Rica Sioux closed her eyes. The
Bangladesh
was doomed. The monster in the command capsule was doomed. Sadly, so were the last of her officers. She’d seen the dead shock troopers laying in their battlesuits. Too bad, they hadn’t been able to kill all the enemy space marines. She’d asked to speak with the cunning leader who had foiled them, the one who had called her and had led the smaller team. None of the enemy had looked at her then. That’s when her beatings had really started. So she’d asked only once more, and Kang had knocked her teeth out one by one, telling her to mind her own business.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” asked the Tracking Officer.
Rica Sioux opened her eyes and closed them again. The Tracking Officer had only been a blur. Anyway, it hurt her head too much trying to see. She wouldn’t tell why it didn’t matter because she was afraid the officers had all cracked. They knew she planned something and worked no doubt for that monster in her command capsule. The Highborn had trained him well. That monster, Kang, he was much more clever than he looked. He understood about breaking people. It was an art with him. Her officers should have let her blow the ship.
“Admiral!”
“Leave me alone,” whispered Rica Sioux.
“She’s dying,” said someone.
“Better tell Kang.”
Rica Sioux smiled. There! Now she knew they had been cracked.
“Admiral!”
“Good-bye,” said Rica Sioux. Her old heart defeated the drugs trying to keep it going. The ancient organ quit and Admiral Sioux stopped breathing.
Marten woke up outside the beamship, secured to the underside of a blasted particle shield. He’d slept nineteen hours. It didn’t repair his extreme exhaustion, but he’d woken with an idea. That’s how it usually went with him. He had a problem. He wrestled with it and then he went to sleep. When he woke up or during a shower, the answer just popped into his head.
He could use a shower now. His jumpsuit was grimy and he itched all over. As he sipped water from his tube and relieved himself—a battlesuit’s waste-disposal system reverted a shock trooper back into a baby with diapers. He went in his suit and the battlesuit flushed the body wastes for him. A handy feature, Marten supposed, but he always felt strange using it. In any case, he slurped concentrates and began the journey back into the beamship.
Once aboard he used a comlink to check various damage control crawlers that nineteen hours ago had been under his command. Six of them had been shut down. He checked his own motion detectors that he’d been setting up the entire time and saw that six battlesuits hunted the engine room for him.
They had probably grown tired of searching for the unfindable, the reason only six did it and not the usual thirty. Anyway, he finally had the answer to his problem. The question was could he implement the answer before the HBs arrived? Leaning his half-ton battlesuit against a wall and switching off, he began the three-minute procedure that took him out of it.
He felt naked stepping out the suit in his bare feet. The two Gs of braking pulled hard at his muscles, but it felt wonderful to scratch his chest and legs and a spot on his back. Then he put on a special cup around his genitals. Two Gs could do the nastiest things. Finally, putting on combat boots, he prowled the corridors until he came upon one of the shutdown damage control crawlers.
He manually opened a hatch, slipped into the cushioned seat and checked the HUD controls. Soon he revved the crawler into life and peeled out, traveling down the long, empty corridors. He sped toward a specially selected missile locker. It took him an hour to crawl past various battle-damage and take two detours from prowling shock troopers. Finally, he entered a huge storage area devoid of light. With the crawler’s beam, he viewed huge missiles that still hung from their racks. Using the vehicle’s mechanical arms, he hauled two of the missiles from their racks and to a nearby firing tube. Unfortunately, the firing tube was blasted wreckage.
He checked the time and decided to leave on the double. Too long in one place was asking for bad luck. As he drove, he pulled a detonator out of his pocket and pressed several buttons. The
Bangladesh
shuddered so he knew that several of his pre-positioned bombs had gone off. Just as importantly, the two-Gs of braking quit. The auto engaging of the crawler’s magnetic locks told him that.
He grinned. That should keep the others busy, fixing the engines. The damage shouldn’t be too great. Enough to temporarily stop the engines but not enough so they would throw up their hands and hunt him in vengeance. Still, this would make them mad and search harder. So he headed for his battlesuit. It was time to go outside and make them rusty again.
***
From outside the
Bangladesh
he worked to clear his chosen firing tube. He’d found several Zero-G Worksuits and torn them apart, taking a welder arm and work-laser. As he clung like a fly to the vast beamship, he used both tools on the tube, cutting a bigger opening. The glare of the welder and the laser had caused his visor to polarize.
“Marten!” suddenly blared in his headphones. It was Kang.
Marten shut off the work-laser, hooking it to his battlesuit. Magnetic clamps kept him attached to the mighty
Bangladesh
. Around him shone millions of stars. The particle shield behind him kept the blazing Sun from cooking him.
“I know you can hear me, Marten. And I know that you’re too scared to answer. But here’s my deal. We’ll stop hunting for you if you promise not to blow any more bombs. The men agreed to let the HBs do their own dirty work. You were a shock trooper once and you did help some of us enter the beamship. Vip says you want Omi. So we’re leaving him in the Deck 15 Recreation Room. I know you know the ship’s layout like the back of your hand. You can pick Omi up if you want. We won’t stop you. And I’ll give you this, Marten. You’re a bastard. Kang, out.”
Marten managed a chuckle. A neat little trap old Kang had set. Could he trust him? He would continue to work on a war footing. Then he reconsidered. This might mean that the HBs were almost here.
Marten swore, turned up his air-conditioner unit, detached the work-laser from his suit and with its beam began to cut through more armor plating.
Lycon stood in the Game Room, as it had come to be called. Sage-dotted dunes rolled under a holo-simulated, sun-bright sky. A simulated breeze blew past tall cacti while somewhere an eagle screeched.
Lycon wore his blue dress uniform with crisscrossing white straps, with a blaster on his hip and his “Magnetic Star” First Class on his chest. A wall panel slid up and the powerful, two-foot taller Praetor strode in. He too wore his uniform, brown with green strips on the sleeves. His pink eyes glittered and a frown gave him a dreadful presence. Lycon noticed that he carried a folder in his big hands.
“Greetings, Praetor.”
“Training Master.”
“I request an intersystem shuttle so I may head to the
Bangladesh
.”
“You have requested such a spacecraft earlier and I denied it. What has now caused you to think that I’ll change my mind?”
“Your generosity, Praetor.”
If anything, the Praetor seemed to become more dangerous. The inhuman angles to his face tightened and the bristles atop his head seemed to stand that much stiffer. “I am generous to those who help me, Training Master. Once I offered you a position. You refused. Thus I too must refuse this request.”
“As you know I am not fond of the Neutraloids. Ideas, not chemicals, are the method to controlling premen.”
“I am aware of your position.” The Praetor held up his folder. “This will considerably weaken it.”
Frowning, Lycon took the proffered folder and paged through it. Space photos, mostly, little specks against the backdrop of the black void. “I don’t understand.”
“Flip to the back and read the charts.”
Lycon did. Missiles, it said. Then he noticed that sweat stung his eyes. He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat. Suddenly he felt weary. Handing back the folder, he asked, “What about the
Gustavus Adolphus
, can’t it intercept them?”
“If you would have read a little farther you would have seen that several attempts have been made. The
Gustavus Adolphus
is now headed here. The second Doom Star headed back to Venus quite a bit earlier.”
Lycon knew that the Venus Doom Star headed back in order to intercept SU battleships that had sped for Venus as soon as the Doom Star had left the system. Fleet maneuvering was such an intricate game. He shook his head. Infantry tactics is what he knew.
Lycon asked, “Did the
Gustavus Adolphus
try to intercept with battle lasers?”
The Praetor nodded. “Enemy jamming is good and of course they jink enough to cause misses.”
“What about ant-missiles torps?”
“Did you read the distance spreads?”
Lycon shook his head.
“The
Gustavus Adolphus
is still too far out, much too far away to be able to effect the battle. Perhaps battle is the wrong word. Annihilation is more appropriate. The
Bangladesh
is doomed.”
Lycon suddenly hated how the Praetor loomed over him. He hated the arrogance in the pink eyes that blazed with the accusation that he was only beta, an original, an inferior Highborn who couldn’t think through elementary facts.
“There will be no more shock troops,” the Praetor said. “Long-range capture assaults are meaningless when the enemy simply destroys the prize ships.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Lycon, desperately trying to control his temper. “Still, I must try and achieve in the manner I think best.”
“Your sponsor, the Grand Admiral, has lost face.”
“But he hasn’t lost rank.”
“No,” said the Praetor, “not yet.”
For a moment, they listened to the holo-simulated eagle screech. Lycon marshaled his thoughts, mastered his anger and spoke in an even tone.
“I say this without rancor, Praetor, but you too have lost face.”
The nine-foot tall Highborn grew very still. Lycon felt the hostility, the emanating rage.
“Is this how you would move me to give you a shuttle?” the Praetor asked softly.
“I appeal rather to your logic.”
“I see no such appeal.”
Lycon detached a small capsule from his belt. He handed it to the Praetor, who merely eyed him with a strange, pink-eyed fervor.
“There is a button on this capsule. When you press it four Neutraloids will be released into the Game Room.”
The Praetor shrugged.
“The names of the Neutraloids might interest you.”
“What possible interest could such names contain for me?”
“Dalt and Methlen are two of them. Ervil and former Chief Monitor Hansen are the others.”
A weird ecstasy twisted the Praetor’s features. In a husky voice he asked, “Is this true?”
“It is true.”
The Praetor reached for the capsule and hesitated. “Once their capture is known it will strengthen my position.”
“Yes, Praetor, this I realize.”
“Changing them into Neutraloids will also prove that traitorous premen can through my procedure be rehabilitated.”
“Agreed.”
“It would seem I owe you a favor.”
“My only desire is to serve.”
The Praetor nodded. “I order you to the
Bangladesh
, Training Master. Take your training marshals and do what you can for your doomed shock troops.”
“As you wish, Praetor.” Lycon clicked his heels and dropped the capsule into the Superior’s huge hand.
The Praetor closed his fingers around it, an awful smile on his pearl-white face. “I’ll wait until you’ve cleared the room.”
“Thank you, Praetor.” Lycon strode quickly, and once over the first set of dunes he began to jog. After the third set of dunes, he passed two cages. One held three Neutraloids, savage beings, their muscles strangely quivering and stark and tattooed a deep blue color. They snarled at the fourth Neutraloid, one alone in its own cage. He was thinner, with white bushy eyebrows and a long face. His muscles also quivered and hate blazed from his eyes. He held onto the bars of his cage, watching Lycon as he passed, never taking his eyes from him.
Lycon felt uncomfortable being the object of such hatred. How the Praetor hoped to use these creatures was beyond him. They were brutes, nothing more, berserk killers, unusable in any but the most artificial circumstances.
“Hansen!” snarled one of the Neutraloids, the shortest of the caged three, he with extra-broad shoulders. “We’re gonna skin you alive, Hansen!”
“Eat you!” shouted another, straining, reaching between two bars as if he could clutch the one he hated.
“Kill you, you bastard!” howled the third, rattling his cage as hard as he could.
Hansen shuddered, but he didn’t take his eyes off Lycon.
Then, thankfully, Lycon topped the last set of dunes and hurried for the exit.
Marten waited until the end to get Omi. He didn’t trust Kang. But he was certain the others had spoken honestly. He probably would never have been able to build his jury-rigged craft if they had kept after him.