Cybership Read online

  At first, Jon resisted for the best of reasons. He didn’t know how to read. The chaplain found out and began to teach him. It was a painstaking effort. Once, Jon hit the chaplain in frustration. The man of God stared at him as a bruise appeared on his right cheek.

  “Do you want to fight me?” the chaplain asked softly.

  “Yeah, I do. Because that sure as hell beats trying to read this garbage.”

  Jon received the worst beating of his life that day. As he lay on the floor, Jon had decided it was worth it because at least he was done with the embarrassing teaching. Only it hadn’t worked out that way. The sergeant had sent him back to the chaplain a week later, and the reading lessons continued.

  Jon never knew when the change came, but it did. Reading opened his mind, and the new knowledge ignited a thirst in him to know more. He began to read voraciously until some of his mates began to call him a bookworm.

  “No,” Jon said. “I’m a book lion. I devour books. I don’t crawl through them.”

  The books changed him.

  Two years after entering the regiment, the colonel spoke to him. He told Jon he had the makings of an officer.

  “You know the meaning of honor,” the colonel said. “And I see that you’ve begun to think. Those make for a dangerous combination. Are you willing to enter the officer-cadet program?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jon said.

  “Then, let us begin with the first lesson,” Graham said, handing Jon a booklet.

  The mercenary regiment recruited its own personnel and trained its own officers while they were in the field. Then, disaster struck—a grim change in the political nature of the Saturn System.

  The Solar League sent its Jupiter-conquering fleet to the Saturn System. The war for the Saturn System began and ended in the same year.

  The regiment fought in two actions, winning one and losing the other. Colonel Graham extricated what remained of the regiment and realized the freewheeling mercenary days were over in the Saturn System. The Jupiter Gravitational System showed what would happen here. The Solar League would take over, using the GSB to hunt down and intern all resisters, putting them into brutal internment camps.

  Colonel Graham had kept enough of the regiment’s assets liquid to buy passage on an ancient freighter. They were part of the exodus from the Saturn System, people fleeing to Uranus, Neptune and the trans-Neptunian regions beyond.

  That had been the first time Jon traveled low. What remained of the regiment went into cryogenic deep freeze, heading for the Neptune System. The journey took three years of frozen travel. One-fifth of the regimental soldiers never woke up, an eleven percent poorer percentage than normal.

  The colonel had recruited in the Neptune System, but things had never been the same. The change in customs had bewildered many of the old-timers. Fortunately, Jon had found the differences stimulating. Maybe because he read so much he could accept new ideas more easily than the others could.

  Things had changed for the Black Anvil Regiment in the Neptune System. The most radical change came…

  Officer Cadet Jon Hawkins groaned as his head began throbbing anew. He had a few of his older memories, but none of the newer ones that would tell him why he was here on this spaceship. At least he knew more of who he was.

  Jon sat up with a start. The silver-haired man in the cryo unit had been Colonel Graham.

  A fierce loyalty rose in Jon. Colonel Graham was like a father to him. Whatever else happened, Jon had to make sure the colonel came out alive and well from cryo sleep.

  As Jon determined that, the little arbiter sat up in his half-open med tube. The secret policeman had a cast on his broken hand, pseudo-flesh on his forearm wound, a tight wrap around his badly sprained ankle and another cast on his broken foot. He didn’t seem quite so terrified anymore.

  The med tube must have given him a sedative to calm his nerves.

  The arbiter studied Jon, and he seemed disapproving. “You should take off those clothes,” the secret policeman said. “Otherwise, we could legally shoot you as a spy.”

  Irritation made Jon scowl.

  “You’re a prisoner,” the arbiter said. “You would do well to remember that.”

  The SL arbiter was a prick. The secret policeman could have shown a little gratitude. Jon had saved his life back in the corridor. Instead of thanking him, the arbiter wanted to assert his authority. Given this, letting the policeman know the extent of his ignorance would be a mistake.

  “Better start talking,” Jon growled.

  The arbiter’s head swayed back. A second later, bitterness twisted his lips. “Help me out of here first.”

  Jon kept staring at the man with a look from his old enforcer days.

  The arbiter’s features hardened.

  “If you piss me off enough,” Jon told him, “I’m going to drag you back to the repair bot and toss you to it.”

  The arbiter slid out of the med tube and gingerly put weight on his good foot. He hopped to a stool, sitting down.

  “The med unit cut off my boots,” the arbiter complained. “What am I going to wear now?”

  “Last chance,” Jon told him.

  The arbiter’s head jerked up. “Do you realize I represent the GSB on this ship?”

  “That’s it,” Jon said, standing.

  “Bah,” the arbiter said. “We’re wasting time. I am Arbiter Sapir Oslo of the Battleship Leonid Brezhnev. As you are no doubt aware, the Brezhnev belongs to Task Force Ten.”

  Jon kept staring, as the information did not jar anything loose in his memories.

  “Surely you recall the battle?” Oslo said.

  “Refresh my memory, why don’t you?”

  “Interesting,” Oslo said. “You were in cryo sleep, and you came out fast. I doubt you remember much.”

  “Task Force Ten came from Earth,” Jon said, guessing.

  An evil smile spread the arbiter’s lips.

  That kindled the stainless steel rat in Jon, and he moved toward the arbiter.

  The arbiter pretended indifference at first. Then, he said, “I can have you shot if you—”

  Jon hit him in the face, catapulting the smaller man head over heels onto the floor.

  The arbiter lay on the deck-plates, gasping. Jon kicked him in the side. The arbiter groaned, curling up. Jon knelt and laced his fingers into the man’s thinning hair. He pulled the head upright. Before he could begin the interrogation in earnest, he heard a heavy but muted clomp outside the door.

  Jon twisted around. The hatch slid up, and an SLN battlesuit aimed a heavy assault rifle at him.

  -6-

  The three of them were frozen like that for several seconds. Finally, the battlesuit stepped into the chamber, its servomotors purring softly. The hatch slid shut behind it.

  The battlesuit was huge, a little over seven feet tall. This one probably weighed 0.76 tons, as it lacked a back boat.

  The assault rifle looked to be a heavy Gauss 5mm. No doubt, it would fire anti-armor rounds. The Gauss rifle used magnetic impulse to accelerate 5mm steel-needle sabots.

  “Excellent,” Oslo declared from on the floor. “Get your hands off me,” he told Jon.

  Jon stood, backing away from Oslo. The assault rifle tracked him as he moved.

  “Now,” Oslo said. He slid along the floor until he came to a stool. Using one hand and one foot, the secret policeman painfully worked himself to a sitting position.

  A speaker activated on the battlesuit’s helmet-turret. A masked voiced asked, “Why were you holding down the arbiter?”

  “I was about to bitch slap him,” Jon replied. “If that didn’t work, I was going to break his nose before I beat him good.”

  “Don’t you realize the penalty for harming a GSB arbiter?” the battlesuit asked.

  Jon shrugged. He’d gambled and lost. That didn’t mean he had to lose his balls in the process. Better to go down swinging than to gain more time as a sniveling coward.

  “Did the arbiter annoy you somehow?�
�� the battlesuit asked.

  The arbiter had been touching his wrapped ankle. He looked up now, his narrow features pinched with distaste.

  “Who are you?” Oslo demanded of the battlesuit.

  “He annoyed me,” Jon agreed, “but that wasn’t why I planned to slap him. I wanted some answers.”

  “What kind of answers?” the battlesuit asked.

  Jon took a deep breath as he glanced from the battlesuit to the arbiter.

  “He’s a Neptunian national,” Oslo said into the silence. “He’s a spy in an SLN uniform. Shoot him.”

  “That’s a lie,” Jon said.

  “How do you know he’s a spy?” the battlesuit asked the arbiter.

  “I have said so,” Oslo declared. “That is enough.”

  “Are you a spy?” the battlesuit asked Jon.

  “No.”

  “Are you Neptunian?”

  “No,” Jon said. “I’m a New London mercenary in the Black Anvil Regiment. I woke up in a cryo unit less than an hour ago. The arbiter showed up, saying I caused something bad to happen. Before we could talk about it, a repair bot attacked us, badly wounding him. I saved his life and figured he owed me a few answers in return.”

  “The arbiter’s casts and pseudo-skin would seem to substantiate your story,” the battlesuit conceded.

  “The Neptunian filth is a lying capitalist dog,” Oslo declared. “He surprised me here. I’d dragged myself to the med center after facing and defeating a crazed robot. I told him as much. He then—”

  The battlesuit’s faceplate whirred open, interrupting the arbiter’s speech. A young woman peered up as if she could barely see out of the opening.

  “Do you recognize me?” she asked Oslo.

  The arbiter frowned at her. “Yes. You’re the Martian mentalist.”

  “You told the admiral you were going to get the mercenary colonel and make him flush the virus for us. This man does not look Neptunian, and he has the bearing of a soldier. I think he’s telling the truth about helping you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Oslo said. “The capitalist dog struck me. The penalty for that is death. I order you to shoot him.”

  “What if he can purge the virus for us?” the woman asked. “Wouldn’t we need him then?”

  Oslo pulled at his lower lip as he studied Jon. “Can you do that?”

  Jon said nothing, as he had no idea what they were talking about.

  “I asked you a question,” Oslo said.

  “I don’t think the soldier likes you,” the woman told the arbiter.

  Oslo scowled at her. “I do not care for your tone. It smacks of insubordination. You would do well to recall who I am.”

  “Believe me, I am recalling,” the woman said. “It’s why I thought he was telling the truth.”

  “Enough,” Oslo said. “You will vacate the battlesuit this instant. Under the circumstances, I have decided to wear it.”

  The woman peered at Oslo. A second later, the faceplate whirred shut. The helmet speaker activated. “We’re leaving, Arbiter. Would you like me to carry you?”

  “This is intolerable. I am Arbiter Sapir Oslo of the GSB. The Solar League has invested me with political authority on the Brezhnev. I determine who is loyal and who is not. The disloyal leave the service. You can leave alive or you can leave feet-first.”

  “Your threats don’t mean anything out here,” the Martian said through the helmet speaker. “We’re all as good as dead anyway. Maybe we can figure out what happened and alert Earth. Do we need you for that? I doubt it.”

  The heavy assault rifle aimed at the center of Oslo’s chest.

  “What’s it going to be, Arbiter?” the Martian asked. “Life or death?”

  “You dare to threaten me?” Oslo asked in outrage.

  Jon expected several 5mm needles to obliterate the arbiter’s chest any second.

  Instead, the small policeman’s shoulders slumped. Fear reentered his eyes. “Is it that bad? Is the ship truly doomed?”

  The rifle lowered a fraction. “It’s that bad. The admiral is dying. We three might be the only ones left alive aboard the Brezhnev.”

  The words struck Jon like a blow to the gut. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  The helmet swiveled toward him. “Don’t you know?”

  “No.”

  “Do not believe anything he says,” Oslo said in exasperation. “He’s a proven liar.”

  “I don’t believe the Neptunians or their soldiers have anything to do with our predicament,” the Martian said. “I’m beginning to think it’s an alien attack.”

  “What’s an alien attack?” Jon asked.

  The Martian paused. Finally, she said, “Let’s go to the command deck. Maybe a fresh insight can give us a clue as to what’s happening.”

  “The command deck,” Oslo said, backing away. “We can’t go there. That’s where the attack started.”

  “Why do you think I’m wearing a battlesuit? We cleared out the command deck before I came here.”

  “We?” asked Oslo.

  “The others died,” the Martian said. “The admiral sustained wounds. But we shut down the main computer core. Now, we have to make a decision. Are you ready?”

  Sapir Oslo swallowed audibly, his throat convulsing. The fear still shined in his eyes, but he nodded. “Maybe we can escape in a lifeboat.”

  “Maybe,” the Martian said, not sounding convinced. “Ready?” she asked Jon.

  He nodded. The Martian had said something about aliens. Just what in the world was going on?

  -7-

  Jon refused to help Oslo walk. The battlesuited Martian did not ask him a second time. She scooped up the arbiter, cradling him one-armed while keeping the assault rifle ready with the other.

  She marched through the corridors like an upright elephant, her footsteps reverberating and shaking the deck-plates.

  Jon struggled to keep up. He felt better, but the shoes soon pinched his feet and he found that he hadn’t fully recovered from the cryo sleep yet.

  The Martian took what seemed a circuitous route. They did not use any turbo-lifts. Instead, they used service tubes to go from one level to another. The battlesuit bent metal rungs as it climbed and barely made it through the narrow passageways.

  “Is that wise?” Jon asked as they climbed to another deck level.

  “Wiser than a turbo-lift,” the Martian said through a helmet speaker. “You really don’t know what happened, do you?”

  “He doesn’t even remember the battle,” Oslo said in a superior and irritating manner.

  “Why doesn’t he remember?” she asked Oslo.

  “I suspect it is because he came out of cryo sleep too quickly.”

  The battlesuit halted, with the helmet turning so the faceplate aimed at Jon. “Are you worried about brain damage?” she asked.

  Jon had forgotten about the possibility. The idea of brain damage sickened him.

  “Does any part of your head feel numb?” the Martian asked.

  “No.”

  “What about your hands or feet?”

  “I feel fine,” Jon said, “other than being tired.”

  “Then you should be fine long-term,” she said. “A fast thaw-out causes a little memory delay. If you don’t feel any numbness, I doubt any of your forgetfulness is permanent. None of that accounts for the fact that you woke up, though. Ahhh…”

  “What is it?” Jon asked.

  “The computer must have caused the thaw-out,” she said. “Maybe it realized you were our enemy. It wanted to unleash you as a distraction.”

  “Why didn’t it thaw the rest of my regiment then?” Jon asked.

  “We must have killed or overpowered the computer before it could start thawing the rest of you,” the Martian said. “It actually tried to bargain with us at the end. It was pretty freaky, believe me.”

  The faceplate turned forward and the battlesuit continued clomping through the corridor.

  Things became radical
after the next turn, as they passed dead ship’s personnel. The corpses lay twisted with blue, contorted faces. Some had died as they clawed at the floor. A few had bullet holes in their heads and either clutched guns or had them lying nearby on the deck.

  “Looks like a few committed suicide rather than suffocate to death,” the Martian commented.

  “They didn’t have any air?” Jon asked.

  “That’s what suffocated usually means.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jon said. “Hold it.”

  The battlesuit halted and turned to face him.

  “Are you really expecting me to believe that the ship’s computer turned hostile?”

  “That’s my working theory,” she said.

  “But…” Jon waved his hands. “There are all kinds of fail-safes against that. I mean, how did these supposed aliens know the right codes? Hell, how did the aliens know the language so fast? How do you know it was aliens that caused this, anyway?”

  “I suppose you’re thinking a hostile force gave our computer systems self-attack orders,” the Martian said. “I don’t believe that’s what happened.”

  “You should not explain anything to him,” Oslo said.

  “Maybe he has insights that can help us,” the Martian said.

  “He is an enemy combatant.”

  “Not if the Solar System is facing an alien threat,” the Martian replied.

  “No, no,” the arbiter said, shaking his head. “This disaster happened because of Neptunian espionage. We must question him, using force if we have to.”

  Jon rubbed his forehead. It had started throbbing again, making his eyesight blurry.

  “Look at him,” Oslo said. “Neptunian Intelligence must have inserted post-hypnotic commands into him. Subdue him, Mentalist. I order you to action.”

  “Wait,” Jon said. The headache worsened as splotches appeared before his vision.

  It came flooding back to him then—the reason he had been in a cryo unit aboard the SLN Battleship Leonid Brezhnev.

  The SLN had invaded the Neptune Gravitational System with an overpowering battlefleet. The Solar League controlled the Inner Planets and had invaded the Jupiter and Saturn Gravitational Systems several years ago. The Neptune Navy had sent several cruisers to Saturn back then. That had been the pretext for the present SLN invasion.