A bloated, gross feeling suddenly overwhelmed him. Then his helmet’s intercom buzzed.
“I feel like throwing up,” Vip said.
“Try and relax,” said Lance.
“Yeah,” Marten said.
By the sounds, valves in the room opened and an ethylene glycol solution that made sludge seem thin glopped in. It pressed against the G-suits and the oily inner surface of the suit’s interior seemed to sink into Marten’s skin. As the tech had predicated, Marten felt as if he was being smothered. three atmospheric pressures compressed against each of their G-suits. The reason they’d been given drugs was so their innards became pressurized enough to resist the outer force.
The delicacy of the human body meant that a person could only take eight Gs before passing out from lack of oxygen to the brain. Highborn could take about twice as much, which was another of their superiorities over premen. With these suits, however, the shock troopers could survive the twenty-five G acceleration that the missile needed in order to catch up to the
Bangladesh
after the beamship passed Mercury. The suits would also stimulate their muscles throughout the trip so they wouldn’t atrophy.
“This is gonna be a load of fun,” said Lance.
With his chin pressing the various switches in his suit, Marten checked the VR files. Battle plans, entertainment dramas, porn, it was all here. He switched to the missile’s cone camera, watching them being slid out of the hanger and toward the gargantuan boost ship.
Highborn glory: Succeed or die.
The quiet, desperate rage that he’d been struggling to contain blossomed into something darker and more urgent. Not only were they ripping him away from all that he’d ever worked for, but… They were cheap missile fodder, a mere biological component webbed into a warhead—
becoming
the warhead. They were a bio-weapon of a different sort. They were dogs to kick around and abuse, and geld if they became too intractable. No. This was worse than madness. It was inhuman debasement, a shredding of all dignity. Escape was no longer good enough. If he made to the Outer Planets he vowed to warn them of the hell that was coming and do everything he could to help stop it.
Both Highborn Grand Admiral Cassius and Social Unity’s Supreme Commander, General James Hawthorne, considered themselves keen students of military history. Each searched the past for clues, looking for what to avoid or what to do.
Throughout his life, the Grand Admiral had only known victory. Beginning as a young clone-cadet in the Moscow War Academy, to the stunning and brilliant Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit in 2339, he’d shown dash, iron will and a fanatical, almost otherworldly genius. In the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit, he had crushed the combined Fleets of the Mars Rebels and the Jupiter Confederation’s Expeditionary Force sent to help the Martians. Genius had marked even his planning and execution of the Highborn Rebellion in 2349.
Most Highborn likened him to the ancient world-conqueror, Alexander the Great, while the Social Unitarians thought he more resembled the worst of civilization’s scourges, Genghis Khan.
The Grand Admiral planned to outdo both ancient warlords. After conquering the four inner planets and crushing Social Unity, he dreamt of continuing with the Jupiter System. He would crush its Galilean moon-kingdoms of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, together with the rest of the gas giant’s snowballs awash in wealth and high technology. The strange space-habitat states orbiting Jupiter would also be plucked like ripe fruit. Then he would lunge at the Saturn System, at Uranus. He dreamed of the subjection of the entire Solar System, all the way to the distant science outposts on Charon. The crux of his reasoning settled upon the fact that he was a Highborn, a true lord of Order and genetically superior to the masses of Homo sapiens spread helter-skelter throughout the system. After all, the two examples from the past had been mere premen. Still, both premen had overcome fantastic odds and preformed outstanding feats of daring and strategic brilliance. In some senses, they could be emulated. But instead of their earth-bound glories, future ages would marvel at his conquests, at his stunning judgments and genius. Or so he mused in his quieter moments of reflection.
As he lay in his study aboard the Doom Star
Julius Caesar
, which orbited the Earth’s Moon, he pondered a different problem: namely, the X-Ship
Bangladesh
. He pondered it as he laid his nine-foot frame on the couch. He had tossed his boots aside. His feet crossed at the ankles and perched on the couch’s armrest. He kept twitching his VR-gloved hand, images flashing across the lens of his VR-goggles.
The people and point in history he settled upon were the Japanese of the early to middle Twentieth Century. They had been militarists, men who understood about honor and the will to fight. What most intrigued the Grand Admiral were the last days of 1941 and the next several months of 1942. It began with a naval battle called Pearl Harbor. He twitched his fingers, studying the plan, the risks and the brilliant execution of this Nipponese Admiral Yamamoto. After the incredible victory in Hawaii, the Japanese Fleets had scored one stunning win after another from the Philippines to the Indian Ocean. Finally, with their island empire won in a few swift months, the Japanese gathered their naval vessels into a vast armada to finish off the Americans at Midway.
The Grand Admiral read fast and he frowned at what he read. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had planned in minute detail and with painstaking thoroughness. They had trained to a pitch of excellence of nearly Highborn quality. But the Midway Operation, it had been a sloppy affair born of conceit. Ah, the old historian had a phrase for it: victory disease. The Japanese of World War Two had won so handily and so quickly that they soon believed that their superiority was inborn, innate and would always be that way.
Much like how many of his men were now behaving and thinking.
Victory disease
…
Becoming sloppy
…
The Grand Admiral read about the staggering Japanese defeat off the Midway Islands. Prime carriers destroyed one, two, three. It was most amazing. The mighty Admiral Yamamoto forced to flee from the very foes he had come to annihilate.
Grand Admiral Cassius sat up and tore off his VR-goggles.
The premen weren’t stupid. They were inferior, yes, but still with the ability to bite. Hadn’t he almost lost the
Genghis Khan
to them on May 10?
This X-ship, the
Bangladesh
, it could very well be dangerous. And it approached the one location the Highborn could not afford destroyed.
The Grand Admiral pulled on his boots and strode out the door.
The Grand Admiral’s laser-beamed orders took immediate effect, even as the massive booster ships built up speed orbiting Mercury. Each booster ship appeared to be little more than an asteroid with a flock of missiles perched on its forward surface. X-ray Pulse Bombs, EMP Blasters, ECM drones and the SA Missiles were all ready to launch. Meanwhile, massive engines fed on hydrogen and left a white exhaust behind the booster ship. It looked like a comet’s tail. Faster and faster went the booster ships, automated vessels, increasing velocity in as short a time as possible.
The Grand Admiral’s orders brought a burst of activity to the Sun Works Factory. The horde of repair pods zoomed from the Doom Star
Genghis Khan
. The giant warship’s engines were warmed. Soon the mighty spacecraft pulled out of the cradle that had been so carefully built around it. The Grand Admiral had ordered the
Genghis Khan
behind Mercury, in relation to the approaching
Bangladesh
. There it would stay until they discovered what the X in the X-ship actually meant.
The majority of the repair pods flew into storage and shut down, while the millions of tons of warheads, laser juice and other combustibles and military explosives went into their special emergency compartments on the Sun Works. The Grand Admiral didn’t want the SU military catching the Sun Works Factory the way the American pilots at the Battle of Midway had caught the four Japanese Carriers
Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu
and
Soryu
. He didn’t know how the
Bangladesh
could possibly do any damage to the Sun Works, but—why were they flying by at 30 million kilometers, why not much farther out or much nearer in? There was a reason for the 30 million-kilometer range, and he didn’t know what it was. He felt certain about what the SU could and could not do—but he would not allow himself to become arrogant.
Pride went before the fall
. It was an ancient proverb, well proven by history. And in yet another area, he would show the Highborn superior to the premen. He would actually learn from history.
As the Sun Works Factory went into emergency war-drill, the five booster ships reached boost velocity.
The first asteroid-ship changed the direction of its thrust and shot from Mercury’s orbit. The white hydrogen tail billowed behind it. It sped toward the first cone of probability. Then the first missiles launched off the boost ship. The Law of Motion was immutable. For every action, there is a reaction. So the launching of these missiles slowed the forward motion of the boost ship by the amount of their mass, which was the reason why these boost ships had been built so massively. Then the next set of missiles lifted off the asteroid, the hunk of rock turned into a ship.
As those missiles launched, the second boost ship altered orbit. It sped toward a different cone of probability.
***
“Do you feel that?” Vip asked, sounding worried.
“We’re launching,” Marten said. His VR-goggles were set on the missile’s viewer.
Then his suit’s gages wobbled. It felt as if he was being flattened. He found it hard to breathe.
“This is horrible,” Lance said in a choking voice.
“The tachyon drive has kicked in,” Marten said. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing. Would his internal organs rupture?
“Are we accelerating at twenty-five Gs?”
Marten didn’t know who said that. “Yeah,” he said. He wondered if he could ever get used to this feeling.
“How long is this trip gonna last?” Vip asked, with a tremor in his voice.
“Watch a video,” Marten suggested.
“I don’t know how.”
Marten had to concentrate before he explained it one more time. He wondered if he was going to die like this, squeezed in a suit and buried in goop, or would they reach the
Bangladesh
and start the automated drain procedure?
Maybe it was time for him to watch a video. Anything to get his mind off this grinding pressure and off Nadia and the ultra-stealth pod waiting in the Sun Works Factory for somebody to use.
Earth—Joho Mountains, China Sector
General James Hawthorne paced in his office as he spoke with Commodore Tivoli, who ran Military Intelligence.
Tivoli was a small woman with compact shoulders and hard crinkles in the corners of her hazel eyes. She played a dangerous and constant game with PHC. In the scheme of Social Unity, three prime movers comprised the State: the Military, the Party and Political Harmony Corps, the State’s secret police.
Ever since 10 May 2350—six long months ago—the game had turned nastier than usual. The asteroid impacts had hurled millions of tons of particleized debris into the air. The previous pollution together with the new additives had created a heavy, greasy cloud of reflective dust. Temperatures dropped rapidly, creating hurricane-strength winds that whipped across the planet in ever-increasing power. That, combined with the billion deaths, had created an intolerable strain on Earth’s social fabric. News of the disaster had leaked over the planet.
Six months ago Greater Hong Kong had vanished, and Beijing, Manila, Taipei and Vladivostok. The million-ton meteors dropped on them had left vast smoking craters.
The numbed inhabitants of Earth wondered how it could have happened. Their holosets had daily informed them that the Supremacists were on the run, soon to be defeated. Yes, Antarctica had fallen because of a treacherous sneak attack by the specially bioengineered soldiers. The neighboring islands of Tasmania and New Zealand had also been snatched up by the self-styled
Highborn
. Perhaps the loss of Australian Sector soon thereafter shook a few alarmists, but a stint in the slime pits had cured those.
But on May 10 enemy Doom Stars had actually entered the stratosphere. That could only mean the Social Unity Space Fleets had been defeated. No person on Earth, no matter how deep in the mantle he lived, was safe from more million-ton meteors raining down from the heavens.
At that realization, forty billion people knew gut-wrenching fear. Most lived in the vast underground cities, human hives that often sank more than fifty-five levels down. Social Unity gave them harmony, guidance and solace, and had turned them into a sheepish, submissive horde. They believed in humanity’s manifest destiny, and worked for the good of the whole. Now the truth dawned. They’d been given propaganda swill.
One billion people dead in an instant, slain by asteroids maneuvered into Earth orbit and then rocketed down. It meant they were all defenseless.
On the holosets six months ago, the Social Unity familiars urged caution, that the latest disaster had been studied and was now well in hand. Be assured that it couldn’t happen again. The mere idea of a repeat attack was ridiculous and anyone who suggested otherwise should be reported to the nearest hall leader. In memory of those so tragically lost on May 10, a planet-wide hum-a-long would commence in one hour. Anyone not participating would be given ten demerits to his profile.