Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod (3 page)

If he survived this, he vowed to plan each move with care. Maybe he had spent too many dreadful weeks lost in space. Maybe that had played havoc with his senses and dulled his mind. He would now sharpen his mind.

There, he finally had it. Marten licked his lips, clipped his tools back onto his belt and pried the plate loose. He used a magnetic bolt to keep the plate fixed against another part of the hull.

Now came the tricky part. He hooked his suit to the sensor net so he could use the ship’s computer. In five minutes, he’d established a link. If there were some Highborn code—

No, no code was needed. That was a mistake on the part of the Highborn, a lack in their security details. They had probably never envisioned someone else gaining control of their shuttle, with the killer locked outside.

Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Marten used voice activation. He wasn’t used to this, and he had little time left, but he managed to override the airlock controls.

The computer told him the outer hatch was open. Marten swallowed hard and clanked along the shuttle’s hull, hurrying now. Time was running out.

He made it to the hatch with five minutes of air left. He closed the outer hatch, pressurized the chamber and opened the inner one. He only had two minutes left as he cracked the seal and twisted off his helmet inside the shuttle. He stood staring at the wall. That had been far too close.

Taking a deep breath, Marten began to open the vacc-suit. He needed to go outside later and reattach the sensor plate. But he couldn’t go now. He was too paranoid to go now. He had to first figure out why the outer hatch hadn’t opened properly. Maybe Lycon done something to it as he’d fought to remain aboard.

There was a lot to do to make this shuttle his and to make sure it was shipshape for a longer voyage to Mars. Marten floated to the oversized pilot’s chair and he reconfigured the flight path.

“Think,” he whispered to himself.

Once he changed heading… would that bring him to the notice of any Doom Stars or to SU warships? A spaceship was difficult to spot. It was such a tiny mote compared to the vastness of space. A shuttle was even harder to see than a warship. Once he fired up the engines, however, that all changed. In the voids, an engine’s heat signature stood out like a beacon. The trick was to be out of range of any warship’s weaponry. A Doom Star had the longest range and any warship could launch a missile.

“You have to tiptoe, Marten,” he said.

For the next hour, Marten studied his radar and teleoptic scopes and all known positions of all warships. The time came when he had to choose. He was nervous. He wondered what he had forgotten. This was the moment. Once he engaged the engines and used up precious fuel, he wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. What he decided now would affect what happened to him months from now.

He first floated to Omi and rechecked everything. Then he returned to the pilot’s chair, reconfigured his course yet again. His stomach was queasy. This was crazy. He was free and that meant he had to be brave.

Finally, he reached out and engaged the thrusters. The one-G of acceleration returned. It brought back gravity, or pseudo-gravity. Marten laughed. He couldn’t believe it, but he laughed with relief. He had made his decision, his biggest yet as a free man.

Now his destination was Mars.

General James Hawthorne paced with his thin hands clasped behind his back. He was in a bullet train, a magnetic railcar, and speeding in excess of five hundred kilometers per hour. He was crossing through Peru Sector, he believed, the northeastern corner of it. It was dark outside his window, as the train barreled through tunnels most of the way. Because the Highborn owned the air and owned space, this was the safest and presently the fastest transportation on Earth.

He had left the battle zone some time ago. His ribs were still sore where Captain Mune had thrown him onto the ground.

Hawthorne paced before a desk. On the desk was the gun Ulrich had used to murder so many good people. It was made of nickel-plated steel and shone like a polished mirror. Hawthorne bent close and saw himself in the shiny barrel. He kept the gun as a reminder of the treachery that lurked around him.

He believed himself cagier these days. He’d learned from his political mistakes, and he’d vowed never to be taken unaware again. There had been several attempts on his life. He now knew that more assassins would likely come for him.

It was the message that lay on the table beside the slivery pistol that made him paranoid. Madam Director Blanche-Aster had requested an emergency session with him. She was in Central American Sector, waiting for him. That was strange. She should be safely in New Baghdad, not in Central America. Had she engineered a coup attempt in his absence?

Officially, Madam Director Blanche-Aster ran Social Unity. In reality, she was his figurehead. It suited them both. He needed the pretense of her rule to pacify Political Harmony Corps and thirty-eight billion citizens. She needed his skill and military muscle to survive the other scheming directors and to survive Chief Yezhov of PHC.

Why had she come to Central America?

Hawthorne checked his chronometer. Soon, he would find out.

***

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, there was a heavy rap at the door of General Hawthorne’s railcar.

“Come in,” Hawthorne said. He sat at his desk, reading Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. He felt as if the Highborn were like Caesar’s Roman Legions and the SU Military like the many Gallic warbands that had suffered endless butchery. Hawthorne kept wondering how the Gauls could have defeated Caesar’s crack legionaries. If he could discover the answer, it might help him against the Highborn.

Captain Mune entered, and said, “Madam Director Blanche-Aster is ready to see you, sir.”

“Did she bring her security clone?”

“I took the precaution of having the clone wait in the detention car, sir.”

“Did you disarm the clone?”

“No, sir.”

Hawthorne nodded, glad for Mune’s discretion. It was wise to hide the steel fist of his rule. Lord Director Enkov had never understood that. It made people more comfortable to pretend they had power, even when they knew better. He wondered why that was, and then dismissed it from his thoughts.

“I’ll go to her,” Hawthorne said, rising.

Captain Mune allowed himself a small smile. “I took the liberty of anticipating you, sir. If you’ll follow me…”

***

General Hawthorne entered a plush railcar with red carpeting, hanging ferns, famous portraits and fans gentling wafting about the odor of roses. Those odors couldn’t hide the medicinal smells emanating from Blanche-Aster’s special chair.

The Madam Director was one hundred and sixty-two years old. Longevity treatments had controlled the encroachments of age. Her chair kept her breathing. It was a bulky, gleaming-white unit with magnetic repulsors. It floated an inch off the carpet. Tubes snaked from it into her. Fluids surged through the tubes.

Hawthorne nodded a greeting, took a seat across a white cube from her and crossed his legs, idly smoothing a crease in his trousers.

Her vibrantly alive eyes tightened. Tubes rustled as the Madam Director leaned forward. “You’re no doubt curious as to why I’ve traveled this far for a simple conversion,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“You have my attention, madam.”

She gasped at the effort of leaning forward and sank back against her chair. Her withered fingers twitched over armrest buttons and the floating chair backed away from the cube and turned toward a window. Sunlamps burned brightly in the tunnel outside, showing the granite walls.

Hawthorne waited. The gurgles from her chair were the only sounds in the room. Then a slight whine occurred as she faced him.

“I understand you will think my worry part of a subtle plot to remove you from office,” she began. “It is exactly the opposite. I have learned to fear Chief Yezhov.” Her unnaturally smooth features twisted with distaste. “I fear your Captain Mune almost as much. He is inhuman, the wrong direction for humanity to have taken.”

“You may be right about that. However, Captain Mune’s
inhumanity
has saved my life more than once.” Hawthorne refrained from rubbing his sore ribs.

The Madam Director cackled like a holovid capitalist. Maybe she knew it was a mad sound. She stopped almost the moment she made it. Then her chair floated nearer to her end of the white cube.

“Do you realize that our own arrogance has created this intolerable situation?” she asked.

Hawthorne waited. He had learned that holding his tongue combined with unruffled patience awarded him many advantages. It often made others nervous, and it usually caused them to speak their mind without his having to reveal his position. There was an ancient proverb concerning the matter.
Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent
.

The Madam Director hissed through her teeth. “Our eugenicists created the Highborn in their labs. They spliced genes and tampered with DNA. We wanted the perfect soldiers in order to bring harmony to the Solar System. The capitalists in the Outer Planets recklessly horded the limited resources of our system. Billions live harshly on Earth. With those resources equitably shared under Social Unity, we could have achieved an era of peace and plenty.”

“Ambition often leads to disaster,” Hawthorne said, thinking about the ancient Athenian Empire and its Sicilian Expedition in 415 B.C.

“If we had never created the Highborn,” she said, “we could have averted this war.”

“The past is always more clearly seen than the future.”

The Madam Director scowled. “Aphorisms won’t avert the coming disaster.”

Hawthorne kept his face bland, but she had his interest. She was seldom this agitated.

“We should have understood that altered humans would view reality through altered eyes,” she said. “How could these supermen join us in social harmony? Man is a communal being. In many ways, massed men are like a herd of sheep. It isn’t a complete analogy, but I think you can understand my meaning.”

Hawthorne waited stoically. This lengthy preamble was undoubtedly leading to something momentous. She likely believed he would find her proposition repugnant, so she buttressed it with this speech.

“These words are not heretical to Social Unity theory,” she said. “They are plain facts, if stated in an uncomplimentary fashion. I hope I may speak frankly with you?”

“Our task is to face uncomplimentary facts head-on in the interest of serving the people,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “That is well-spoken. Chief Yezhov hints that you possess anti-socialist tendencies. Your statement just now belies Yezhov’s words. I have come to understand the steel of your spine. You eye intolerable facts with unwavering resolve. Perhaps a taint or two touches you and infests your thinking. But those are wounds gained in service to Social Unity.”

Hawthorne allowed himself a small twist of his lips.

“General, you should not belittle the importance that the other directors place on Social Unity theory. There are whispers that you attempt to sully the purity of the movement. Your monomaniacal insistence that all cybertanks and bionic soldiers remain under your command has led to strange rumors.”

Was this the thrust of her argument? Was she actually going to try to get him to relinquish command of the pillars of his power? If that was true, it meant she had become his enemy. Hawthorne felt tired then. He didn’t want to order her death. But he couldn’t allow her free rein if she worked this openly against him. Mentally, he began to cast about for her replacement.

“I’m not impugning the bionic soldiers,” she said. “Because of the Highborn, we need them. They are a lesser evil. For all their machinery, the bionic soldiers are still Homo sapiens. The Highborn are not Homo sapiens. They are like…”

“Wolves,” Hawthorne suggested.

Blanche-Aster gave him a blank look.

“You spoke about sheep before,” he said, “so I assumed you knew about wolves.”

“In my younger days, I worked in the farming habitat of
Taping Five
,” she said.

“It bred sheep?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Wolves were predatory animals like dogs that lived in the wild in the ancient times.”

“Ah,” she said. “I understand the allusion now. Yes, the Highborn are like the pit-fighting dogs that the slum dwellers breed.”

“Sheep and wolves can’t mingle without the wolves devouring the sheep,” Hawthorne said.

“As the Highborn try to devour us,” she said. “That is my point. We are engaged in a death struggle. Either we must exterminate the Highborn or they will replace humanity. Should they win, they won’t slaughter Homo sapiens immediately. But given several hundred years….” She paused as the color of the fluids in her tubes changed from blue to a reddish tinge. Then a clot of deeper red tumbled and wavered like jelly as it surged through the tube and disappeared into the chair.

“I’m not sure I completely agree with you,” Hawthorne said, keeping his face impassive. Her chair—he suppressed a shudder. “History shows that Master Races desire slaves or inferiors. I believe that Homo sapiens shall become a permanent slave race to the Highborn.”