Star Soldier (16 page)

“During a war of this magnitude we must expect certain setbacks,” Hawthorne said. “I explained that during my Directorate interrogations.”

“Setbacks, yes,” whispered Enkov. “But we’ve received one defeat after another, and those defeats have come quickly.”

General Hawthorne shrugged as he pivoted and paced back the way he’d come. “New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, Antarctica, we can well afford such losses.”

“Not in the swift manner we’ve lost them.”

General Hawthorne didn’t respond, even though Director Enkov was right. The Highborn had waged brilliant campaigns. They excelled at space combat. He had hoped land war would have stifled them just a little.

“Volunteers stream into their Free Earth Corps,” whispered Enkov.

“True. But it takes time to train good soldiers.”

“It takes less time to train garrison troops to hold what they’ve conquered. That frees the Highborn for further campaigns.”

Hawthorne nodded. It was the essential problem.

“Did you expect them to win so quickly?” the director whispered.

“No.”

“Then perhaps you’re not a traitor after all, merely incompetent.”

General Hawthorne stopped short.

“Or will you tell me that you miscalculated?”

“Miscalculated is too strong a word,” said Hawthorne. “I misjudged their timing.”

A dry chuckle escaped the old director. It made the smoldering tip of the stimstick bob up and down. “Whatever you call it, you were wrong.”

Cold fear settled in Hawthorne’s chest.

“A general who guesses wrong is useless.”

“But—”

Director Enkov lifted a trembling hand. “Swift, Highborn advances have demolished your estimated timeline. Even your little scheme of blowing Greater Sydney with a deep-core burst came to nothing. Worse, our propagandists have been working overtime to defeat the Highborn accusations that we planned such a thing. In all, General Hawthorne, your prosecution of the war leaves much to be desired.”

Sweat beaded Hawthorne’s upper lip. “I am to be relieved of command?”

“General Hawthorne, I believe you’re something of a historian. At least that’s what my briefing team told me.”

“They are correct, sir.”

“Splendid. Do you recall the history of an ancient city called Carthage?”

“Indeed.”

“I believe Hannibal marched from there.”

“Yes, sir, he did.”

“Yes….” Director Enkov shifted to a more comfortable position. “The Carthaginians had an interesting habit concerning generals.” The director’s features took on a more sinister cast, as he smiled cruelly. “If the Carthaginian general came back defeated or lost too many troops, the city fathers debated among themselves. If the judgment went against this general, they took the loser outside the city. There they stripped him of his rank and his clothes. Soldiers scourged him with whips. They nailed spikes through his wrists and his feet, hammering him onto a cross. That cross they propped upright. They
crucified
him, I believe is the term.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hawthorne, uneasily. “The Carthaginian’s invented the custom that the Romans later copied.”

“For the remainder of the war I wish you to consider yourself a Carthaginian general, and all it entails.”

Secret Police General James Hawthorne grew pale and found that he couldn’t speak. There was a hidden gun in the bottom left drawer of his desk. He wondered what his chances were of reaching it and killing these two.

“…Unless,” said Enkov.

“Yes,” croaked Hawthorne. He cleared his throat, hating his display of weakness.

“Surely you have a Plan B,” whispered Enkov.

“B, sir?”

“Something to implement in case your original theories proved false or misleading.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

General Hawthorne thought once more about the hidden gun in his desk. Then he decided that Enkov’s briefing team surely knew about it. The bodyguard would undoubtedly kill him before he could open the drawer.

“Sir, there is a Plan B.”

“Splendid.”

“But it entails great risk.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, General.”

“I don’t see any other way out of our impasse, sir.”

“Not an impasse, General, but our defeat.”

“Yes, sir. Our defeat.”

General Hawthorne sat on the edge of his desk. He massaged his forehead and wiped the sheen of sweat from his upper lip. “Sir, to be blunt, the Highborn were a good idea that went bad.”

“A good idea?”

“Superior soldiers, sir. Or, to use a metaphor, a better sword than our foes in Outer Planets could wield. Only this sword has turned in our hand.”

“I see.”

“Actually, one could say it became a magic sword that turned and attacked us.”

“Yes, yes, quite colorful, General, but what is your point?”

“Our old swords, sir, break every time we try to defeat the magic sword. My first theory was to throw so many old swords against it that in time the magic sword would become nicked once too often and shatter. That doesn’t seem to be happening, or it’s not happening fast enough. What we need is a better sword.”

“You mean create more Highborn to throw at the first batch?”

“That’s not a bad idea, sir.”

“It’s lunacy. The first batch turned on us. Why not the second?”

“You’re probably right, sir.”

Enkov scowled. And by that, General Hawthorne believed that his time was limited.

“Sir, what about a new and better sword, even better than the first sword? This new sword we shall be able to control?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That in deep space a habitat orbits Neptune. Actually, it’s in deep-Neptune orbit. It appears to be like any other of the hundreds of habitats orbiting the gas giant. In actuality it’s the home to a secret and special project.”

“What project?”

“The creation of a new and better sword, sir.”

“Men, General?”

“Soldiers, sir, who can outfight Highborn.”

“Are you mad? What’s to stop them from turning on us like the Highborn have?”

“These are quite different creatures, sir. Their very makeup allows us to implant deep controls.”

“Out with it, man! What are they?”

“Cyborgs.”

The old withered eyes narrowed. Enkov glanced at his bodyguard. “You mean like him?”

“No, sir. Infinitely more deadly. And if I may say so, sir, most inhuman in their efficiency.”

“You’ve actually made enough of these… these cyborgs to change the war?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Director Enkov spat the stub of his stimstick onto the carpet. There it smoldered until the bodyguard crushed it with his foot. “What do you mean ‘not yet’?”

“I need the go ahead for phase two, sir.”

“What is phase two?”

“If the Director would be so kind as to glance at the holochart on my desk….”

For a second they stared eye to eye. Hawthorne wondered if the old man was going to order the bodyguard to kill him. He began to judge how fast he could jump for the gun in his desk.

Then, with a wheeze, ancient Director Enkov began to work his way to his feet to come and look at the holochart.

2.

Far from the raging civil war—past Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus—orbited blue Neptune. Hundreds of habitats orbited it, and many colonies had sprung up on its various moons. The majority of the space habs had been constructed out of weird ice, making them glittering, colorful motes in the eternal night of space. It insured that the Ice Hauler Cartel was one of the major powers in the Neptune System.

The continuing, growing thirst for weird ice and the constant need for new sources of water had finally led the cartel into experimental ship construction. IH-49 was the third of its kind. It was being readied for a long and hopefully momentous journey. However, within the command module things had already started to go wrong.

“That’s impossible.”

“What?”

“My game froze.”

Osadar Di frowned, not sure that she’d heard correctly. Paranoia came easily to her. Thus, she always checked and rechecked everything that could possibly go wrong. It made her an excellent space pilot.

Osadar shut down her scanning program and pushed VR goggles onto her smooth forehead. She had short dark hair, dark worried eyes and a scratch on her nose. A bit too tall for an ice hauler, she had long shapely legs highlighted by her blue-colored jumpsuit. The suit had a red IHC tab on the left shoulder. The cramped command module held screens, consoles and claustrophobically close bulkheads. The commander sat in the middle of this mess, the pink-faced life support officer to his left and Osadar to his right.

The commander, a tough old man with short silver hair, experimentally tapped his VR monocle.

“What game could you possibly be playing at a time like this?” asked Osadar.

“Antiquity.”

“
The
Antiquity Game?”

“Not Earth’s. Neptune’s.”

Because light moved so slowly, three hundred thousand kilometers a second, each planetary grid only linked with computers in its near vicinity. The time lag of say from Earth to Mars—something over five minutes—was too much for players of a complex game like Antiquity to react successfully to each other’s moves.

Osadar checked a screen. The commander used ship’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) to run his ultra complex character. A laser lightguide system hooked him into the nearby Neptune III Net.

“What’s
wrong
with this thing?” he complained.

“Explain.”

“I just ran a diagnostic, and Ajax checks out.”

“Who?”

“Ajax!” He scowled. “My character in the Trojan War.”

Osadar shook her head.

“The Greeks and Trojans, Achilles and Hector? Didn’t they teach you anything in the Jupiter System?”

“Give me the code,” Osadar said.

“Eh?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh. Thanks. The code word is Asimov.”

Osadar put her goggles back on and manipulated her gloves. “There isn’t anything wrong with your character.”

“That’s what I said!”

“So what’s wrong?”

“Ah ha! Found it. The laser-link is down.”

Osadar frowned. It was her habitual look. She tried to squeeze off a message to the nearest IHC station. Zero. She ran a diagnostic on communications. Check. So she sent another flash. Another zero. Either the diagnostic lied or IHC had gone off-line, which wasn’t possible. For that would mean IHC no longer existed. The Ice Hauler Cartel
owned
communications out here—they even owned her at present. Any space hab orbiting Neptune or one of its moons used their patented lightguide net-web.

The commander cursed in old Angelic. Sometimes he took his historical excesses to extremes.

“Now what?” Osadar asked.

“Ajax crashed! Do you know how much
time
I put into him?”

“Ask the AI why he crashed.”

“AI isn’t responding.”

Osadar’s stomach clenched.
She
tried the AI. The ill feeling grew, producing a touch of nausea. Then her eyes, those worried dark orbs, glistened with fear. The AI couldn’t answer because its entire ram was being used. What in the devil was going on?

“Ask computing what’s wrong with the AI,” the commander told the LS officer.

“…Can’t, Commander. Something’s jamming inter-ship communication.”

Fear stabbed Osadar’s heart. She tore off her VR goggles and shucked off the gloves. Breathing deeply, she tried to control her panic. Then she unbuckled herself and floated to a portal.

“What are you doing?” asked the commander.

Osadar grabbed a float-rail and pressed her palm on the lock. Nothing happened. She floated to the other portal. It, too, refused to open. She bit back the moan that tried to rush past her teeth. As calmly as possible, she flipped a terminal-head and punched in override. Then she cranked open the portal by hand. On impulse, she set the locks so it couldn’t slide shut on her.

“Commander, I’m getting a red reading in computing.” The pink-faced LS officer looked up in confusion.

“Osa?” asked the commander.

“I’m going outside to manually override the laser-link. I want Dominie Banbury to hear about this.”

“Do you really think that’s warranted?”

“Don’t you?” she asked.

The commander pondered a moment and nodded. “Wait a minute, though. I’m going with you.”

3.

Toll Seven allowed himself a faint smile. Ship’s AI had succumbed to his program. The Master Plan went forward with flawless precision.

He shook his bald head—he looked like a robot with plastic flesh, with a shark’s dead eyes. He used inner nanonics to dump chemicals into his brain’s pleasure centers to dampen his joy. Neither fear nor happiness must mar the smooth working of the plan. Clean concentration was paramount. That blood globules floated past him, under him, over him and behind him meant nothing. The raw stench of gore influenced him not at all. Even more importantly, the adrenaline that had surged through his body when he’d fought ship’s security had been carefully drained away by his inner nanonics. The enemy bio-form floated head-down behind him, a trickle of blood still oozing from the torn throat and adding to the floating hemoglobin.

Toll Seven issued the next command through the leads in his fingertips. He’d plugged his first three fingers into computing slots. The converted AI obeyed and locked all inner ship’s doors. Toll Seven then slipped a computing cube into the security key. He checked his inner clock. Nine seconds to gassing. Once the IH-49 crew was immobilized, all eighteen of them, he would begin transferring their bodies to his stealth pod. Nothing would be wasted.

“Attention, First Rank,” said the AI.

“Yes?”

“Three crew members have exited the ship.”

With his broad, seamless face as smooth as ever, Toll Seven slipped a VR monocle over his eye. “Transmit image.”

Through virtual reality imaging, he saw the bulky vacc-suits and the twinkling stream of hydrogen spray that propelled them. With a flawless knowledge of the ship’s layout, both inner and outer, he realized that they jetted to the laser-link.