a man.

  The bionic man released General Hawthorne.

  Hawthorne staggered away from the bionic captain. The general gingerly massaged his biceps and wondered if his arm was permanently damaged.

  “Manila, gone. Taipei, gone. Vladivostok—”

  “Now what, sir?”

  General Hawthorne tried to collect himself. It was difficult. The scale of death was… millions, no, maybe a billion dead. He couldn’t visualize it. His chest threatened to lock up as his heart hammered.

  “The Julius Caesar is entering low-Earth orbit, sir, the stratosphere. And the Genghis Khan seems to have turned around. It’s coming back.”

  General Hawthorne looked up. The Doom Stars filled the screen, part of the Genghis Khan a mass of smoking wreckage.

  “We badly hurt one of them,” whispered Ulrich.

  General Hawthorne squinted. The main brunt of the amphibious assault had yet to be touched by the Highborn. Was it possible to snatch victory from this… this… could one call a billion deaths a mere blow?

  “Lord Director Enkov on line seven, sir.”

  “He’s alive?” General Hawthorne asked in amazement.

  Before he could say more the bionic captain hustled him to line seven. There he saw the haggard, angry face of Lord Director Enkov. No doubt, the Lord Director was already looking for a scapegoat. General Hawthorne had few illusions about who that would be.

  20.

  Murderous gun-battles raged in the merculite missile station. The last of the Kamikazes, Samurais, rocket engineers, hastily trained civilians and ex-police officers refused to surrender. They fought with whatever tools were at hand. They were more stubborn at the end than they had been at any other time in the Siege of Tokyo.

  Showing no mercy, the FEC soldiers kept coming. After silencing the heavy machinegun ports and blowing the underground locks, the last of the 93rd Slumlords had stormed into the station. Behind the super-thick station walls and below the four-thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete, the merculite station was a vast fortress filled with rows upon rows of heavy merculite rockets.

  Perhaps sixty of the huge, armored missiles waited on a conveyer. They looked like bullets on a machinegun belt, and were fed to four blast pans: the launch sites. Between the blast pans raged the gun battles. Bullets and shrapnel bounced off the vast missiles.

  Heavy body armor turned the battle in favor of the Slumlords. Remorselessly, they advanced toward the control room. Men in tattered rags crawled along the girders, dropping grenades. They popped out of supply tunnels, guns blazing. Each time, lasers and gyrocs cut them down. Then a last remaining squad of Samurais leapfrogged to the attack. They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and blown to bits. Their blood stained three of the rockets that were closest to the blast pans.

  Marten led his assault group, their weapons smoking from constant use. Alone or grouped in twos or threes they sprinted, bounded or crawled to new positions. Lasers beamed, machine pistols chattered and gyrocs barked. All around the FEC soldiers, the colossal missiles towered over them. To Marten, they seemed like idols, things that should be worshiped and most of all feared. The merculite missile station was a cathedral to war, to man’s madness and killer instinct. It was only right then that men murder men in this place.

  “Why don’t they surrender?” shouted Stick, slapping a new clip of grenades into his electromag launcher.

  “They can’t,” said Omi, lifting his laser and burning a hole in an engineer that raced at them with a wrench.

  “Why not?” said Stick, laying down a pattern of grenade fire that slew another four unfortunates.

  “Because they’re insane,” Omi said, “beyond reason.”

  Marten marveled at these last Japanese even as he killed them. A squad of political police officers screamed a war cry as they ran at them. They fired stunners, utterly ineffectual against combat-armored soldiers. Some of Marten’s men actually stood up, taking the brunt of the stunner fire as they blew apart the pathetic, would-be warriors.

  When the last police officer fell, Marten rose. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned his men forward. Sigmir’s assault group rose and followed.

  Marten paused at the corpse of one of the stunner men. The man must have known his weapon couldn’t hurt armored soldiers. So why had…. Marten’s chest tightened. He reached down and took a tangler that was attached to the corpse’s belt. He hadn’t seen one of these since…. His stomach fluttered as he thought about the Sun-Works Factory circling Mercury. For years there with his parents, all he’d ever used was a tangler, one just like this. It was a policeman’s weapon, useless on the battlefield.

  A feeling suddenly came over him, an ins
ight into himself. These Japanese were like his parents. They’d never given in, but had died for freedom. Yet what good was dying? He stuffed the tangler in his pack and hurried after his assault group. They knelt behind some missiles, trading fire with….

  Marten threw himself onto the concrete floor, an enemy grenade flying over him.

  “Look out!” he yelled. He rolled left, behind the nearest missile.

  A flash and a scream told of another FEC death. How many had to die before the Siege for Tokyo was over? Then he saw motion, the bomb-thrower sprinting to get nearer them. In a single, liquid move, Marten rose and fired. Riddled with bullets, the bomb-thrower staggered backward, a look of shock on his face.

  Marten hated Social Unity, but he felt pity for these poor sods. Then he squinted thoughtfully. He didn’t love the Highborn either. He laughed—at last understanding who he was.

  “What is it?” shouted Stick, who stood nearby, slapping yet another grenade clip into his launcher.

  Marten shook his head. But it had come to him, finally. He belonged to neither side. He was his own side, as his parents had been their own side. And what side was that? the cynical part of him asked. Freedom’s side, he decided.

  In that instant, he conceived something new within himself, the germ of a new country, or perhaps one that was very, very old and would be reborn again. In his land—the one he now bore in himself, as a pregnant woman bears a new life—a murderer would pay for stealing another man’s life.

  “I see it!” shouted Petor.

  Marten snapped out of his musing and peered around his missile. He saw it too. It was a door marked CONTROL ROOM.

  Sigmir howled, and he dashed toward the entrance. Amazed at the berserk rush, the FEC soldiers of the 93rd Slumlord Battalion watched the huge Lot Six Highborn hurl himself at the door. It burst apart on impact. Sigmir rolled in amidst gunfire. He roared a battle cry as he leaped up and let his gyroc bark.

  At the very same instant, the clamshell top whirled open to the nighttime sky. A loud clank sounded as the heavy missiles lurched toward the four blast pans.

  “Look at that,” shouted Stick. He pointed up into the sky. “What is it?”

  Marten peered where Stick pointed. His jaw dropped.

  Through a break in the smoke, he saw the full moon. It had a dirty color because of the haze. In front of the moon slid a perfectly circular shape. It too seemed far away. But for something so far away to block out even part of the moon’s light, the thing would have to be enormous.

  Then it came to Marten, and goosebumps ran up and down his spine.

  “What is it?” shouted Stick.

  “…Doom Star,” whispered Marten.

  Stick looked at him as if he were crazy. “Doom Stars don’t come close enough to Earth to be seen by the likes of us.”

  “What else can it be?” asked Omi, who looked up too.

  Stick shrugged, and all three of them studied the huge circular shape that slowly slid in front of the moon. Each gasped as the huge shape lit up. Beams, missiles, or that weird gel they’d heard about, something leaving the ship made a play of pretty colors. One of those pretty colors became a beam that slashed through the clouds. Before it could stab within the site, into the merculite missile station, the four-thousand-ton dome whirled shut on its gargantuan hydraulic sleds.

  Omi, Stick and Marten exchanged glances. Within the merculite station, the sounds of gunfire, of battle, died down.

  “It’s finished,” said Stick.

  Omi raised his eyebrows.

  “We’ve taken the merculite missile battery,” the former knifeboy said.

  “You mean that Sigmir has,” Omi corrected.

  “Yeah,” said Marten. He knew now that he carried something critical within himself. But if freedom were to be reborn, he had to act the part of a true man today. He nodded sharply to his two friends, asking, “Do you two remember Turbo?”

  Their faces hardened.

  Stick said, “We remember. But we can’t do anything about that now.”

  “Why not?” asked Marten.

  “Because it would mean our deaths,” Omi said.

  “Given that we’d even be able to kill him,” Stick added.

  “Do you doubt our abilities?” Marten asked.

  Neither of them answered.

  “I don’t,” Marten said. He turned and marched for the control room. A moment later, he heard Stick and Omi behind him.

  As Marten entered the bloody room, Stick whispered, “How you gonna make it so we don’t die in return?”

  Sigmir sat the controls—the panels circled the room. A heap of dead technicians lay on the floor.

  The huge Highborn spun in his chair, facing them. “Gentlemen, it is done and I have won.”

  Marten stopped, with Stick flanking one side of him, Omi the other.

  Sigmir glanced at each of them in turn, his dead-seeming eyes searching theirs. With the reactions of an auto-sweep, he fired at Stick. Marten rolled. Omi cursed and beamed Sigmir. The laser light bounced off Sigmir’s shiny armor; unknown to them it had been reflected, laser-proofed. Stick grunted. The gyroc shell lodged in the armor joint of his torso and right arm. Then the shell exploded and Stick blew to the floor, dead. Marten fired round after round against Sigmir’s armor. The bullets bounced off to little effect, even though Marten was hoping to weaken the armor by repeatedly hitting the same spot.

  Sigmir roared with laughter and re-aimed his gyroc. Marten leaped aside. The explosion of the shell threw him hard onto the floor. Both Omi’s laser and Marten’s machinegun were powerless against Sigmir’s superior armor. Realizing that, Marten dropped his gun and drew the tangler from his pack.

  “Fool!” bellowed Sigmir.

  Marten and he fired at the same instant. The gyroc round was a dud and failed to ignite. It still hit Marten in the chest and threw him backward. The strong sticky strands, meanwhile, tangled the seven-foot berserker.

  Sigmir shouted wildly and strained to snap the strands.

  Bruised and aching, Marten rose and emptied his tangler onto Sigmir, cocooning him with the wire-thin strands.

  “Release me!” roared Sigmir.

  Omi shot off the radio attached to the Lot Six Commander’s helmet.

  Marten dashed to the controls of the merculite station. They were of similar design to those in the Sun-Works Factory. His fingers played over them. Then Marten ran, shouting to Omi, “Come on!”

  “Preman!” Sigmir bellowed. “Release me or face my wrath.”

  Marten didn’t pause. He ran out of the control room, shouting orders at everyone to retreat. Above them, the clamshell top whirled open and the missiles lurched toward the blast pans.

  “Evacuate the station!” bellowed Marten. “Hurry!”

  “Where’s Sigmir?” shouted Petor, running toward them.

  Marten nodded to Omi. Omi waited until the bodyguard was almost on them. Then he indicated that Petor flip open his visor. He did so. Omi plunged a vibroblade into the bodyguard’s face.

  ***

  Panting, running for the nearby trench line, Marten peered up at the night sky. Four missiles launched from the merculite station. Far above, the Doom Star glowed. All around Tokyo and farther a-field terrible laser beams flared.

  “Run!” Marten roared.

  FEC soldiers ran, knowing that they had only seconds left. They only just made it to the trenches.

  Marten landed hard, almost knocking the wind of out himself. The night erupted in a blaze of fire and steel and rocking shockwaves. Marten lay curled into a fetal ball. The pounding was worse than anything he’d faced so far. Heat washed over the trench. Shrapnel that had once been the inside of the merculite missile station flew over in bunches. Bits of dust and concrete rained upon the FEC soldiers, causing each man to tremble violently because he thought it meant the end. They endured the Doom Star beaming of the inner missile site. The intensity of the explosions shook their nerves near the breaking point. Finally, after what seemed an etern
ity, it stopped.

  Marten and Omi uncurled. They avoided looking at each other because each knew from experience that a haunted look would stare back from a zombie’s mask. So they breathed gingerly, amazed that they could still be alive.

  “Here comes the Colonel,” said a man.

  Marten dragged himself upright. He wouldn’t lie. He’d tell him that Sigmir must have been caught in the merculite station. Everyone knew how insane the Captain was about capturing it. He must not have run away in time, but if the Colonel didn’t buy the story…

  Marten glanced at Omi.

  Omi whispered, “Then we’ll have to kill him, too.”

  Marten smiled grimly in agreement.

  21.

  General James Hawthorne left the command center in time to forgo watching his carefully assembled armada and army demolished unit after unit by the Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan Doom Stars. Thousands of bombers, fighters and choppers, wiped out by heavy beams. More than five thousand stratosphere-launched missiles blasted the transports laden with a hundred battalions. Surfacing flattops and cruise missile submarines were finished by a combination of beams, missiles and underwater nukes. And in their place, deeply deployed subs rose and disgorged power-armored Highborn onto Japan.

  The careful gathering of hardware and military personnel in the massive build-up… the leaders of Social Unity had made it possible for the Highborn to destroy more units than they had ever been able to find since the start of the war. Perhaps it was true that the Highborn had been bloodied more than ever. The ledger, however, weighed heavily in Highborn favor.

  That much General James Hawthorne knew as he rode a fast ground effects vehicle, a GEV, to meet with Lord Director Enkov. The compartment he rode in was sealed from the world. He wore neither chains nor handcuffs, but in the GEV compartment with him sat the bionic captain and five of his most trusted bionic soldiers.

  They had hustled General Hawthorne out of the command center. They had marched him past the general’s own security men and past the armor units who had secretly pledged personal loyalty to James Hawthorne. Lord Director Enkov had given strict orders concerning the general, and no one had the firepower or the will to take on the bionic guards and thereby thwart the leader of Social Unity.