TAN: That is a logical thought. I have considered it for some time. Three factors have rendered it moot. One, Jovians hostile to the Dictates might well witness the meteor-ship’s destruction and correctly conclude I ordered the act. Two, Marten Kluge is a dangerous man. He might discover a way to thwart the flock of ship-killers. Who knows what his response would be after that? Three, our Solar System faces a hideous threat in the form of the cyborgs. We need every warship possible. Therefore, it is illogical to destroy the meteor-ship.
CIRCE: Kill Marten Kluge.
TAN: Again, that would be a difficult act.
CIRCE: My myrmidons could easily achieve it.
TAN: Difficult to achieve successfully in the dark, I mean. As an official act, it would be simplicity itself. But that would harm my Chief Strategist position and force my political enemies to unite against me. No. You are my answer, Circe. You must practice the Cleopatra grip on him and control the barbarian through your sexuality.
CIRCE: His…
wife
might already have a fierce grip on him. I note they practice the olden custom. That implies she has some form of dominance over him. Why otherwise would he agree to such an antiquated practice?
TAN: That is beyond my area of expertise.
CIRCE: To achieve your mandate, I may have to eliminate her.
TAN: Do what is necessary to gain control of Marten Kluge. The mission is too important to leave to random factors. He is a barbarian and therefore unaware of our philosophic ruthlessness and purity. We seek to achieve the highest good for the greatest number. Nothing will be allowed to stand in our way.
CIRCE: I consider him little more than an intelligent barbarian.
TAN: I caution you against underestimating him.
CIRCE: Noted.
TAN: I feel I must also warn you against letting him or anyone else aboard the vessel knowing about your liaisons among the myrmidons.
CIRCE: Perceptions are critical. I am aware of that.
TAN: Hmm, yes. I do not mean to imply that you do not. As a side note, this taking of a wife…I find that troubling.
CIRCE: Wife or not, I shall subdue him. He is only a man after all. What about the cyborg?
TAN: When the time comes, kill it. No one will mourn its loss. In this purpose, I am determined: the eradication of the cyborg infestation. With their passing, the Dictates will flourish, in time, throughout the entire Solar System.
CIRCE: Long live the Dictates.
TAN: May they guide us forever. Chief Strategist Tan signing off.
Eights days later between Luna and Earth, an orbital fighter zoomed out of a bay in the
Julius Caesar
. It was one of two Doom Stars in the Earth System. The other presently hid behind the Moon.
The orbital fighter was an ugly craft, triangular-shaped and squat, with cannon ports and extra fuel tanks. It was a single-seater, and it held the Grand Admiral of the Highborn, Cassius. He wore a battleoid-suit. Behind his visor, he ground his teeth in anger.
The
Julius Caesar
was much nearer Earth than Luna. Cassius had brought the Doom Star into near-orbit as a threat against Eurasia. He had been doing this for the last three months. There was a reason for it, historical in nature.
Despite his rage, Cassius worked out ship-vectors, rates of laser-fire, proton-beam pumping and prismatic chaff levels. Eurasia and Africa had become bristling fortresses. The Supreme Commander down there was good, too good for a preman. Storming North America was still taking much too long. Cassius attributed it to Hawthorne.
The nine-foot Grand Admiral shrugged within his battleoid-suit. Because he wore it, it was badly cramped within the orbital fighter. He looked around at the stars. They shined brightly. To his side was the great blue-green ball of Earth. There were drifting clouds above Mexico, where he was headed, toward Mexico City specifically.
Cassius had been moving the two Doom Stars near Earth and over Eurasia in imitation of Alexander the Great. Alexander was arguably the greatest warlord the premen had ever produced or likely ever would produce. Naturally, Cassius knew he could have easily outfought and outgeneraled Alexander. Maybe the reason the young Macedonian held such fascination for him was that Cassius believed he was the Highborn Alexander. He was the greatest military genius among the greatest military soldiers the Solar System had ever seen. The truth of that was obvious.
With his big hands, Cassius shifted the fighter’s controls. The squat craft plunged toward the stratosphere. Almost immediately, the heat-shield began to glow as the fighter began to rattle and shake.
The ploy with the Doom Stars was just like Alexander’s maneuvers before the Hydaspes River. It had tactically been Alexander’s most brilliant large-scale battle. Alexander had marched, for him, to the ends of the Earth—in reality, India. There King Porous had waited with an army of chariots, archers and elephants. Porous had spread out his army, covering the various fords over the Hydaspes River. Alexander had marched back and forth on his side, accustoming Porous’ soldiers to his presence. Finally, the day came where Alexander’s phalanxes did as they always had. Elsewhere, however, a picked company of cavalry crossed the river, making it because the enemy had grown lax.
Cassius was accustoming the soldiers of Social Unity to the near presence of the Doom Stars. It was risky, because at any time, Hawthorne might order a vast barrage of proton beams, merculite missiles and whatever orbital fighters they had been secretly constructing to attack the
Julius Caesar
and its sister ship.
Despite the heat-shield, the fighter’s solid construction and the battleoid-suit, Cassius heard the howling wind outside his craft. He dropped at combat speed toward Mexico City.
The radio crackled, and a FEC lieutenant came online, asking for identification.
Cassius was surprised
. Have we stretched ourselves so thinly that premen run sectors of air-defense?
The FEC soldier could easily activate the air-defense over the city and region. With a single finger, the preman could achieve what many SU soldiers had been unable to do—kill the commander of the Highborn.
There were loyalty tests, to be certain. The lieutenant manning the air-defense-net had a stake in the Highborn victory. Still….
Cassius punched in the fighter’s code.
“Acknowledged, SA-12,” the FEC lieutenant said over the radio. “You are cleared for a scanning pass.”
Cassius grimaced. He’d do more than that. Before he was through, high-ranking Highborn would be on the air-defense-net. Maybe it would be a lesson to them all. But he was more concerned that the young cockerel bearing his chromosomes would realize the foolishness of his action. Yes, Felix was about to discover that with such a grand genetic heritage as he possessed came responsibilities.
Gripping the controls, Cassius kicked in the afterburners. Time was critical. He might already be too late. With a lurch, he slammed deeper into the cushions, his fighter screaming down toward the surface level of Mexico City.
The orbital fighter gushed licking flames as it landed on a Mexico City street. Around him, GEVs ground to a halt. In the distance, a siren wailed. The few premen on the streets had uniformly stopped, staring at his orbital in shock.
His hatch popped open as a ladder extended down from the canopy to the pavement fifteen feet below. Grand Admiral Cassius stood up. He gleamed in his silvery battleoid-suit. The camouflage unit was turned off. He looked like a giant robot of the action vids, with a mirrored visor. On his right arm was a rotating hand-cannon.
Climbing out of the cockpit and onto the stubby nosecone, Cassius leaped to the ground. The battleoid-suit had a powered exoskeleton. Twin Titan-5000s motors energized it. They purred, allowing him to make one hundred meter jumps.
Cassius landed heavily, the pavement under his shock-absorbers cracking and splintering. It had been some time since he’d worn a battleoid-suit. But it was just like being a jet-jockey, something you never forgot how to do.
Premen scrambled to get out of his way. A woman screamed. A young one, a child, staggered against the side of a building and began to cry.
Cassius snorted in disbelief. How could such weaklings as these stand against the Highborn? It was inconceivable. Only their mind-numbing numbers gave them long-term resistance.
Checking his HUD, locating the brothel—three streets over to the north—Cassius jumped two more times and then began to run. He moved like a magnetic train, picking up speed as he ran. He’d forgotten the joy of a battleoid-suit. Maybe he should do this more often.
“Is he present?” asked Cassius, using the suit’s radio.
“Yes, Grand Admiral,” a Highborn replied.
“Did you delay him as ordered?”
“Sir—”
“Answer my question!” Cassius thundered.
“Yes, sir,” the Highborn said. The soldier sounded truculent, but that didn’t concern Cassius. If the Highborn had whined, he’d have been surprised and concerned. It wasn’t in the nature of a Highborn to show fear. Even one caught in a flagrantly prohibited act would show courage to the end.
“Release the girl,” Cassius said.
“Sir, are you sure this is—”
“Release the girl!” Cassius roared. “And if he dies, you will die under SU agonizers.”
“Understood, sir,” the Highborn said. “Tech Sergeant Gaius out.”
Tech Sergeant
, that meant he was from one of the newer batches. Yes, this was beginning to make better sense now. This demonstration was more needed than ever.
A four-story building rose up before him. It was red-colored on his HUD. Cassius grinned like a feral wolf, and he charged, activating the buffers.
He crashed through the main door of synthi-oak. Scantily-clad women screamed. Several FEC soldiers raised guns, most quickly lowering them. The inner area possessed red couches and thick shag rugs. A shot rang out. A bullet hit the battleoid-suit, and bounced off.
Cassius grunted. Then he fired a single round from his rotating hand-cannon. That took trained fire-control. The offender flew off his feet and against a wall, his chest a gory ruin. His gun tumbled over a shag rug until it struck a woman’s leg. She crumpled and began to wail in agony.
Ignoring them all, Cassius leapt, landing on an upper level. Wood groaned and a lamp shattered into pieces. The display on his HUD changed, showing him the building’s layout. He wondered if Felix had heard any of this.
Growling, the Grand Admiral of the Highborn crashed down the hall. He chin-clicked a sensor. The girl had entered Felix’s room. Yes, this was nearly perfect timing. That would add to the retelling of the tale.
Four seconds later, Cassius smashed through the door to Felix’s room. Unaccountably, the fool had heard nothing or even worse, he’d ignored it.
Felix was a big Highborn fresh from the Training Academy. He had blond hair, a wide face and a god-like physique. He lay on a huge bed and he was naked, with his arms behind his head. A woman with a towel around her waist stood ten feet from his bed. She might have been dancing for him, as dance music played in the room.
Felix scowled as he sat up. He looked like a clone of Cassius, just many years younger. There was a reason for that. The same chromosomes had been used in the birth tubes.
“Who are you?” Felix demanded.
Cassius raised his battleoid arm, aiming the hand-cannon at the woman. She was pretty, extremely so. Her eyes became wide.
“There is a proscription against prostitution,” Cassius said over his suit’s speakers.
“She’s clean,” Felix said. “I’ve used her before.”
“The premen have operatives among us. They might have kidnapped her between sessions and inserted a cortex bomb.”
“I don’t see how—” Felix started to say.
Cassius opened fire, letting the hand-cannons rotate as he shredded the woman into bloody chunks.
“No!” Felix howled. He rolled out of bed and charged Cassius.
The hand-cannons stopped as smoke drifted out of the barrels. The woman was a ruin of flesh, and blood smeared the wall as if someone had hurled a bucketful at it.
This mindless attack galled Cassius more than Felix’s taking of prostitutes. The youthful fool leaped at him. With contemptuous ease and exoskeleton strength, Cassius swatted him, batting the Highborn onto the floor and into unconsciousness.
Cassius returned to the
Julius Caesar
. Three days later, he took the Doom Star into its nearest orbital pass yet across the Eurasian landmass. He sat in his command shell, tense and expectant.
The crew went about their tasks quietly and efficiently. They monitored the battered hulks of the drifting farm habitats. A few months earlier, SU ships had launched from Earth and tried to slip commandoes and supplies into the old habitats. They’d attempted to install field-grade weaponry there. It was unlikely there had been other secret attempts, yet Cassius suspected the worst. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had surprised him once too often on other occasions. The man was a miracle-worker.
“Launch a squadron of fighters,” Cassius ordered. “They are to use a random, C-targeting sequence on any habitat within a thousand-kilometer radius of the ship.”