Planet Wrecker ds-5 Page 4

  “It wasn’t a machine, but a cyborg, which made it partly human.”

  “Do not lecture me,” Tan said.

  Marten waited.

  She flicked her hand. “No. I shouldn’t have said that. Just now, I spoke with hyperbole and you stated fact.” Sighing, Tan leaned her elbows on the table and massaged her forehead. “Do you know the kind of pressures that have battered me this past year? One wrong misstep and I could have lost us everything. Yet everyday, the controllers and the industrial barons complained or demanded I meet another of their imaginary needs.”

  “The war grinds us down,” Marten said.

  She lowered her hands and straightened her back. “We’ve lost too many warships. Our fleet—it could not withstand a full-blown cyborg invasion now. You do recognize that, don’t you?”

  Marten waited for her point.

  “Yet it’s madness to simply sit and rebuild,” Tan said. “We must strike back and destroy their industrial capacity. But how can we do that with any hope of success?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “How polite you’ve become,” said Tan, with an edge to her voice. “Please, grace me with your thoughts. It’s one of the reasons you’re here.”

  “I’m a ground fighter,” Marten said, “not a grand strategist.”

  It was Tan’s turn to wait, to say nothing.

  “Okay,” Marten said. “You asked. So I’ll tell you what I think. This is a war to the death. It’s either them or us. So we should gather the biggest fleet we can, go to Neptune and burn them out with nukes.”

  “And this can be achieved how?”

  “Talk to Social Unity. Talk to the Highborn. Convince them to unite their ships into one invincible fleet.”

  “The Highborn are too arrogant to listen,” said Tan.

  “They’re arrogant,” Marten agreed. “But I don’t know if they’re too arrogant not to fight with us. The Praetor gave his life to kill cyborgs. That ought to prove something.”

  “They will want tactical control,” Tan said.

  “If it gives us victory, give them that control.”

  Tan’s eyes narrowed. “You are like most people, I’m afraid. You see what’s in front of you, but you cannot conceive of what’s behind that. Of what use is it to defeat the cyborgs, only to fall victim to the Highborn?”

  “The cyborgs are aliens and attempt to convert all of us into their likeness. The Highborn are still human after a fashion. But you have a point. I don’t want to live under the Highborn. Therefore, I suggest you keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

  “Which is?”

  Marten laughed sourly. “I didn’t understand it yesterday when I came to see you. But I understand it now. You’ve been maneuvering this past year to beat the cyborgs but also to keep control. Do the same thing with the Highborn and with Social Unity.”

  “You presume much, Marten Kluge.”

  “Look, Chief Strategist. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since yesterday. One thing that struck me was that the lone cyborg had a goal. He fought to reach this room. He didn’t fight to reach the fusion core. That tells me the cyborgs think you’re critical.”

  “Go on,” said Tan.

  “If they think you’re critical, well, then I guess I do too. I don’t like the Dictates. In fact, I loathe them. But I’ll back you until the cyborgs are dead. If my choice is the cyborgs, the Highborn, Social Unity or the Dictates—” Marten blew out his cheeks. “Social Unity or the Dictates, I don’t know which is worse.”

  “You insult us. The Dictates are the greatest form of human—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Marten said, waving his hands at her. “You told me yesterday that it’s greater than sludge waste. Now let me tell you how I see it. Social Unity let a psychopath put me in a glass tube to pump for my life. The Dictates allowed a sadist to put a collar on me and shock me to his delight. You’ll excuse me if I don’t see the benefit of either system.”

  “No system is perfect.”

  Marten snorted. “Look. What I’m trying to say is that I won’t interfere with your political maneuvering. At least, I won’t interfere if you’re working to destroy the cyborgs.”

  “You are not in a position to thwart me.”

  “I killed the cyborg for you, remember.”

  “Yes. I am grateful.”

  “I’ve trained Jovians to kill cyborgs. I may be more use to you than you realize.”

  “…Yes,” Tan said softly. “I’m beginning to see that. And that surprises me.”

  “That’s the trick,” Marten said. “To always have one more surprise up your sleeve.”

  Tan toyed with her chalice. She frowned, and she took a deep breath. Then she let it out slowly and looked up at Marten.

  “You have confirmed my decision,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “The controllers and helium barons believe the emergency has ended. They are quite wrong.”

  “Yeah?” asked Marten.

  “We have scoured our system and destroyed the cyborg infestation. Now we must toil even harder, rebuilding our infrastructure. But we cannot rebuild civilian comforts. No. That would be a strategic mistake. We must launch more floaters into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. We must construct moon-based lasers and point-defense satellites. Most importantly, we must launch three to four times the number of meteor-ships and dreadnaughts and train new crews.”

  “Keep the Jovians scared, eh?” asked Marten.

  “I am frightened of the future, aren’t you?”

  “Yakov showed me the way,” Marten said.

  “You are chaotic,” Tan said. “Your thinking—well, we discussed that yesterday. Are you saying now that you plan to sacrifice yourself for the greater good?”

  “I remember some Social Unity battle-slogans,” Marten said. “The exact sayings escape me, but it was something along the line of dying for your society in order to save Earth from the Highborn, that was the highest calling.” Marten scratched at the metal tabletop. “The Highborn had a counter-saying for those of us in the Free Earth Corps: Make the enemy die for his society.”

  “Yakov followed Social Unity’s dictum,” said Tan.

  “Yakov had learned to stand his ground,” Marten said. “He helped me see that sometimes if you’re a man and want to live free that you have to take a stand. Before that, I’d been doing a lot of running away. I’m through running, though.”

  “I fail to grasp how Yakov’s sacrifice—”

  Marten made a fist and set it on the table. “That’s the first part of it,” he said. “Standing. We did that here. So did Yakov. Now we have to do the second part. Attacking. We have to enter the enemy’s territory to burn him out and make sure he can never hurt us again.”

  “Your vision and zeal has confirmed my decision,” said Tan. “And you are familiar not only with Mars, but also with Earth and the Highborn. I cannot conceive of a better spokesman than you.”

  “Eh?” said Marten.

  “There is a derelict meteor-ship floating in orbit around Callisto. I have already sent repair boats full of technicians and mechanics to it. I cannot afford at this time to diminish our defenses. The cyborgs could even now be in the void with another invasion force. Yet you are right in saying that to win, we must attack. And we must attack in conjunction with everyone else. You, Marten Kluge, will head to Inner Planets as the Jovian spokesman. You will go with a major warship and a full complement of space marines.”

  “I’ll be in charge of the space marines?”

  “Are you not listening?” asked Tan. “You will be the Force-Leader of the meteor-ship. Put whoever you desire in charge of the soldiers.”

  Marten blinked at Tan. His own warship, not just a shuttle? Then it hit him. He’d be returning to Social Unity, returning to the Highborn. He sat back and wished he were sitting in a chair, not on this lousy cushion.

  “Naturally,” said Tan, “I shall begin negotiations through laser-communications, and I shall retain full authority
over anything concerning Jupiter.”

  That brought Marten up short. “Who will crew the ship?”

  “I shall amalgamate the decimated units who stormed Athena Station,” said Tan. “You will therefore possess veteran soldiers.”

  “Who will crew the warship?”

  “There are some highly decorated veterans—”

  “Their moon of origin?” asked Marten.

  “Why does that matter?”

  “From Ganymede?” asked Marten.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Tan. “Does that concern you?”

  Marten could have told her that he clearly saw what she was doing: getting rid of the non-Callisto space marines and warship crews. At least, she would be getting rid of the most independent-minded ones. In her terms, she would likely think she was getting rid of the worst ones. Yet he’d already told her that he wouldn’t interfere with her political maneuverings.

  Shaking his head, Marten wondered if that would be mankind’s failing, the inability to unite totally, that someone would always try to achieve his own selfish aim. He made a face. Maybe that made man, man. Cyborgs united perfectly, but they were no longer completely human.

  “I’ll do it,” Marten said.

  “Excellent,” said Tan, lifting her chalice.

  Marten lifted his and they clinked cups, sipping wine afterward.

  “You have given me a vision of the future,” Tan said. “You have given me hope. If we can unite humanity….”

  “It’s going to be a big ‘if’,” said Marten.

  “Things worth doing are seldom easy.”

  “Yeah,” Marten said, sipping his wine again, wishing it was beer. He was going to be a warship captain. And he was returning to the Inner Planets. Life was strange, and he wondered what the future held for him, and what it held for the Solar System.

  -8-

  “I don’t recommend this, sir,” Captain Mune said for the fifth time this hour.

  Supreme Commander Hawthorne understood Captain Mune’s concerns. And he silently agreed with the captain’s reasoning. Coming here was…penitence maybe. Or maybe he was a glutton for pain, or maybe he needed to feel the fear in his belly.

  He’d always hated the generals in what the ancients had called World War One. Those generals and field marshals had lived and dined in French chateaus as their soldiers had died in the mud and on the wire by the tens of thousands. Soft hands had moved pins on a map or pushed little blocks of wood representing a battalion of terrified soldiers, wet from the constant rain. If the generals and field marshals had slogged through the trenches with their men, they might not have continued the senseless butchery for years on end. Those generals might have striven for a way to win without fields of corpses.

  Hawthorne sighed, and he tied the laces of his hood. He wore a green tunic with a hood covering his head. He was taller than the security people around him, but he was no longer thinner. His eyes felt gritty and he knew there were discolored bags under them. There had been too many sleepless nights lately.

  “Be careful who you’re touching,” said Captain Mune. He jostled a security woman’s arm, shaking a chemsniffer out of her grip. She’d been using it on Hawthorne. The chemsniffer clattered on the pavement as the woman gasped with pain.

  Other brown-clad security people turned, facing Mune.

  The captain was a bionic soldier, and today he was Hawthorne’s sole bodyguard. The captain’s arm made soft whining sounds as he produced a card, handing it to the chief of lift security. The whining noise came from Mune’s mechanized joints.

  The chief of lift security, who wore dark glasses and badly needed a shave, glanced at the plastic card and then at Mune.

  Like the Supreme Commander, the captain wore a tunic, and like Hawthorne, Mune was incognito today. He was nearly as tall as Hawthorne, but thicker and more than five times as strong. That thickness now made Mune noticeable, made him stand out among the thin security people in their baggy uniforms.

  Hawthorne knew that Mune had a heavy-duty gyroc pistol hidden on him. The gyroc fired rocket-propelled, fin-stabilized shells, an unlikely weapon down here in the lower levels of New Baghdad, the capital of Social Unity on Earth.

  “What is this about?” asked the chief. His unshaven chin had plenty of white hairs among the black ones.

  “Sure you really want to know?” asked Mune.

  Hawthorne glanced at the captain. Mune spoke in a menacing tone.

  “It’s your life,” said the chief, who had grown pale. “Just to let you know—”

  “Don’t,” said Mune.

  The chief nodded, backing away. It seemed he worked to keep his face neutral. He motioned to the other security people, who gripped well-used shock rods.

  Mune stepped beside Hawthorne and said in a low tone, “I recommend you go back to your office and watch videos of the latest bread riots, sir. This is too risky.”

  “Do videos carry the stench of despair?” Hawthorne asked. He moved past the security cordon, his shoes echoing on the pavement. They were on Level Fifty-Three, a low-card district. Some of the lamps on the ceiling were broken. Across the wide veranda were five-story offices, human welfare buildings. Some had smashed windows on the lower stories. There was burn damage as well.

  “It’s quiet,” said Mune.

  Hawthorne listened to his shoes click as he set out in a fast stride. Several blocks later, he crunched over broken glass. The cleanup crews hadn’t made it very far, and he wondered why not. There were green apartment barracks on the next street. All the shrubs and synthi-trees there had long ago been torn out. People boiled bark, leaves and roots. According to reports, some had ground up the wood and eaten that too. He spied a group of children listlessly sitting on steps. The best off were rail-thin. Several lacked shirts and had the bloated, distended bellies of the truly starving.

  “Has it really gotten that bad in the capital?” whispered Hawthorne.

  Mune had glanced at the children before passing on to study the surroundings. “We’re being watched, sir.”

  “Hmm,” said Hawthorne.

  It had been nearly three years since he’d sent the reinforcement fleet to Mars. To ensure the fleet’s passage past the Doom Stars, he’d attacked from several farm habitats orbiting Earth. Those habitats had helped feed the planet’s billions—no longer. Because of the attack, the Highborn had retaliated, destroying some habitats and conquering the others. It had been a bitter decision, but Hawthorne had ordered Space Command to begin targeting enemy-controlled habitats. Merculite missiles and proton beams—

  Few habitats in Earth orbit existed as farms now. Most were drifting hulks. A few of them had degraded orbits, and might have fallen like meteors onto the planet. Proton beams had sliced them into manageable chunks. The atmosphere had burned ninety-eight percent of the chunks. The last two percent had hit the surface, most of those plunking into the oceans. A tiny percentage had struck land, doing damage, but nothing to affect the outcome of the war.

  “There, sir,” said Mune.

  Hawthorne stopped, and looked where the captain pointed. Three scarecrow-thin men walked toward them. They wore threadbare shirts and worn shoes.

  “I don’t see any others,” said Mune. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Is this level fully populated?” asked Hawthorne.

  “The block-leader reports said yes.”

  “Could those reports have been fabricated?”

  Captain Mune glanced at him.

  Hawthorne gripped his belt with both hands and watched the approaching men. The loss of the habitats had hit food production hard, as had lost landmasses. There was growing starvation throughout the Earth. That it occurred here in the lower levels of New Baghdad, the very capital—what must it be like in other cities?

  “Sir,” Mune said.

  Hawthorne saw them, another group of men. This group was ten strong. Like the first three men, the second group headed toward them.

  “I’ve read rep
orts of cannibalism,” said Mune.

  “No,” Hawthorne said, feeling ill. “It couldn’t have gotten that bad.” How could he have remained so ignorant of the situation? Were his people shielding him?

  “The riots several days ago, sir—” Mune ripped the gyroc from under his tunic. Then he jumped at Hawthorne, grabbing the Supreme Commander’s shoulder. He jerked hard, almost dislocating the bone from the socket.

  Hawthorne grunted as pain blossomed in his shoulder. He went down, and he heard the crack of a fired rifle. Then he heard the whine as a slug passed near and a ricochet as the bullet spanged off pavement.

  “Sniper,” said Mune. The gyroc clicked. A shell popped out as its thruster-packet almost immediately ignited. With a whoosh, it sped up at a fourth-story window. There was a shattering of glass, an explosion and seconds later the sound of masonry as bits showered on the paving below.

  One of the scarecrow-thin men shouted. The rest panted eerily as they came on faster. Some produced knives. Others brandished clubs. More than twenty men came at them now. They came from three different directions. Their clothes were tatters at best. The look in the men’s eyes—they were full of desperation.

  “Halt!” Hawthorne shouted, raising his hands as if he could push them back.

  Mune manually ejected the shells in his gyroc. He inserted others with red tips. “Fragmentation rounds, sir,” the captain explained.

  “I didn’t realize it had gotten this bad,” Hawthorne whispered. There was a gun in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it. “It’s murder just shooting them down.”

  “Murdering them is better than dying, sir.”

  “I order you to halt!” Hawthorne shouted.

  One man did. Two others shouted at the man. That one jumped as if poked with fire, and he sprinted after the others.

  Mune fired. A shell sped at the ten-man clump. Hawthorne witnessed the red burn of the rocket-shell’s exhaust. Then a proximity fuse must have sensed the targets. The shell exploded. Shrapnel tore into half of them, knocking down several, making too many scream and shriek.

  Those still standing turned and sprinted for safety. Some of the fallen jumped up and ran after the others. The screams of the wounded continued.