Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod (33 page)

Blackstone shook his head. Much depended on the Highborn. Would they use their long-range lasers and slowly devour everything in Mars orbit? At present, Social Unity lacked a million-kilometer weapon. Therefore, the Doom Stars standing off seemed like the wisest enemy strategy. It seemed like it at first blush, but it wasn’t. The Earth convoy fleet had brought enough prismatic crystals to absorb extended laser fire, and the plants on Mars churned out more and more defensive crystals. If the Highborn remained at long laser range, it would give them extra time to fix the moons and bring online their own million-kilometer ranged lasers.

The Highborn were impossibly clever concerning tactics and strategy. That meant the three Doom Stars might bore into close orbit, using prismatic crystals and aerosol-gel screens to shield them. Three Doom Stars massed together, all pouring laser fire at one target at a time, chewing through everything fast and annihilating ship after ship—

Sweat prickled Blackstone’s face. He hoped Supreme Commander Hawthorne knew what he was doing. Was this all simply a mad gamble? Were the Highborn invincible? It made Blackstone’s stomach churn just thinking about it.

Commodore Blackstone finally heard hisses from the other side of the hatch. A green light flashed. With a gloved hand, he touched the switch. The hatch opened and he climbed through into a pressure chamber with his security detail following. They waited, and soon the inner hatch slid open. Blackstone led the way into a larger chamber with vacc-suit racks and emergency breathing masks dangling from hooks.

He noticed Commissar Kursk. She stood with her arms crossed and as she tapped the toe of her jackbooted foot.

As Blackstone unclasped his helmet, he wondered idly what it would be like to pull off her cap and muss up her hair. Then he would grab her face and force a passionate kiss on her. It was the least he could do before he died in battle. A man deserved a woman before he risked his life for victory.

“Ah, breathable air,” Blackstone said. He pitched the helmet to one of his security detail. Then he rubbed his eyes. That felt so good. He was so tired. His ex-wife used to rub his shoulders at times like this. Would Commissar Kursk consent to rub his shoulders?

“Where have you been?” she snapped. She sounded angrier than usual. Now that he looked, he noticed she glowered.

Blackstone sighed. He needed a nap, not an angry PHC Commissar. “Will you walk me to my quarters?” he asked.

“I need to speak to you now.”

“This is hardly the place. I’m tired. I’ve been shuttling back and forth for the past four days and now I need—”

“Did you grant Toll Seven the use of Olympus Mons for his continued interrogations?” Kursk asked.

Blackstone stared at her. Why did it always have to be about Toll Seven? Irritated, he shrugged.

“The proton beam is a primary weapon,” Kursk said. “Now you’ve installed the cyborgs there and have effectively given them control of it. What if the cyborgs decide to blackmail us at the critical moment?”

Blackstone became cross. “We are all part of Social Unity. That’s why they won’t. They need us.” He wondered if that was true. Did the cyborgs need anybody? “I desperately need a nap, Commissar. I’m exhausted. So what I’m going to do now—”

“If you’re wise, you’ll head straight to Olympus Mons with a regiment of drop-troops,” she said.

Couldn’t she even let him finish a sentence? “I’m not drop trained,” he said tonelessly.

“Use fast shuttles,” she said.

Blackstone glanced at his security chief. The man stonily stared into space. Blackstone rubbed his neck. He hated these vacc-suits. He hated living in a battleship for months on end. Three weeks ago, they had won a brisk battle and now three Doom Stars headed for Mars. He didn’t have time for the commissar’s imaginary worries.

“I’m taking a nap,” he said. “Write a report if you think it’s so important.”

She took a step closer, and now worry replaced her anger. “Toll Seven has become too secretive. He’s doing something down there that—”

“Did you send operatives to Olympus Mons? I know you were talking about it.”

“…I did.”

“And?” he prompted.

Commissar Kursk licked her lips.

Blackstone found it stimulating. He wished she would do that under more pleasing circumstances. Perhaps it was time to arrange that.

“My operatives have reported that everything is well,” she said.

A dull headache throbbed into existence so Blackstone rubbed his eyes again. Kursk was unhinged concerning the cyborgs. He hated them, too. But the Battlefleet had to use what fate had given them. He attempted a smile as he said, “Don’t tell me you think Toll Seven has suborned your best operatives.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t think that,” she said, “But I do. Their reports… there was something odd about them that I can’t quite decipher.”

“Do you want to go down to Mars yourself?” he asked.

Fear put lines on her face. Blackstone wondered about her age, if she was older than he suspected.

“…I’d only go down with a full regiment of your best combat troops,” she said.

Commodore Blackstone raised his eyebrows. “The cyborgs are our best hope for victory against the Highborn. So I hardly think that now is the time to anger Toll Seven. I’m going to take a nap. Once I’m awake, talk to me again. Until then, I can’t even think straight.”

Blackstone floated past her, and the security detail followed. He heard her garments rustle as she turned, probably to watch him. He felt her eyes on him and wished it were her hands running over his skin. He grinned. It felt good to have put her in her place. Maybe he needed to do it more often.

***

Down on Mars within Olympus Mons, Toll Seven oversaw the secret installation of a mass cyborg-converter. Most of the equipment had come down the past weeks in heavy orbital shuttles under General Fromm’s command. During the massive shuttle flights between the warships and the cargo-carrying vessels from Earth, the converter equipment had been carefully ferried from several battle pods and to the
Alger Hiss
. The entirety of that crew was finally jacked into Web-Mind. Their chaotic minds had been systematically reprogrammed to the extent free bio-forms could retain such programming.

Toll Seven paced along the length of the converter. It was in a vast garage, deep inside the volcano, near the bottom. Heaters labored to raise the temperature to an even 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Conversion demanded a warm environment. Cyborgs worked like ants over the garage-sized machine, using drills, sonic screwdrivers, laser-welders and micro computing-cubes. It created a bedlam of electronic whirls, air-compressor hisses, clacks and metallic clangs.

Toll Seven had already rerouted the magnetic lifts that led to this garage. No one could enter the area without a complex code-sequence given at cyborg speeds.

The working cyborgs never looked up to watch him or each other. Each was controlled by preprogramming inserted by Web-Mind. They moved fast and with cyborg precision, and still this was taking too long.

Toll Seven used a visual-imaging handscanner, checking the calibration of delicate machinery. He needed more cyborgs, and he needed them now. Drop assaulting the volcano had damaged far too many prime units. He hadn’t even recovered all of them yet. OD12 was still missing and so was KR3. Reviewing Web-Mind, he suspected that KR3 might have committed self-destruction. It was irritating to realize, but such anomalies happened.

Toll Seven used inner nanonics to dump chemicals into his brain’s irritation centers. The bio-chemicals struggled to dampen his unhappiness. He needed clean concentration more than ever. The great enemy came: the Highborn, the genetic super-soldiers. They moved three of the hated Doom Stars toward Mars. The giant spacecraft were the ultimate in warship design and construction. Web-Mind had calculated for two, but had accepted the possibility of three.

This was the delicate moment. Web-Mind still needed Social Unity, or more precisely, Social Unity’s fleet. It wasn’t possible to suborn the rest of the Battlefleet in time. The Highborn came on too quickly and he hadn’t brought enough neck-jacks nor set up a facility yet to make new ones. It would have been so much easier if they could have reached the Earth System and landed amongst the Homo sapiens. With PHC eager for help, it would have been simplicity to set up a processing center in one of the vast cities. In several months, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of cyborgs could have emerged from that city and swarmed the Eden planet.

This was the critical juncture. He had a foothold on Mars, but he lacked a large populace to convert. He would have to visit the Olympus Mons prisoners again and weed out the culls, those too damaged to convert. Once the Highborn threat had been dealt with, however, then it would be time to assist Social Unity re-conquering the Martian underground cities. Web-Mind would choose a city and begin turning the masses into cyborgs.

Toll Seven studied the handscanner. He turned around and took several steps back. He adjusted the scanner. The skin-chopper with its many blades that removed human epidermis—ah, he saw the problem. He had misplaced a decimal in his configurations. He adjusted and reread the scanner. Then he continued down the line.

He needed cyborgs down here and he needed them in space, ready to implement the stealth-attack tactic that would win them the Battle for Mars. If only there was some manner to speed up converter construction—but there wasn’t now. Later—

His inner nanonics dumped more chemicals, keeping stress out of his system. He needed to send a message to Earth soon, to Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps. That particular Homo sapien had been invaluable with his warning. The original ploy to assassinate James Hawthorne had not only failed, but had also alerted the general to the real danger. If not for Yezhov’s timely lightguide message—

Toll Seven halted and his silver eyeballs swiveled in their plastic sockets. Reminiscing would not improve his efficiency. He must concentrate and extract every ounce of effort from himself during these critical weeks.

Against the Highborn—

Toll Seven longed to plug into Web-Mind and reconfigure the statistics one more time. He would have to use the half-cyborgs, the ones converted in his command pod. It was yet another risk in this daring stab for Solar System-wide conquest. With three Doom Stars approaching, the odds were 62.34 percent in cyborg favor.

Those odds would fall fifteen points, however, if the bio-forms of the Battlefleet discovered that key Homo sapiens had been jacked into the Web-Mind. If only he could capture Commissar Kursk or even better, Commodore Blackstone. The time might come, but so far, they had each proved too cautious by training or by instinct. They would soon make an error, however, for that was the way of free bio-forms. Once he gained control over those two, the odds for space-battle victory would increase another 3.22 percentage points.

Marten Kluge felt trapped and was depressed, as if he had never escaped out of the punishment tube in Sydney, Australian Sector. It felt as if the blue water still gushed over his head as he pumped and pumped the red handle.

He had lived as a meaningless cipher in an underground megalopolis on Earth. Now he lived again in a sprawling subterranean city, but this time on Mars. Only this time the city was a titanic slum compared to Sydney.

A little over three weeks ago, they had skimmed from Olympus Mons and had made it to New Tijuana, 343 kilometers away. That was much too near the giant volcano, too near the terrifying nest of cyborgs.

Marten tightened his back muscles so they wouldn’t quiver. He and Omi were in an underground firing-range, practicing with genuine Gauss needlers. Others of his commando troop practiced here. Secretary-General Chavez had given him permanent command of them.

Marten hefted what Major Diaz had called ‘a combat needler.’ It was bulky, but light. He suspected it would prove useless against cyborgs or against battle-armored drop-troops. Marten settled a pair of goggles over his eyes, lifted the needler and sighted the human-shaped target one hundred feet away. He fired a burst, listening to the cracks of noise and listening to all the other cracks from the other compartmentalized lanes. The hit area glowed red, showing dots on the target’s forehead.

“Let me try,” Omi said.

With his thumb, Marten flicked the safety, set down the weapon and stepped back. Omi picked it up and fired burst after burst. The glows showed in the head, the chest and in the genital area. When the needler clicked empty, Omi slammed in another clip and methodically emptied it, too. He picked up a third clip.

“That will do for now,” Marten said, putting a hand on Omi’s shoulder.

Omi whirled around, and there was something dangerous in his dark eyes. That something settled down as Omi seemed to realize who touched him and where he was.

“It’s getting to you, too, eh?” Marten asked.

Omi took a deeper breath than normal and gave a minimal shrug. “Is this why we escaped the Highborn?”

“Meaning?”

“To die on Mars?” Omi asked. “It’s only a matter of time before they unleash those cyborgs on us.”

“Right,” Marten said. It was as if Omi’s words had flipped a switch in him. Marten knew what he had to do. He’d been playing the long shot for a long time now. Until they were free of the Inner Planets, there was no sense in trying to play it safe.