Vaguely, Blackstone wondered why Toll Seven wasn’t here aboard the
Vladimir Lenin
. He could have used the cyborg’s advice. He wondered what the strange cyborg thought about the disaster. The cyborg surprise would be all-important now. Without those stealth capsules…
Toll Seven sat alone in his command pod with Web-Mind all around him.
Web-Mind was the greatest technological marvel in the Solar System. It was a mass bio-computer merged with metric tons of neural processors. Hundreds of bio-forms had died to supply Web-Mind with the needed brain mass. Each kilo of brain tissue had been personality scrubbed and carefully rearranged on wafer-thin sheets and surrounded by computing gel. Other machinery kept the temperature at a perfect 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Tubes fed the tissues the needed nutrients. Sensors monitored bio-health. Sub-computers did a hundred other necessary chores to keep Web-Mind functioning perfectly. The bio-brain-mass could outthink any known entity and track many thousands of enslaved bio-forms. The Web-Mind on the Neptune Habitat was supreme, but the one in Toll Seven’s command pod had been given override authority here. That meant it could adjust the master plan to suit emergency needs. It had more than enough brain mass to engineer victory at Mars System. Its future function would be to act as syndic for all Inner Planets.
Toll Seven wore a wireless headband, linking him to Web-Mind. Well before the Doom Stars had reached the one-million kilometer range, he had slipped the command pod to a safer location near the atmosphere of Mars. He had initiated shutdown procedures and implemented stealth-sheathing to the outer hull. Then he had cooled the pod’s hull so his vessel imitated space debris. The safety of Web-Mind superseded all other considerations. In the coming days of heavy battle, there would be no real safe place in the Mars System. Web-Mind had considered slipping out of the system and awaiting the battle’s outcome. But it had decided that camouflaging as space debris was safer than engaging engines for an extended burn to reach a suitable distance.
Toll Seven scanned his pre-battle arrangements. The Neptune-made cyborgs were scattered throughout the Mars System. Most waited in single stealth-capsules like the newly converted half-cyborg, Lisa Aster. Others guarded Olympus Mons, ready to take over the proton beam and the point-defense systems there. Perhaps as importantly, critical Webbies were stationed throughout the Battlefleet, ready to assume command positions. They would gain those positions through surprise assassinations.
Toll Seven’s head rotated like a robot’s head. His silver eyes swiveled in their black plastic sockets as he read the message on the monitor before him. The green letters scrolled past at impossible speeds. Toll Seven’s fingers blurred as he typed the reply. Web-Mind concurred.
General Fromm had asked a last question via Web-link. Toll Seven answered. Web-Mind then informed him that General Fromm had unplugged from the link and was returning to his place on the
Vladimir Lenin’s
bridge.
Several days would pass now as the Doom Stars approached. Likely, the genetic super-soldiers would continue to fire their heavy lasers at targets of opportunity.
A strange reaction surged through Web-Mind. It caused Toll Seven to stiffen because he was linked via the wireless headband. He felt Web-Mind’s emotions and sensed that soothing chemicals poured along the wafer-thin bio-sheets. The great bio-brain entity knew a moment of uncertainty. Was it possible that its secret plan would fail in the face of the Highborn? Web-Mind wished for continued existence. Its location above Mars as camouflaged debris—
Then the soothing chemicals softened the unease and Web-Mind began to reconfigure its strategies and coming tactics. No single entity could outthink it. The Master Plan would surge ahead and the Mars System would fall to Web-Mind. It was inevitable. If only this waiting period could be sped up.
“The wait will unhinge the Highborn more than it can possibly disturb Web-Mind,” Toll Seven interjected.
Both Web-Mind and Toll Seven understood the truth of that. Still, the wait was the wait for unperceived possibilities to interfere with the smooth application of the Master Plan. Only time and events could truly solve that dilemma.
The Doom Stars bored toward Mars as the heavy lasers swept Deimos with brutal destruction. Belatedly, the commander there began pumping chaff and prismatic-crystals before the moon. Then all the moon’s missiles were launched at the Doom Stars.
With contemptuous ease, the Doom Stars targeted and destroyed them. The heavy lasers swept through the thin PC-Fields and continued their systemic obliteration of anything that appeared dangerous on Deimos.
Deimos was the smaller moon, with the greater orbit. Phobos was larger, although not by much. It was closer to Mars and orbited the planet three times a Martian day or every 7.3 hours. At Commodore Blackstone’s orders, supply ships added their prismatic-crystals to what Phobos poured into a field before itself. The PC-Field was of small width but great thickness and absorbed the heavy lasers for several hours a day. Then it orbited back around Mars and was safe for another cycle from the terrible lasers.
To the Highborn, Mars began to take on greater size. When the Doom Stars were approximately 250,000 kilometers from the Red Planet, Grand Admiral Cassius opened a channel with admirals of the
Hannibal Barca
and the
Napoleon Bonaparte
.
“In twenty-four hours at the earliest,” Cassius said, “our ships will be in range of the battleships. We must assume they will form a fighting circle and attempt to attack en masse against one Doom Star.”
“Which side of Mars do you think they will choose to appear around?” asked Admiral Brutus of the
Hannibal Barca
.”
“I am a fighting man, not a magician,” Grand Admiral Cassius said. “But it would be logical to assume they will try to shield themselves behind Phobos as it orbits into view.”
“I would think the other side,” Admiral Brutus said. “They will expect us to believe they will use Phobos as a shield and then do the opposite for a surprise effect.”
“That hardly amounts to a tactical surprise,” Grand Admiral Cassius said.
“I expect their surprise to be similar to the 10 May Attack and to their recent breakout from Earth,” Admiral Brutus said.
“A mass assault?” asked Cassius. “Yes. I agree. They will use full laser batteries and launch masses of missiles at short range. They will hope to crash through with tonnage instead of with guile. Yet they will have a true surprise for us.”
“You still insist upon that, Grand Admiral?”
“Logic dictates it.”
“As you say—”
“The premen are rash and prone to wild panics,” Cassius said. “But their highest officers have a modicum of ability. They will not have used their last fleet to lure us unless they believed they could win. That mandates a surprise.”
“The moons—” Brutus tried to say.
“Surely constituted part of their surprise,” Cassius said. “Their fierce defense of Phobos shows that, as does their former military formation. Remember, gentlemen, both moons show a continual face toward Mars. We have not damaged the Mars-facing side of Deimos.”
“I thought the asteroid-busters—”
“Admiral Gaius, Admiral Brutus,” Cassius said, “I am implementing Attack Plan 27. I gather that each of you gentlemen is familiar with the outlines of it…”
Grand Admiral Cassius continued to speak as the majestic Doom Stars moved toward Mars. Then the admirals began to debate the finer points of Attack Plan 27. The great victory over the final premen space-fleet of Inner Planets was about to enter the annihilation phase.
A naked Commissar Kursk knelt behind an equally naked Commodore Blackstone. He sat up. She rubbed his shoulders and occasionally ran her fingers across the back of his bald head.
“We can’t win,” Blackstone whispered.
“Hush,” Kursk whispered, leaning against him as she draped her arms around him.
“They swatted us like flies. Three battleships and two missile-ships—they were destroyed
like that
.” Blackstone snapped his fingers. “Twenty other vessels are dead.”
“They had greater range,” Kursk whispered in his ear. “Now they are closing in. Now our weapons can come into play. If you can lure them near the proton beam—”
“These are Highborn,” Blackstone said.
Kursk tightened her grip around him as her breasts flattened against his back. “I forbid you to fear,” she whispered.
He clutched one of her wrists. “Is this technique in your PHC training manual?”
“As a matter of fact…” she said, and she nibbled on his ear.
Blackstone had responded earlier. Now this felt too much like the last request of a dead man. Instead of a meal, he had taken the Commissar. He had wanted to take her for so long. Now… now he felt as if he’d betrayed his ex-wife. The Highborn were superior. The cyborgs, Toll Seven’s plan would fail.
Blackstone tightened his grip on Commissar Kursk’s wrist just the same. In his gut, he knew that death waited. But he was a fighting man, a fighting officer. He had to show a brave front. If nothing else, he had to die well. He could show his crew how to do that. Yes, he would not shout and rave as last time. This time, he was going to kill at least one Doom Star. To kill all the Doom Stars seemed impossible, but at least they could take down one of those damned super-ships.
He turned around, catching Commissar Kursk by surprise. His decision to die well gave him a resumed appetite.
“Where were we,” he murmured as he kissed her.
Amazingly, she giggled. It seemed like an unnatural sound considering the nearness of the Doom Stars. But maybe that was the sound of life. If they could kill one Doom Star, maybe that meant that someday in the future, man would rise again against the nine-foot supermen. Blackstone didn’t know. Instead, he pushed the Commissar onto her back as his hands roved over her thighs, and he tried to enjoy a final moment of love before oblivion claimed him forever.
Marten Kluge stood alone on the windswept sands of Mars. Behind him over a large dune were the EVA tents, skimmers and plasma cannons.
It was night, with the stars bright in the cloudless sky. Phobos sailed serenely through the blackness, to him, half the size of Luna as seen on Earth. It was hard to believe that outside Mars’ atmosphere waited the SU Battlefleet. Beyond them came the Doom Stars full of arrogant Highborn, which meant arrogant Training Masters, battleoids and super-soldiers with unnatural vitality and the lust to kill.
Something alerted Marten then. He turned and watched an EVA-suited Omi trudge toward him. He knew the Korean’s stride. Omi shouldered a gyroc rifle and had a grenade-launching carbine dangling from his hip.
Marten pointed in the far distance at the giant volcano of Olympus Mons. It dominated the dark landscape. The majestic mountain was uniquely Martian, a thing of towering awe and splendorous beauty. This was a strange, dead world, similar to the ocean on Earth with its life underground.
“Tomorrow,” Omi said over his com-unit.
“You have word on the Doom Stars?”
“Major Diaz did,” Omi said, “from Chavez. Chavez wants to talk to you.”
Marten shrugged. Everything seemed peaceful tonight. Olympus Mons, the red sands, it was beautiful. The wind never stopped blowing. He wondered if he would miss Mars.
Omi and he stood side-by-side in silence, staring up at the stars.
“It’s up there,” Marten said, breaking the calm. Both of them knew he meant the
Mayflower
.
“Did you try another signal?” Omi asked.
“I’m not pushing my luck more than I need to,” Marten said.
“Since when did you decide that?”
“—We can’t stay on Mars,” Marten said.
“Never said we should,” Omi replied. “I’m just saying that your supply of luck ran out a long time ago. You’re living on borrowed time.”
“That’s the trick.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Omi said.
“I’ve already borrowed more luck than I can ever hope to repay,” Marten said. “Knowing that, I’ve decided to push it and borrow even more. The bank is open as far as I’m concerned.”
“What’s a bank?” Omi asked.
“It’s like a loan shark.”
“Got it,” Omi said. “You’re not worried about an enforcer like me coming along and demanding repayment because you’re too high on DD.”
“What did Chavez want?” Marten asked.
“More diplomatic jargon,” Omi said. “None of it made any sense to me. I think what he really wants is the commandos back in New Tijuana.”
Marten turned toward Omi and stared at his friend’s visor. All he saw was a dark reflection of himself, with his own EVA helmet and suit.
“It’s time we moved closer to Olympus Mons,” Marten said.
“As he listened to Chavez over the radio, Major Diaz looked pretty thoughtful,” Omi said. “He might not agree with you.”
“Yeah,” Marten said. “We’ll see.” And he began trudging through the red sands back to camp.
“Help us!” a colonel screamed. “Can anybody hear me? They’re pounding us with missiles and beaming everywhere. Commodore Blackstone! Captain Vargas! Please, somebody answer. Somebody—”