Marten unbuckled and leaped for the hatch. He sailed too fast and bumped his head. Muttering, practicing greater control, he floated through the hatch and pushed toward the medical chamber. A light was blinking on the life-support monitor.
Marten felt queasy. He wasn’t a doctor. In the clear cylinder, Omi twitched and his features had become blue.
“Don’t die,” Marten whispered. He checked the monitor. It was the air-mixture. There was far too much carbon dioxide in the cylinder. He realized that he’d adjusted for the ship, but the controls on Omi’s system were still recycling the badly-mixed air.
Marten used the emergency release handle. The hatch hissed. Marten swung the hatch open.
His friend stopped twitching and the blueness faded from his skin. After a minute, Marten slid Omi back into the cylinder. He stood and watched for a half-hour.
Then he returned to the oversized pilot’s chair. He had to decide where to go. Before he could, he needed to know more about Mars. He studied the computer files until he found and read HB intelligence reports on the Red Planet. The information surprised him.
Mars had rebelled against its Social Unity garrisons. A single Doom Star had orbited Mars as the Highborn exterminated SU military personnel on the habitats and on the two moons. According to what Marten read, many SU personnel had escaped onto the surface. In other words, part of Mars belonged to Social Unity and the rest was in Rebel hands. The Doom Star had then departed the Mars System. As their last act, they’d installed the Rebels in the surviving orbital military installations.
Marten tapped at the console. The Highborn had left the Rebels, the Mars Planetary Union as they called themselves, in control of near orbital space. The Martians were separate from the Highborn and separate from Social Unity. Might the Mars Planetary Union welcome an ex-military man? Might they greet with open arms an independent captain owning a shuttle?
Marten rechecked the computer. An hour later, he hooked a line to the latch outside the airlock. Marten wore a vacc-suit, with a toolkit on his belt. He floated as stars shined all around him. Behind him, the Sun blazed. Marten magnetized his boots and clanked along the shuttle’s hull. Soon, he reached the friend-or-foe device. He knelt and extracted a wrench from his kit. For the next twenty minutes, he loosened bolts. It brought back fond memories of working with Nadia on the repair pod.
Finally, he detached the unit. He pulled so it floated upward. Then he crouched under it and heaved with all his strength. The friend-or-foe device sailed away into the void.
Let the Highborn monitor that on their computers.
Grinning within his vacc-suit, Marten began clanking back to the airlock. He coiled the safety line as he did so. Once at the airlock, he pressed the switch. But nothing happened. The outer hatch remained shut.
Marten frowned, and tried again. Again, nothing happened. He blinked in growing concerning. Then it hit him. He’d never operated many Highborn-built spaceships. Was this a different design from the ships he’d used while growing up around the Mercury Factory? Maybe it was a Highborn security device, an airlock that couldn’t be opened from the outside.
Marten banged on the hatch. After several blows, he realized that would do nothing at all. Omi was in the medical unit. He was stuck out here in space, with a limited air supply. He’d better think of something else fast.
“General Hawthorne, sir, this is highly irregular. I must insist you return to headquarters. I can’t possibly guarantee your safety.”
General James Hawthorne was a tall man with gray along his temples. He wore camouflaged body-armor and held his helmet in the crook of his arm. He was the de-facto dictator of Social Unity, a military genius and one of the key reasons the Highborn conquest of Earth had slowed to a crawl.
The speaker was Colonel Diego of the Tenth Battalion of the Sixth Division, Third Army, in South America. It was the hot spot of the war, at the southwestern edge of the mighty Amazon River Basin. The Highborn had just captured La Paz of Bolivia Sector as they continued their push north through the heart of the continent.
General Hawthorne was here because he was tired of watching video-feeds. He wanted to see the real thing, to gain the pulse of his troops and see how the new tactics worked. Thus, he had risked leaving New Baghdad to come here to the jungle warzone.
“An orbital strike occurred yesterday about this time, sir,” Colonel Diego said. He was a slim, stern-featured man, with a slender mustache. He glanced uneasily at Captain Mune and the rest of Hawthorne’s security team.
Everyone stood under the canopy of giant rubber trees. Monkeys screamed in the upper branches. Soldiers waited by heavy artillery tubes. General Hawthorne had just arrived in four tracked infantry carriers packed with his bionic bodyguards.
All the bionic men were like Captain Mune. Specialists had torn these bionic men down and rebuilt them with synthetic muscles, titanium-reinforced bones and sheath-protected nerves. Like Hawthorne, Captain Mune and the others wore camouflage gear. Mune had heavy features that were a little too wide and which hinted at plasti-flesh. He wore a peaked cap, and a barely audible whine emanated from him when he moved. Special enhancement glands had been grafted into him. If the need arose, they would squirt drugs into his bloodstream and dull any pain he might receive or stimulate him to even greater strength and speed. He wore a holstered gyroc pistol. Captain Mune was Hawthorne’s personal bodyguard and had saved his life more than once.
“Carry on, Colonel,” Hawthorne said.
“But, sir, the Highborn battleoids—”
“Are one of the reasons I’m here,” Hawthorne said.
Colonel Diego blinked with incomprehension.
“The Field Marshal has the same concerns you do,” Hawthorne said. “As I told him, I’ll take care of myself.”
“But General—”
“Those are my orders,” Hawthorne said quietly.
Colonel Diego hesitated a moment longer and then turned back to his communications team. They had set up a data-net under a camouflaged tent.
“Our presence has made him nervous,” Hawthorne shortly whispered to Captain Mune.
“You’re making me nervous, sir,” Captain Mune said.
“Nonsense,” Hawthorne said. He put on the helmet and lowered the visor. Then he strode purposefully into the jungle and toward the enemy lines.
Captain Mune motioned the security team. Several bionic men took off running ahead of Hawthorne. They were much heavier than normal troops and their boots sank deeper into the moist soil. The bionic men held gyroc pistols and were conditioned to sell their lives for General Hawthorne’s safety.
Listening to his labored breathing as he climbed over a giant root, Hawthorne understood why everyone was so uneasy. If he died out here, Captain Mune, Colonel Diego and even Field Marshal Santiago would take the blame. It was unfair, but it was how politics worked in Social Unity. Hawthorne knew he shouldn’t be here. But he absolutely needed to know firsthand how the war progressed.
It had been a political risk coming here as it left New Baghdad to the directors, giving them greater freedom to plot against him. In that sense, being here was unwise.
The real political danger for him was the fact that the Highborn were winning the war. Unless he could achieve a real victory against the Highborn, Social Unity was doomed. The strike on the Sun-Works Factory had hurt the Highborn, but not badly enough. It had cost Social Unity too much to do the damage. They had even lost the experimental beamship.
He needed to know if this was the place to attempt a critical defeat against the Highborn. He needed to know if it was even possible. So he took this risk, and he risked the lives of others.
An hour later, after they’d traveled several kilometers deep into the jungle, they finally made contact with the enemy.
“Get down, sir!” Captain Mune shouted. He shoved Hawthorne from behind.
The bionic captain’s strength was irresistible. Hawthorne found himself hurled against a mossy rise. He grunted, his body-armor rattled and his faceplate mashed against the damp soil. For a second, Hawthorne’s lungs locked as harsh, whooshing sounds streaked over him.
Explosions lifted him from the mossy hummock and his armor rattled again as he slammed back down. Hawthorne grunted as weights fell on him. It took several seconds before he realized two bionic soldiers shielded his body with their own.
More explosions occurred. Then something fast and powerful boomed overhead. Were those the new magnetic lifters?
“Get off,” Hawthorne whispered. “I must witness this.” He squirmed free, wiped muck from his visor and blinked to get rid of the spots before his eyes.
Captain Mune lay beside him. “Sir, we must retreat.”
Hawthorne raised himself higher and peered down into a jungle valley. He used his chin to select one of his helmet’s special features: telescopic sighting.
He witnessed a Hawk Team. They were Free Earth Corps, traitorous humans who fought for the Highborn. They used a rugged, fuel-efficient, battlefield jetpack. Two of them lifted into the air, armed with portable missile-launchers. A burning SU infantry carrier lay on its side two hundred meters ahead of the fliers. Three SU soldiers tumbled out of the wreckage. Two missiles streaked from the Hawk Team. There was an explosion, and then no one moved on the burning carrier.
“The bastards,” Hawthorne said through gritted teeth. Before he could order his bionic men to take aim, one of the newer bio-tanks raced out of the jungle growth.
Bio-tanks were smaller than cybertanks, and were built upon different principles. The bio-tank was low to the ground and had a single silver dome atop its tracked body. A portal opened along the silver dome and a chaingun poked through. The chaingun whirled into life, shredding the two jetpack infantry. Other FEC infantry hidden in the trees opened fire with their portable missiles. As the flaming streaks closed upon the bio-tank, the vehicle activated its defensive armament. It exploded beehive-shaped charges. The shrapnel took out all but one missile. That missile cracked the silver dome, and it appeared to have angered the bio-tank. The engine revved. The tracks churned, causing grass and dirt to fly behind it. The bio-tank roared for the trees, its chaingun shredding leaves, branches, bark and FEC soldiers.
“Excellent,” Hawthorne said.
“Sir,” Captain Mune warned.
Hawthorne saw it: a great, bounding humanoid, a Highborn battleoid. With exoskeleton strength, a battleoid could make fifty-meter leaps.
A second and a third bio-tank appeared. They must have tracked the battleoid. Their chainguns poured rounds at the armored Highborn.
Stricken, the battleoid sprawled onto the ground. Then enemy lasers struck. They stabbed down from the heavens. The giant beams melted one of the bio-tanks’ silver domes, and the vehicle exploded. More lasers stabbed down, striking the other bio-tanks.
Hawthorne’s visor polarized and saved his eyes. The lasers were striking uncomfortably near.
Before Hawthorne could stop him with a command, Captain Mune hefted the general onto his shoulder and ran. The other bionic men followed. As they ran, SU artillery began to pound the area with high explosives, no doubt seeking other battleoids. High command desperately sought Highborn casualties. Due to Hawthorne’s orders, they were not aware of his presence in this combat zone.
The giant lasers stabbed down again. They beamed down to Earth from the orbital laser platforms. Hawthorne and his strategy staff had yet to find a battlefield answer to that tactic. Knocking them down was the only real solution. The cost in merculite missiles was always too high, as the Highborn savagely defended the orbital platforms.
“Set me down,” Hawthorne ordered.
“Respectfully, sir,” Captain Mune said, “I must decline. I just heard over Colonel Diego’s data-net that more battleoids are coming. I think the Highborn know you’re here. I think this is a trap to capture you, sir.”
Hawthorne endured the indignity of being carried until Captain Mune reached a tracked infantry carrier.
After setting him down, Captain Mune said, “It’s time we left the battle zone, sir.”
Hawthorne counted bionic men. About half were missing. Had they died so he might live? Was seeing the jetpack infantry killed worth half his security team?
“We must defeat the Highborn,” Hawthorne said.
Captain Mune hustled him toward the infantry carrier.
“There has to be a way to stop them,” Hawthorne said.
“Right now, sir,” Captain Mune said, “I’d just worry about surviving the afternoon.”
The hatch clanged shut. The engine fired into life. As it roared for Colonel Diego’s headquarters, General Hawthorne was sunk deep in gloomy thought.
Time ticked away for Marten as he sweated outside the shuttle, and his vacc-suit smelled like fear.
He adhered magnetically to the hull. At its present velocity, the shuttle sailed serenely for the Earth System. The stars shined their beauty, but Marten had no interest in them now. He’d worked hard the past half-hour to remove the final plate and gain access to the sensor system.
He checked his air supply. He had another twenty minutes left. The vacc-suit’s tanks hadn’t been fully charged before he gone outside. Marten shook his head. He couldn’t believe the mistakes he’d made these last few hours. For years, he’d dreamed of freedom. For years, he’d labored under rules set by others. With freedom, came responsibility. He could no longer afford the luxury of thinking some of the time. He needed to engage his wits all of the time.