Star Soldier

1.

Concrete, glass and plasteel buildings sprawled for kilometers in all directions, but especially down. Greater Sydney, Australian Sector wasn’t as congested as Hong Kong or New York, but its fifty-one million inhabitants seldom felt the sun’s warmth. There wasn’t anything wrong with the sun or its ability to shine upon the populace. Ozone depletion, long a concern of earlier generations, had been taken care of a century ago. Nor was smog any worse than it had been at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century. The problem for sun-lovers had taken a different turn.

To feed Earth’s hordes took more land than the world had and more than all the resources of the sea-farms. Thus, a hundred agricultural gigahabs orbited the planet. And even in the middle of the greatest civil war the Solar System had ever known, laser-launched transports went up and came back down every hour of the day. To save land the cities burrowed into the Earth rather than sprawl outward in ever widening circumferences. If humanity hadn’t taken this radical turn, concrete, glass and plasteel would have covered the entire planet by 2349.

Greater Sydney boasted fifty-nine levels, neither the greatest nor the least among the planet’s megalopolises. Mole-like machinery eternally chewed into the stygian depths, expanding and mining, growing the city at a pre-determined rate.

Most of the fifty-one million inhabitants carried their Social Unity cards with pride. They had been taught that the Inner Planets needed people who could work together for the good of the whole. Loners, hermits and individualists who were found out—and eventually they all were—underwent strenuous re-education or a stint of labor-learning in the algae tanks.

Sometimes, however, even in this age of social paradise and raging civil war, certain officials took advantage of their rank or failed to perform zealously all their duties.

2.

Marten Kluge claimed he wasn’t angry, upset or even nervous. So he didn’t understand why Molly kept telling him to relax. As they stood alone in the narrow corridor outside the hall leader’s office, she tweaked his collar, fidgeting nervously with it.

“Didn’t I tell you not to miss any more of the hum-a-longs,” she whispered, her pretty face creased with worry. She picked a speck of lint off his collar. “Maybe you could say you had a cold. That your throat hurt.”

“The hum-a-longs don’t have anything to do with this,” said Marten. It was almost three years since he’d escaped out of the Mercury System. He’d turned into a lean, ropy-muscled young man with a handsome, expressive face and bristly blond hair.

He wore black shoes, tan pants and a modest tan jacket with a black choker, suitable attire for such an important meeting, or so Molly kept telling him.

Earth was amazingly different from the Sun-Works Factory. Marten had thought it would be worse, and in a way, it was. The cage was gilded, cleaner than the Sun-Works Ring that built the Doom Star ships. Because of that, the people of Earth had lost… something essential. They couldn’t even see the cage anymore. The enormous changes to his life, the sheer impossibility of affecting anything, had depressed Marten and worn down his resolve. He missed his parents, missed talking to people who thought for themselves. All he wanted now was to throw off his Social Unity pretense and be who he really was, if only for a few hours.

“It must be the missed hum-a-longs,” Molly whispered, brushing his collar and bringing him back to the moment.

“Tell me,” said Marten, “has the hall leader made another advance on you?”

“…What difference would that make?”

Silence was his only answer.

Molly lifted worried green eyes. And with a gesture he’d come to adore, she brushed her stylish bangs. “Promise him you won’t miss any more hum-a-longs. Maybe offer to watch your neighbors more diligently.”

Before Marten could reply, the door opened and a thin woman in a mufti robe stepped out. “Marten Kluge?”

Unconsciously, his face tightened and his shoulders tensed.

“Be careful, Marten,” Molly whispered. “And don’t say anything rash.”

As Marten followed the mufti-robed woman, his throat constricted. So even though it was ill-advised, he tore off the choker and slipped it into his jacket pocket. The chokers were the latest craze, the latest symbol of social unity. Molly had bought him one expressly for the meeting.

The outer office—the woman’s—was as coffin-small as his rental. Her desk and computer terminal filled it. So when she turned to open the hall leader’s door, she brushed his shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he said.

She frowned, staring at his now bare throat. Then she turned, and said, “Hall Leader Quirn. Marten Kluge seeks your guidance.”

The hall leader glanced up from behind his computer desk. He was small with narrow shoulders and wore a crisp brown uniform and military style cap—that to hide his thinning hair. He had ever-vigilant eyes and a mouth habitually turned down with disapproval. His eyes narrowed as he viewed Marten, and he touched the choker around his own throat.

Marten’s bare throat felt exposed, naked, and it made him fidgety. Without thinking about it and before being bidden, he squeezed past the woman and stepped into the hall leader’s office.

“Lout,” the woman said under her breath.

The hall leader’s mouth twitched with annoyance as he studied Marten.

“You sent for me,” said Marten.

“I requested your presence,” said Quirn. To his secretary, “Hold any inquiries until we’re done.”

“Yes, Hall Leader.” She closed the door.

Marten marveled at the office’s spaciousness. It held the desk, two low-built chairs and a stand to the left with a potted plant. A holoscreen “window” showed crashing ocean waves.

“I appreciate your promptness,” said Hall Leader Quirn, although he didn’t rise or offer his hand.

Marten ignored the slight as he forced himself to act pleasantly.

“Please,” said Quirn, “take a seat.”

“Thank you,” Marten said, sitting in one of the low-slung chairs. He noticed that the higher-seated hall leader now looked down at him.

Quirn gave him a superior smile as he picked up a plastic chart and tapped it against the desk.

“Marten, I’m afraid we have some unfortunate business to discuss. Yes, troubling business.”

Marten lurched to his feet.

“What’s wrong?”

Marten grimaced and touched his forehead. Then he looked up. “The pain comes and goes. But I feel better now.”

“Splendid. If you’ll retake your seat.”

“I’ll stand if it’s okay with you? Sitting too much….” Marten shrugged. “You know how it is.”

“What I have to say is better discussed if you sit.”

Marten could picture Molly advising, “Sit down, Marten. Don’t be rash.” Despite this common sense and the feeling of weakness in his knees, Marten resisted.

“No. I’ll stand.”

Quirn leaned back in his chair, eyeing him.

Marten smiled, trying to placate the hall leader with a social gesture.

“Hmm.” Quirn sat forward and placed the plastic chart on the desk, smoothing it with his fingers. “Very well, we shall proceed.”

“Good.”

“No, Marten, I’m afraid that it’s not good. And that pains me. Of all the tasks a hall leader performs, this is personally the most difficult. Yet none of us is allowed to shirk his responsibilities. There would be chaos otherwise. Now then, your profile… Marten, it’s taken a decided turn for the worse. It’s come to my attention that you’ve actually missed three hum-a-longs in a row.”

“I-I had a cold,” Marten said, the excuse sounding lame even to his ears. “My throat hurt.”

Quirn’s voice became an octave more menacing.

“During that time you’ve also missed two discussions and quite incredibly failed to fill out any community charts. Now,” he cleared his throat, reaching for one of the drawers. “I will allow you to fill out several charts here this very moment. Particularly, I would like to know how Mr. Beerbower spends his quiet time from four in the afternoon to—”

“Uh,” Marten said, “I’d rather not.”

Quirn looked astonished. “Everybody fills out community charts. We watch out for one another.”

“Yes, but—”

“Now see here, Marten, the entire thrust of Social Unity demands that we care about our community. In a time of grave crisis such as this we must be certain that the group functions as smoothly as ever, as one.” Quirn opened the drawer and took out a plex-sheet, holding it across the desk.

Marten hesitated. He could take the plex-sheet and fill in nonsense as he’d done in the past. But that didn’t really matter today, did it? It was a known fact that the hall leader switched partners with amazing regularity, and his partners were always attractive and energetic. Whispers abounded that Quirn saw such couplings as conquests. Few dared refuse his advances. Molly had dodged him the most persistently, and Marten was certain the hall leader now took it as a personal challenge. Quirn was clever, too. He must realize that if he sent Marten to the slime pits, without real justifiable cause, that might embitter Molly. Therefore, the two of them today were going to have to go through a charade.

“This is quite unprecedented, Marten. Failing to fill out the charts shows a decided lack in political duty. Perhaps….” Quirn’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you hold heretical views.”

Marten still couldn’t reach out and take the plex-sheet. He knew he couldn’t tell Quirn that he was tired of pretending, especially now that the Highborn attacked Earth. The genetic super-soldiers had rebelled against Social Unity, just as he wanted to rebel. The Highborn had started the civil war, it was said, through an act of rage. Marten squinted. The truth was that he was soul sick, cramped, feeling as if he should have gone down fighting with his Mom and Dad. He’d watched Quasar several weeks ago and had seen a documentary on the cave paintings in Southern France Sector. What had fascinated him was the whole idea of cavemen. Free to roam wherever they willed. Hunting for food, really protecting their mates. It had seemed so… alive. He’d imagined himself bellowing at other cavemen, a club in his hands. A man who fought for the well-being of his woman would cherish her. He would treat her as the greatest thing in his free-living life. Like his Dad had treated his Mom. Definitely heretical views.

“No?” Quirn asked icily. “Very well.” He put the plex-sheet back in the drawer, closing it with a thump. Then he folded his hands on his desk, and his mouth quivered with distaste. “I’ve given this much thought, Marten. I’ve talked with Reform through Labor and found that openings are available.”

“You’re sending me to the slime pits?” For a wild instant, Marten envisioned himself leaping over the desk and attacking the hall leader.

Quirn raised a hand. “You know very well that a political crime such as yours—”

“Missing three hum-a-longs is a crime?”

“Please don’t interrupt. And the answer is yes, for refusing to join your friends and neighbors in sanctioned political harmony, for willfully staying away, that is a political crime. And that translates into an assault upon humanity. Almost as repugnant are your thought-crimes—surely you have some. Fortunately, for you, Marten, the guidelines unequivocally state that thought-crimes occur to most citizens at one time or another—thus the need for a firm teaching party like Social Unity. Yes, a stint in the ‘slime pits ‘ as you put it might be in order.”

Quirn let the threat hang in the silence for a moment while he watched Marten narrowly.

“However, in your case I don’t believe that would help. And in these trying times even heretics like you must pull their weight. Marten, you need to understand that the State wants to correct your bad tendencies so that you can become fully functional again. So, I’ve thought of the perfect job that I believe will help teach you this.”

Marten stared at the hall leader, wondering what the man’s devious mind had thought up.

Quirn shoved a small slip of plex-paper across the desk.

Marten picked it up. Biocomp engineer, it read. Then he noticed the hours: Early morning shift.

“I’ll have to get up when everyone else is asleep.”

“Yes,” said Quirn.

Marten understood. With these new hours, he wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with Molly. In other words, she’d have more time alone. And because he hadn’t been sent to the slime pits, Molly would surely be grateful to the hall leader. Very neatly done, Marten thought sourly. He looked at the slip of plex-paper again: Biocomp engineer.

…Interesting.

3.

OFFICE OF THE SUPREME COMMANDER

PLANS AND OPERATIONS DIVISION

BEIJING, EAST ASIA SECTOR

TOP SECRET

14 April 2349

Directive No. 1

For the prosecution of the war

“Ultimate victory demands objectivity. Due to their bioengineering, the Highborn rebels automatically have certain advantages. These can neither be wished away nor ignored. Simply stated, man for man the Highborn are smarter, quicker, stronger and perhaps even wiser. Their intense training also heightens their military advantages. Breakthrough ship design and technology has armed them with craft superior to any in the Solar System. Combined with a surprise assault, the genetic super-soldiers have gained mastery of Earth-Luna space.

“It can be expected that total enemy space-fleet control of Venus and Mercury will occur in short order.

“Recommendation: All fleet units randomly retreat into deep space until our superior production gives us a two to one advantage in ship tonnage.

“Army Units, it should be noted….”

***

The microphone snapped off. Even thought he couldn’t see them, Secret Police General James Hawthorne stared steely-eyed where the ancient men and women of the Directorate were sitting. Or he assumed they sat behind the polished surface in front of him. Otherwise, he sat alone at a table, a spotlight shining in his eyes and a mike in front of him.

Whoever sat behind the polished wall had been given the chance of a lifetime. The orbital bombardment that had destroyed Geneva had also slain the entire Social Unity Directorate and the SU General Assembly. These new members were a mystery to him and the world at large. He’d carefully studied the files of two aged women who had made it onto the Directorate. They were products of extreme longevity treatments. The others on the Directorate were still blanks to him, although he assumed most of them to be old. In any case, they had gained supreme rank in a single amazing bound. Which of them would come to dominate the Inner Planets hadn’t yet been thrashed out.

General Hawthorne wore the green uniform with red piping along the sleeves of Directorate Staff Planning. He was tall and gaunt with wispy blond hair, and many said he had the emotions of granite.

The wall speakers warbled into life.

“Our military ships are to flee?”

Whether a man or woman had spoken was impossible to tell. The shiny, metallic wall confronting General Hawthorne gave him no clue. Such caution bespoke the Directorate’s fear. Not fear of the Highborn, necessarily, but fear of his access to secret police files. The Geneva bombardment had stirred a hornet’s nest of intrigue and deadly political jockeying. No one trusted anyone—not that anyone really ever had. It was just many times worse now.

For all that, General Hawthorne had a war to run. He leaned toward the mike. “A strategic retreat, yes.”

“Don’t be fatuous, General.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Humph! Do you care to explain this, this treason?”

“Don’t they say he’s a military genius?” asked someone else.

General Hawthorne wished he had complete biographical data on these ultra ambitious men and women. A misstep could land him in the Brutality Room. His eyes tightened, and he dared ask, “Am I on trial?”

“Yes.”

“Then—”

“We will set the agenda, General.”

His bowels turned hollow. But General James Hawthorne clamped down on his fear.

A stylus moved against a plex-pad somewhere behind those polished surfaces. An audible click issued from the wall speakers. They were recording his trial—a bad sign.

***

Transcript of Directorate Interrogation of Secret Police General James Hawthorne #4

10.9.2349

Q. Why do you recommend that our space fleets flee?

A. So they won’t be destroyed.

Q. Why do you assume automatic destruction?

A. The Highborn are superior to us, Director. We cannot ignore that basic fact.

Q. Nor am I—not that I accept your assumption. But for the sake of argument let us pretend I accept it. Why did you not suggest suicide tactics?

A. Too inefficient.

Q. (sarcastically) Granted I’m not an expert on strategy, General. But ultimate victory sometimes entails an inefficient use of resources. It’s better than giving up.

A. Agreed.

Q. Maybe you’d better explain yourself.

A. The Highborn have certain advantages, Director. What I wish to avoid is playing into those advantages.

Q. For instance?

A. For instance, they are superior soldiers in every conceivable way. Their strategies and tactics will probably prove superior throughout the conflict.

Q. Are you saying we can’t win?

A. Not at all.

Q. But if their strategies are superior, if they themselves are too… I don’t see how we can win.

A. History supplies us with several answers.

Q. By all means, please enlighten us, General.

A. We could liken the Highborn to the Spartiates of the ancient Greek world.

Q. Don’t you mean the Spartans?

A. No, Director. Spartiates were the full-fledged Spartans, the only ones with complete political rights and decision-making powers. They formed the core of the dreaded Spartan army, which was primarily composed of allies and perioeci.

Q. I’m afraid you’ve lost us, General.

A. Sir… Director, the Spartiates as a class dwindled over the centuries. As they dwindled, so did the efficiency of the dreaded Spartan army. Like the Spartiates, the Highborn are few in numbers.

Q. You call over two million few?

A. In comparison to us, yes. My point is this, Director: When the Athenian General Cleon took one hundred and twenty Spartiates prisoner on the island of Sphacteria—

Q. (interrupting) While we appreciate your historical acumen, General, please tell us in plain language what you’re trying to say.

A. (pause) The historical records tell us how to defeat superior soldiers, soldiers who lack sufficient numbers. The primary method is to trick or force them into attrition warfare. In other words, we must fight battles where the Highborn themselves, personally, take crippling losses. For instance, Roman Dictator Fabian defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal in just such a way as I’m suggesting. To state briefly, Hannibal’s superior cavalry obliterated Rome’s legions whenever they marched onto the plains. So Fabian kept the legions in the hills. He fought siege battles against cities that had gone over to the Carthaginians, sieges conducted behind carefully built earthen outer walls and trenches to nullify Hannibal’s cavalry in case they showed up. In the end, Fabian bled his deadly foe to the point where Rome could deal with him in the open. Hence the term: Fabian tactics. Or in modern terms, delaying tactics.

Q. Yes, we see your point.

Q. (different Director) Wait! What bearing does any of this have on the treasonous suggestion that our fleet units scurry into deep space?

A. Space battles are the wrong place for our attrition tactics, Director. This being so, we should save what fleet units we possess until such a time as the odds rework into our favor.

Q. (icily) I see.

Q. (different Director) Where do you suggest we stand and fight, General?

A. Planet-side. On Earth, Venus and Mercury.

Q. But that’s nonsense. They’ll simply bombard us from orbit.

A. Will they?

Q. We’re asking the questions. (pause) Why don’t you believe they’ll simply bombard us from orbit?

A. They need the Inner Planets. They need our industrial might in order to keep their fleet in being. Thus, ground troops will have to land to secure these things. That’s when we fight them.

Q. But orbital bombard—

A. Will give them great advantages for a time, granted. We’ll have to develop better beam and missile batteries to drive the Doom Stars away from near-Earth orbit and better point defense systems to destroy any orbital debris they rain upon us. Still, the essential point is attrition. If they want North American Sector, for instance, they will have to land troops and take it. We will of course fight them on the ground, in the cities, under the cities. Then, once they hold North American Sector, we will continue the struggle via guerrilla warfare, political assassination, terrorism—

Q. And once they own all Earth, General?

A. No. I’m not suggesting that.

Q. Perhaps I missed something then. You’ve implied they will beat us wherever we stand and fight. For how otherwise will they take North American Sector?

A. Initially, they will be victorious, yes. But you said two million soldiers before, Director. Two million soldiers cannot control forty billion people. Don’t forget that they must man their space fleet at the same time. After the first few victories and once their men are garrisoning what they’ve won, then we can overwhelm them here and there. We can assassinate a lone Highborn who visits a prostitute, say. Attrition, Directors. Bleeding the enemy to death one attack at a time. That’s why our space units must flee. An existing fleet, which we’ll have if we keep our ships, means the enemy will still have to worry about them.

Q. Yes, I’m beginning to see your strategy. But one thing worries me, General. Won’t they recruit, well, regular people into their armed forces?

A. Unquestionably.

Q. Then your entire theory is destroyed.

A. I don’t believe so. Because now we will operate in an area of our advantage.

Q. Which in your opinion is?

A. Secret police ruthlessness and superior political theory.

Q. Perhaps you’d better explain that, General.

A. In a word, egalitarianism. Modern Social Unity philosophy teaches us that one man is as good as the next. The Highborn have exactly the opposite view. They are an elite, a master race, if you will. (pause)

Q. Yes?

A. If you will permit one last historical example.

Q. Make your point, General Hawthorne.

A. Nazi Germany preached a racial superiority philosophy in the middle of the Twentieth Century. They invaded Socialist Russia—a precursor to our own political system, I might add—and won titanic battles. Yet the Nazi political philosophy insured the hatred of the people. The people were treated as inferiors even though the Germans were no different in terms of real ability versus the Russians.

In our day the Highborn actually are superior. No doubt, this will cause them to act arrogantly, especially as they rub shoulders with the conquered peoples. The masses will learn to hate the Highborn. What men fear they hate, and when a man is looked down upon, he hates that even more. Added to this is our modern thinking. People will become incensed at the idea that someone actually could be better. That, Directors, is one of our key advantages. Secondly, military governments seldom produce as ruthless a secret police as a one party political government. The Prussian General Staff thought they could outfox and be more ruthless than Lenin and his Bolsheviks back in World War One—

Q. We perceive your point, General. And that point really amounts to kill them on the ground.

A. Yes.

Q. But it entails risk.

A. Great risk. For their battle-skills may prove superior to our political skills. War hysteria and extreme paranoia of the supermen must be drummed into everyone until all Inner Planets hate the Highborn. We must ensure that our troops fight with fanatical zeal. In other words, they must fight to the last man and the last bullet in every encounter.

Q. Then we will win?

A. Yes. We will win.

End of transcript #4: Interrogation of Secret Police General James Hawthorne

4.

The weeks sped by with the news of the expanding civil war on everyone’s lips. Then a fateful day arrived for Marten Kluge and in a way for all humanity. Thanks to Hall Leader Quirn, Marten woke up in his cubicle at one in the morning, when the rest of his complex slept the sleep of the just.

His cubicle, the standard single rent, seemed barely big enough for Marten’s tall frame. So when the alarm buzzed he slid out of his sleep-shelf and in two steps reached the shower. No mementos, paintings or statuettes cluttered the tiny room or gave it a personal flair. It was stark, minimalist, clean, a holdover from his years of hiding in the Sun-Works Factory.

He went through his toiletries, ate breakfast, donned a gray jumpsuit, hardhat, and work boots. As he chewed his last bite of vitamin-reinforced algae bread, Marten squinted at the holoset—he hated its constant noise. By law and technology, the holoset was impossible to turn off. The set showed armored Social Unity infantrymen hiding behind rocks and dunes and lasering Highborn as they bounded toward them in powered battlesuits. The giant invaders crumpled one after the other, dead. Then fighters screamed over the scene, missiles zooming from their underbellies and slamming into huge tanks, which exploded soundlessly behind the commentary.

A talking head droned on the set: “Bitter fighting in the Mullarbor Plain yesterday forced the Highborn Third Army to retreat to their initial drop zone. Reinforcement fighters from Japan Sector helped stem this latest breakout attempt.

“In the east….”

Marten sneered as he picked up his lunch pail. According to the news, this was the third time this week the Highborn had retreated to their initial drop zone. How much farther could they go? He believed that instead of retreating, they advanced. He shrugged. It really didn’t matter what he thought.

He stepped out of his cubicle, closing Door No. 209 and strode along Corridor 118 until he reached the nearest conveyer belt. He rode it out of the twenty-story complex and onto the darkened street. Terraced gardens of sleeping tulips and marigolds drooped away from him, while dwarf palms rustled in the breeze. Gigantic fans connected to vents that led all the way to the surface created that breeze. High overhead, the sunlamps of Level Thirty-nine glowed at dim and soft “sleep” music played from hidden speakers. Automated street sweepers swished by Marten as he strode fast along the sidewalk. Passing him zipped a caravan of cyclists training for the upcoming Festival Games.

Others on the early morning shift passed Marten or headed in the same direction. Many shouted hearty greetings to each other and spoke of the latest Highborn defeat. Uniformed peacekeepers on patrol nodded approvingly. Once or twice, the black visor of a peacekeeper turned in Marten’s direction. He shouted no greetings to his fellow workers nor made any comments on the news. A tall peacekeeper spoke into a hand recorder. Marten wondered if he’d gained another demerit for unsociable behavior.

He entered the Far-Forty Lift Tube with twenty other people, a mixture of manual laborers and office workers. The door closed with a hiss and down they plunged. Ads played on the lift vid. A shouting emcee told of the prizes to be won on Tell-a-Friend. Then dancing girls in sequins wiggled by, singing of the wonders of algae protein shakes. “Mmmm, great!”

The lift stopped, people struggled out and others shouldered their way in. Hiss, close, down they plunged.

Fifteen minutes later Marten and five other men in gray jumpsuits, hardhats and boots strode out of the elevator. No music played down here; no vids or holos blared. The only sound was that of their boots drumming on the cool earth. They peeled away in different directions, one or two waving, and then Marten strode alone deep underground and in a semi-dark corridor.

His shoulders relaxed and the stiffness in his neck went away. His somber features softened. He walked and walked and walked, turning many times into many different corridors. Finally, in the distance he heard the grind and roar of Tunnel Crawler Six as it chewed into deep sedimentary rock.

This was end of the line for Greater Sydney. This was the bottom of the city, where Level Sixty was under construction.

Marten inserted his earplugs, snapped on his helmet lamp, fixed his oxygen mask and strolled closer to his monster.

The mighty Tunnel Crawler Six was a vast metallic worm. The huge segmented sections slithered after the main mouth that tore at the rock twenty-four hours a day. The chewed up parts went on an internal conveyer belt to the central dump. Some of the rock was mined for useful minerals. Some went topside for construction and the rest went down the deep-core mine, there to be turned into lava and added to the Earth’s interior. Pollution as such was nonexistent with the deep-core dump. Nuclear wastes, toxic chemicals, fuel sludge—anything unwanted or non-reusable—was simply dumped deep into the Earth and never worried about again.

Marten’s job wasn’t repairing Tunnel Crawler Six. His specs called for maintenance of the biocomp that ran the beast.

Fine particles of dust drifted in the corridor. Marten’s light beamed through it. It got thicker up ahead as he neared the machine’s maw. The clank and roar of the chewing mouth shook the air. No one could talk here. The roar became a blanket covering other noise. It brought… well, after awhile the roar seemed to fade in one’s thinking until it became a kind of silence.

“Silence is golden,” Marten mouthed under his oxygen mask.

For such an utterance—if he’d been heard—peacekeepers would surely have drawn their shock rods and beaten him down as anti-social.

Marten reached the cab, which was three hundred meters from the mouth, and hoisted himself up the rungs. The long beast shook and vibrated. He opened the cab and slipped in, shutting the heavy door behind him. Much of the roar and clanking faded away, although the vibrations were constant.

He sat at the controls and turned on the Bioram Taw2. The cab was cramped with coils, leads, tools and screens, but the control chair was heaven compared to anything Marten had ever used.

The Bioram Taw2 was a marvel of modern technology. Human brain tissue, from a criminal who’d been liquidated for the good of the state, had been carefully teased from the main brain mass. After a good personality-scrubbing, the brain tissue was embedded in cryo-sheets and surrounded by programming gel. One point five kilos of brain tissue had replaced tons of specialized control and volitional systems. Unfortunately, the cryocyorgic environment accelerated decay and eventual death. Still, biocomps were the wave of the future.

Here, away from prying eyes and busybodies, Marten had given rein to his impulses. He’d written brand new software for his Data-Five auxiliary computer. The auxiliary computer was only to be used as backup for the biocomp, but Marten had ignored that reg. In fact, he’d erased many of the D5’s programs in order to make room for his own. Then, with infinite patience, he’d teased memories out of the biocomp’s brain tissue.

The pros upstairs thought they’d scrubbed all personality from the biocomp’s gray matter. Marten knew it wasn’t as easy as that. His mother had known more about bio-computers than the so-called experts had, and she’d taught him before she’d been killed on the Sun-Works Factory.

Marten took off his work gloves, turned on the D5 and logged onto his Bio-Speak Program. Then he settled the keyboard on his knees, put the mike near his mouth and the audio-plugs in his ears.

It wasn’t what he learned from the Bioram Taw2 that made the difference. It was that after three long years he finally had someone to talk to again. No one in the cab marked demerits or awarded him honors for his views. What he said was what he felt, no less and no more.

Blake, the Bioram Taw2’s name, remembered little of his former life. He’d been married, had two kids and he’d run a big government agency, but of what exactly he couldn’t remember. During their talks, Blake upheld Social Unity, sort of. He mostly wanted to hear all about Marten and Molly Tan. Marten thought it ironic that the disembodied brain was a randy sex-fiend, but he never told Blake that.

Blake and he greeted one another this morning, talked about the news, the work, rambled about nothing for awhile, until finally Blake brought up Molly. He asked, “Why don’t you move in with her?”

“Because she’s not my wife yet,” said Marten for the umpteenth time.

“So?”

“So I think a man should commit first before he has sex with a woman.”

“What a perverse notion, Marten. Don’t ever tell your block leader that.”

“I’ll punch him unconscious is what I’ll do.”

“Why?” That asked eagerly.

“He’s making moves on Molly again, hinting that he can pull strings for her and maybe even for me if she’s nice. When she tells him no thank you, he hints that events can turn the other way just as easily.”

“Tut, tut. Women chase power, Marten. Surely, you know that. She’s just playing hard to get.”

“You don’t know Molly.”

Something like laughter came over the audio-feed. Marten wondered how Blake did that, because laughter had never been in the program.

“Marten, you punch your block leader and you’ll go to the slime pits. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Or maybe they’ll tear your brain down and hook you into a beast.” More of that mad laughter came over the line.

Then the cab shook as the beast tore into the rock with greater intensity than ever.

To Marten’s left, a holoset flickered into life. A small, angry, holo-image shouted silently.

Marten picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.

“Slow it down, Marten!”

“Roger,” said Marten.

In order to keep Blake’s mind off his fate, Marten spent the rest of the morning playing chess. He let Blake win three games in a row. Blake hated losing, but he hated even more someone letting him win. So Marten had to stretch out the games.

After lunch, Marten went on a routine inspection walk. His mind began to wander as he checked well-oiled segments of machinery… neatly maintained like his life. He didn’t know any more what he wanted. Not to live in Greater Sydney forever, that’s for sure. He wondered sometimes if he had the balls to take an excursion into the slums. Where had his daring gone? Had seeing his Dad’s head explode stolen something out of him?

Despite the so-called glories of Social Unity, slums had formed in paradise. Each city seemed to have them. Greater Sydney wasn’t an exception. In fact, for reasons unknown to the social engineers, Greater Sydney’s slums proved nastier than the common run. Sydney’s deep-core mine reached down to Earth’s mantle, drawing planetary thermal power. Many of the larger cities did likewise.

None of the levels reached anywhere near the mantle. The deep-core mine was a narrow shaft that went far beyond Sydney’s living space. The slums were always near the mine, or the upper part of it, anyway. Sydney’s slums were from Level Forty-one to Forty-nine and for a full kilometer outward. Police raids seldom helped keep control there. Social workers rarely ventured into the slums even if guaranteed army patrols. Hall and block leaders kept a low profile there. Ward officers seldom set foot in their own territory. Desperate people lived in the slums, uneducated, violent people with bizarre modes of thought and behavior. Gangs roved at night, youth gangs being particular bloodthirsty. Drug-lords hired people called mules, bodyguards and enforcers.

The honest, card-carrying citizens on the fringes who lived above and below the slums cried out for stronger police patrols. So at elevator openings and stairwells and at strategic tunnel doors thick knots of heavily-armed shock cops formed.

Marten wondered sometimes if the people in the slums had a greater form of freedom than those living in the better levels. Could he find the freedom he desired in the slums? Maybe he could, but maybe at too bitter of a cost.

Marten kicked a rock out of his way. Where had his courage gone?

Later, near quitting time, he turned left at a dark corridor and opened an emergency shed. Inside stood a makeshift kettle, a flame box underneath and strange fumes bubbling out of it. From a nearby bin, he took the last slices of algae bread and fed them into the kettle. He readjusted the still, switched bottles and examined a clear liquid in the light of his helmet lamp.

The liquid was clear, hard liquor: synthahol. He sniffed it and screwed up his nose. It had an awful odor. He put the flask to his lips and threw back his head. He didn’t dare taste it, but he relaxed his throat and let the synthahol slide into his belly. Oh, it burned so nicely in his stomach. Then the alcoholic fumes shot up to his brain like fire—Liquid fire!

He checked his chronometer, finished the contents of the flask and put it back under the drip.

Comfortably numb, he strode for the main lift-tube about a kilometer away. He then reversed the process of this morning. The neck and shoulder stiffening wouldn’t occur until the synthahol wore off. But the cramped lift, the peacekeepers, the endless corridors of his complex… these things remained dreadfully the same.

Marten doffed his clothes in his cubicle, showered, put on new clothes, ate a bowl of gruel and thought about calling Molly. He decided against it. Then his door chime sounded.

For a moment, he froze as fear crawled up his spine. Then he shrugged. They didn’t have anything on him he could think of. But if it was cops, well, then it was the cops. He was more thankful than ever for the synthahol. When they took him, as they surely must in the end, he wanted to play it cool. He slouched against the wall, set his face in a neutral mask and said:

“Enter.”

The door opened and beautiful Molly Tan stepped within. She wore shimmering sequins similar to this morning’s ad girls, and she wore a silky red skirt and silver slippers. She had short red hair combed to the left, freckles galore and a body to kill for. Her legs—Marten puckered his lips and imagined kissing them.

Molly hopped near and pecked him on the lips. Then she frowned.

“Marten, you’ve been drinking again.”

He shrugged.

“But you can’t be drinking this afternoon.”

“Why not?”

She pouted as she ran her hands over his chest. “Discussions start in fifteen minutes.”

“So?”

“Hurry, Marten, get dressed or we’ll be late.”

He almost said no, forget it, not today. Then they’d fight, Molly might storm away, and then that bastard, Hall Leader Quirn, would drape his slimy arm over her shoulder and console her at the discussions.

He threw on a synthetic leather jacket and boots.

“You should wear a shirt under the jacket,” she said.

Marten left the jacket open, exposing his lean stomach, and he didn’t comb his hair. Maybe it was the synthahol whispering. He dressed slum, the daring new style. It wasn’t the right sort of dress for discussions, maybe more an outing to the zoo.

Molly told him all that. He kissed her to silence. She told him to take a mint. She hated synthahol breath.

“And it’s illegal, Marten. You know that.”

“I know.”

“I should report you.”

“Then who will you have to move in with?”

“Oh, Marten!” she said, brightening, clapping her hands. “Are you serious? Do you want to move in today?”

He blinked at her in confusion, uncertain what he’d just said.

She pouted. “We can’t get married. Marten, that’s… that’s reactionary. Do you know what my friends would say?”

Marten took the mint, ushered her out the cubicle and in silence they rode the conveyer to the discussion room. He tried to take her hand. She jerked it away. He rubbed her shoulder, whispering, “Don’t be anti-social.”

She glared at him. He gave her a playful pinch. Finally, she relented and gave him a smile. He kissed her. She kissed him back.

They jumped off the conveyer and strolled to the large double doors of the discussion room. Crowds poured in. The women dressed in silky, knee-length skirts and slippers. Some had sequined blouses like Molly, others wore frilly blouses with the top three buttons open. Every female dressed in bright, “happy” colors. The men wore brown shorts and sandals, and typically yellow sleeveless shirts with red cloth-cuffs. Within the building ferns abounded everywhere. They hung from the high ceiling and lined the walls. Couples and triplets mingled freely. Giggling came from the hidden lanes created by the ferns. Pleasant, sing-along-humming issued from wall speakers.

When a chime sounded people moved to the center of the room, sitting on mats. The men sat cross-legged, the ladies tucked their legs under themselves. A few people frowned at Marten’s attire. More than one woman shook her head at Molly in sympathy. She shrugged, rubbed Marten’s shoulder and finally started scolding him for wearing such improper garments to discussions.

Molly brooded even as the speaker moved toward center stage. The speaker was a terrifying ogre of a woman: large, massively shouldered, with ponderous breasts and a big gut. She wore the tight-fitting red uniform with black epaulets of Political Harmony Corps. She stomped her black boots on the platform as if on parade. She came to a sudden halt and wheeled toward the crowd, glowering at them from beneath the low-slung brim of her black cap. She had heavy jowls that wobbled as she spoke. Her thick right hand rested on the butt of her holstered stunner. Her tiny black eyes, dots within folds of flesh, seemed to glitter as she searched for those who lacked social harmony.

“Depressingly formidable,” whispered Molly.

Marten squeezed her hand. Few here would dare joke about a political police officer. That Molly could was one of the reasons Marten liked her.

The PHC officer barked out in a drill parade voice, telling them how evil the Highborn were, how the genetic soldiers hated everything good and proper. Their political philosophy, as low and primitive as could be imagined, was based on the master-slave relationship. The Highborn could never win, everyone knew that… and on and on she roared. Finally, her voice broke as she burst into praise of the Directorate’s bold new plans that would throw these space deviants off the good old Earth.

Cued, Hall Leader Quirn stepped onto stage. His community persona was utterly different from his office presentation. Today he wore attire similar to the men but with the added features of a short “block leader” cape and his military style cap. He clapped loudly as he limped toward the major. The crowd leaped to its feet, clapping and shouting approval for the major’s speech. As Marten rose, Molly cheered beside him.

Quirn motioned them down as his voice came over the speakers.

“Thank you, Major Orlov, thank you. That was very informative. Yes, I understand now how in the end our military will defeat the Highborn. Their very… evil gives them a certain advantage over good folk like us, trusting folk that we are. How vile it was of them to have taken advantage of our good nature. But soon, very soon they will be defeated.”

“Correct!” barked Major Orlov.

Quirn and she vigorously shook hands on center stage. She dwarfed him like some medieval monster. Then he faced the crowd again. “Major, I’m sure that many, many of the folk of Hall C-Two hundred and seventeen have questions for you, burning questions that I’m certain only you have the expertise to answer.”

From her spot on the floor, Molly hissed at Marten, who swayed on his feet, not having yet sat down again like everyone else.

“Yes, that man over—why, it’s Marten Kluge,” said Quirn in surprise. “Dearest Marten, do you have a question for the major?”

A thin man in a yellow zipsuit hurried toward Marten. The man excused himself as he stepped over seated people until he shoved a mike under Marten’s nose.

“Uh…” said Marten, and it came over the wall speakers.

People laughed.

Quirn held up exquisitely clean hands—they shone as if lacquered. “There are no bad questions. Only questions that haven’t yet been asked.”

“Quite correct!” barked the major.

“Yes, I do have a question,” Marten said.

“Splendid!” cried Quirn. He nodded for Marten to go ahead and ask it.

“Don’t you say anything silly, Marten,” Molly said from the floor.

The mike picked that up and broadcast it throughout the room. Nervous laughter greeted her words.

“A woman’s wisdom,” shouted Quirn.

Clapping erupted everywhere from the women.

Marten growled into the mike. “Yeah, I got a question. How many times can the Highborn retreat to their drop zone? The news said three times already. That seems two times too many to me.”

Silence greeted his words.

Licking his lips in a nervous gesture, Quirn glanced at the major. She stared at Marten with obvious hostility.

Marten leaned his face toward the mike. “I know there aren’t any bad questions.”

As if pricked, Major Orlov snarled, “Far better to die fighting for political equality and social equity than to fall into the hated hands of the Supremacists! Humanity stands shoulder to shoulder against these caste masters, against the peerage of supposed genetic superiority. I for one refuse to buckle under these grandees, these supposed lords of creation. United together and no matter the cost, we will hurl these interlopers into the depths of space.”

Major Orlov’s pin-dot eyes shone. “How many times can the Highborn retreat to their drop zone? That, my arrogant friend, is a matter of state security and only told to those who need to know!”

“Ahhh,” went throughout the room.

Marten allowed Molly to drag him down beside her.

“How could you, Marten?” she said, tears brimming.

Marten might have been worried, but good old synthahol came to his rescue. He blanked out and time seemed to leap forward. The next thing he knew they mingled among the crowds, discussing what had been said. No one asked him about his question. Molly fidgeted and she kept touching his jacket until he zipped it.

Hall Leader Quirn limped up, a glass of punch in his hand. His eyes appeared glassy. Rumor said he sniffed dream dust, but surely, he’d not slipped a dose here. Beside him strode Major Orlov.

“Be careful, Marten,” Molly hissed into his ear.

“Ah, dear fellow,” said Quirn, slapping Marten on the shoulder. “What possessed you to ask such a question?”

“Sorry,” Marten mumbled. Beside him, Molly heaved a sigh of relief.

“Ah, well, must have been a hard day at work,” said Quirn, his right eye fluttering, a sure sign of dream dust usage.

PHC Major Orlov wasn’t so gracious. She planted herself in front of Marten, her burly arms akimbo. “I never believed there were alarmists. Not until I saw you.”

“Asking questions is wrong?” Marten meekly asked.

“Certain questions are. Any patriot knows that.”

Tears leaked from Molly’s eyes as people turned and stared.

“Molly!” cried Quirn. “Please don’t cry.” He moved forward as if to console her.

But Molly turned away and fled toward the nearest Lady’s Room. Marten took a step after her. A hard grip on his arm jerked him to a stop and spun him around.

“I’m speaking to you,” said the major.

Marten scowled, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Quirn limping after Molly.

“Can you comprehend the odds our soldiers face?”

“Huh?” said Marten.

People moved closer, interested in the information and wondering if Mad Marten would give this political policewoman something to think about.

“The odds, the difficulties, the danger.”

Marten eyed the major, and he wondered how much real information she was privy to. Certain that it would annoy her and maybe loosen her lips, he shrugged.

“Are you dense?” the major asked outraged.

“These are Supremacists we speak of,” Marten said, “deviants, I believe you said.”

“Yes, yes, of course they are. But surely you would agree that a rabid dog is dangerous.”

“Surely.”

“Then think of a dog bred for battle, and that dog rabid and running loose.”

“So the odds are bad?” Marten asked innocently.

The monstrous major decisively chopped the air.

“Orbital Highborn fighters scour the skies until nothing of ours can move. Powered troopers land behind any fixed positions we try to hold and in hours the surrounded units are annihilated.” She shook her head so her jowls wobbled. “They have complete fluidity, we die in…”

The faces around her had turned ashen, silent, still.

“Please,” said Marten, “continue. Your information is absorbing”

Major Orlov turned crimson and shot him a venomous glance. Then she turned and ponderously marched elsewhere.

Marten glanced around for a sign of Molly. Then his features hardened as he failed to spy Hall Leader Quirn. Marten strode to the nearest Lady’s Room as he considered the major’s revelations. It was as he’d suspected. The Highborn were winning, at least in Australian Sector. Rumors said they’d already taken Antarctica, New Zealand, Tasmania, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Their strategy didn’t seem difficult to decipher. Grab Earth’s islands first, because except for submarines the islands would be impossible to re-supply with Social Unity troops. The rumors he’d heard said that Earth’s surface vessels had all been destroyed—only the submarines had survived and could survive the Highborn orbital laser platforms that burned anything that moved. Other rumors said the Directorate’s high scientists devised new beam and missile batteries to drive the hated enemies away from Near-Earth Orbit. The news shows ominously stated that Political Harmony Corps intended the Highborn to gain no useful victories.

“Marten!” said a woman.

Marten turned. “Oh, hello Beth.”

Beth was Molly’s best friend. She constantly urged Molly to see someone else. Beth worked in records, wore her dark hair short and never smiled except during hum-a-longs when it was considered bad manners not to.

Beth eyed Marten’s leather jacket with distaste, hesitated and then moved closer.

“Really, Marten, don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

He didn’t want to argue with Beth. So he said, “Sometimes. Have you seen Molly?”

Beth took another step. “Marten… why do you have to make it so hard for Molly?”

“Beth, please, not now.”

“No, listen for once. She’d like you to move in with her. But your insistence that you get married first, Marten! That’s so….”

“Reactionary?”

“It’s worse than that. What if she wants to see other people?”

“What?” he said. “Like who?”

“See. That’s what I’m talking about. We all belong to each other. To insist upon marriage—you don’t own her, Marten.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

Maybe it was the synthahol, because he wasn’t sure why he asked, “Haven’t you ever wanted to belong solely to one person? To be a team, you and your partner, against the world?”

Beth drew back in horror. “We’re all one, Marten. No one is better than anyone else.”

“Yes, but—”

“How dare you want to be…” she sputtered for the right word “…elitist!”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Do you think you’re the only one good enough for Molly?”

“Beth…”

“I think she should see Quirn more.”

“More? What do you mean more?”

Beth blinked in surprise. “Uh, what I mean is—”

“She’s been seeing Quirn?”

“Not seeing, really.”

With his heart hammering, Marten turned and glanced for sight of the hall leader.

Beth plucked at his sleeve. “She can’t just see one person. People might think her odd. Really, Marten, sometimes I think you’re corrupting her.”

Marten could hardly think as he stalked away.

“Don’t be elitist, Marten! Or—Where’s the major?” he heard Beth ask someone.

Quirn! He couldn’t believe Molly was actually seeing him, maybe even kissing him. Rage flared within him. He hunted for the hall leader. Then he saw ferns thrash and he heard a muffled, “Stop. Not here.”

Hall Leader Quirn struggled to hold onto Molly.

Several quick strides brought Marten near. He yanked back the fern.

“Marten!” said the hall leader, his features a mixture of rage, surprise and drugged lethargy.

Marten lunged at Quirn.

“Marten, no!” Molly cried.

“Take your hands off me,” Quirn warned, who finally released Molly to defend himself. “I can—”

He never finished. Marten slugged him in the mouth. Quirn slammed against the wall. Marten grabbed the front of Quirn’s shirt and…

“You!”

Marten looked over his shoulder.

With her sidearm stunner, PHC Major Orlov shot Marten in the back.

5.

Each day the forty billion people of Sol III consumed billions of kilograms of food. The government’s nightmare—even before the civil war—was where to find all those calories. Earth’s environment was strained to the maximum and still there wasn’t enough to go around. A hundred of the solar system’s biggest gigahabs orbited the planet. On the gigahabs were fish farms, wheat farms, chicken farms and rice farms churning out food around the clock in order to provide the teeming hordes with their daily bread. Still that wasn’t enough. Beef had vanished long ago for the average man. Fish, chicken and rabbit returned more meat per bushel of feed than a steer did. Also, cows weighed ten times more than goats and ate ten times as much feed. Unfortunately, a cow only produced four times as much milk as a goat. For the same amount of feed, a goat produced twice what a cow could. For this reason, Earthmen in 2349 drank goat milk and ate goat-derived cheese.

Breakthrough food technologies became stopgap measures. Massive starvation would have occurred but for humanity’s creativity. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” went the ancient saying. And men invented with a passion in the area of food production.

In the end, one of the oldest foods in the chain came to humanity’s rescue. It happened partly for another basic need: oxygen. Near each major city gargantuan algae vats were constructed underground. In order to increase growth, powerful sunlamps burned every minute of the rotation cycle. Many names abounded for these life-saving, sustenance-rich algae a vicious, thick, goopy scum that clogged all known machinery. The nearest to the truth in terms of its rawest form was pond scum. Everything about this high-grade algae production required around the clock maintenance. From the heat flats, to the chutes that drained excess algae to the settling tanks, to the processing bins, the churn cycle and then the constantly cleaned canals that brought the vitamin-rich slop to the enhancing vats. Robotic machinery and androids cared for ninety-seven percent of the process. The last three-percent took flesh and blood workers in slick-suits slaving harder than any Egyptian had raising the pyramids.

The slime pits became one of the supreme teaching tools for Social Unity. Reform through labor, first raised to an art centuries ago by Mao Zedong in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, now once more came into its own in the middle of the Twenty-fourth Century.

For those who found normal social interaction intolerable, for those too thickheaded to understand the beauty of the system, well, a long stint in the slime pits often cured them of their pathological malaise. Perhaps as importantly, for the first time many of them performed a socially useful function. It wasn’t nice or easy. Sometimes, regrettably, workers lost lives to drowning, heat exhaustion, algae gorging, excess bleeding from torn limbs in the choppers, red-syrup lung, sludge parasite and a vicious form of black gangrene. Studies showed that unless the trainees bonded quickly with their counselors, their probability for survival was minimal. Upon initiation, each trainee or student was encouraged to develop the proper work ethic and enthusiasm for his instructor.

Marten Kluge found himself placed among the incorrigibles, due in large measure to Major Orlov backing up Hall Leader Quirn’s testimonial. No one thought Marten’s odds very good for survival, least of all Marten Kluge. But he’d be damned if he were going to just lie down and die.

6.

For four days, Marten Kluge uttered no word to anybody. They cut his rations in half, quartered them, and then they told him he could eat when he decided to cooperate and talk. Stubbornly, day and after day, he kept his lips shut and his eyes peeled. His cellmates stole food from the refectory, he discovered on his fifth day after the judgment. On the eighth day, he successfully performed his first theft from them. The day they caught him started ordinarily enough.

The squad worked in the heat flats for ten hours straight, twice the legal limit. Exhausted, they dragged themselves through decontamination, peeled off their slick-suits and staggered under the showers. Seven men of various shapes, sizes and ages slumped against the tiles as icy water needled their skin. Marten tilted his head back and gulped water. His blue eyes were bloodshot. His skin was blotchy and his stomach seemed glued to his spine.

The water stopped. They shuffled to the vents and like patient animals endured the heated air. When it quit, they donned coarse, itchy tunics and marched barefoot to their cell. Each man crumpled to his mat on the steel floor and fell asleep.

A klaxon woke them. They rose, with black circles around their eyes, and they shuffled out of their cell for dinner. Marten brought up the rear. Just before reaching the door, he knelt, felt the open stitching of the nearest mat and drew a hidden wafer, popping it into his mouth.

“So it’s you!”

Startled, Marten looked up.

A short, swarthy, stocky youth glared at him. He was Stick, a knifeboy from a pocket gang in the slums.

Armored guards stood outside, as did over a hundred men and women trooping out of their cells to dinner. Now wasn’t the moment to fight. Stick knew it, so did Marten, but Stick didn’t seem to care. He launched himself into the cell, aiming a karate kick at Marten’s head. Marten dodged, and the foot slammed against his shoulder and spun him to the floor.

Stick snarled, “Where I come from we kill thieves.”

Marten staggered to his feet. He felt lightheaded and his vision was blurry. He was taller than Stick, probably weighed more, but the scars on Stick’s body had come from a hundred different street fights.

In the corridor, there was shouting and shrill whistle blasts, and then the loud zaps of shock rods striking flesh.

Stick roared a battle cry and rained a flurry of blows at Marten. Smack, smack, smack, Marten’s cheek stung. He grunted as a fist snapped into his stomach. His ribs ached where Stick connected with his heel. Then red despair boiled into Marten. He gave an inarticulate cry as he charged the knifeboy. Knuckles thudded atop his head. Then Marten lifted Stick off his feet and shoulder-slammed him against the wall. He grappled as Stick gouged with his fingernails.

“Stop!” shouted the guards, blowing whistles as they piled into the room.

Neither man heeded the call. So shock rods fell on them, stunning them into submission. Armored guards separated them and hauled them to their feet and forced-marched them out of the cell and down the corridor filled with open-mouthed trainees. Marten glared wildly at everyone. Stick had eyes only for Marten. The look promised murder.

A guard twisted Marten’s arm behind his back. Marten ground his teeth together, refusing to cry out.

“Think you’re a tough bastard, huh?”

Marten remained silent.

The guard twisted harder.

Marten yelled. The guard laughed in his ear. Marten struggled to free himself, and to his amazement, the guard let go. Marten turned toward his tormenter. Shock rods hit him in the face. He saw their black visors and the gleaming white teeth of their sadistic smiles. Then he blanked out into unconsciousness.

7.

Marten woke to the sound of a hissing hypo. Groggily, he realized someone had shot him full of stimulants. He was also aware of a body beside him. He checked and saw Stick sneer. They sat on a bench together.

“You’re meat,” said Stick.

“The prisoners will not speak unless they are spoken to.”

It was an effort, but Marten swung his eyes toward the front. Ogre-sized Major Orlov sat there, her black cap snug over her beady eyes. Brutality shone on her face. Behind her stood two, red-uniformed PHC thugs, men with the zealous glare of the hypnotically adjusted. They were in a small room, the lights bright and the walls bare.

“Marten Kluge, the State believes that you are worse than an incorrigible.”

Marten said nothing concerning her statement. He was too shocked and dismayed to discover her here.

Major Orlov, her ham-like hands resting on her knees, shifted her attention to Stick. “What could possibly drive a trainee to strike another member of society?”

Stick took a leaf from Marten’s book, saying nothing.

Major Orlov nodded curtly, as if confirming a suspicion. “Intransigence is punishable many different ways.”

Stick’s eyes darted around the cell.

“On the other hand, cooperation shows willingness to reform, which means the incorrigible might possibly be returned to the labor battalion he originally came from.”

“Uh…” Stick shifted on the bench. The two thugs behind the major grew tense. Stick’s shoulders slumped in a submissive way. The guards relaxed and the major stretched her lips in what she surely assumed was a smile.

“We had an argument,” Stick said slowly.

The major’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Does Marten Kluge slack off during work hours?”

Stick shrugged.

“No. Mannerisms don’t interest me.”

Stick stared at her.

“Truth interests me. Factual, precise, measurable truth.” She glanced at Marten.

He glowered, but he didn’t glower at her. In fact, he didn’t really listen to her. He stared straight ahead and let rage consume him. His eyes grew glossy and his breathing deepened. He let rage wash over his thinking as he brooded on how much he hated everyone here. How everyone here was against him and plotted to thwart him. They tried to make him talk. He would never talk. He would rather they slice open his belly than give them the satisfaction of hearing him talk. They tried to subdue his will. They had taken away all his personal freedom. No. He refused. He wouldn’t budge a millimeter.

Major Orlov pursed her lips. “The truth is both of you broke regulations. These regulations are not frivolous guides haphazardly written. Indeed not! They are here to reform you. But we can only reform you if you will help, if you will cooperate. Truth…. It is a precious commodity. Those who cooperate will only wish to speak truths. Now, I will give you each a chance to tell me factual, actual truth.”

Marten breathed heavily through his nose. For the moment, he subsisted on rage.

Stick, however, thoughtfully rubbed his chin. He eyed Marten and then he judged the major and her two killers.

“You want the truth?” asked Stick.

Major Orlov bared her teeth. “At this moment we attempt to solve deep-seated issues. I admit to a personal interest—I wish to show the sluggards who run Reform how to… how to correct an incorrigible.” She glanced at Marten, before she continued with Stick.

“I tell you frankly, the tank awaits both of you if we fail. But you must never think of the tank as punishment. Indeed not! The tank is merely one of society’s many tools of reform. Unless each of you is reformed, we have failed in our assigned task. I hate failure. It mocks the State, which is the engine that gives the greatest good to the most people. So yes, truth must now step forth so that the proper correctives can be applied to each of you.”

Marten vaguely understood that hoarding food was punishable by death. Not that he planned on turning Stick over to them. To cooperate was the first step toward giving in.

Stick seemed to think about his answer as he gauged the major. “We don’t get along.”

Major Orlov leaned forward. “Indeed. Why did you choose that moment to publicly reveal your dislike?”

Stick hung his head as if defeated. “He spoke profanities.”

Major Orlov sat straighter, her interests obviously engaged. “Marten Kluge spoke to you, verbally?”

Stick nodded miserably. He was a good actor.

Major Orlov scowled and snapped her thick fingers. One of her red-suited killers stepped forward.

“Give me your agonizer.”

The man placed a small disc with a dial into her huge hand. She twisted the setting onto high as the two thugs swung behind Stick and held him fast.

“Mannerisms annoy me. They indicate frivolity.”

She placed the agonizer to his neck. Stick arched his back and winced horribly, but he made no noise other than a croak. Finally, she removed the agonizer and handed it back to the thug.

She addressed Marten. “What did you say to him?”

Marten glowered at the wall.

“My patience is not unlimited, Mr. Kluge.” After a moment, Major Orlov pursed her lips. She asked Stick, “What did he say to you?”

“It don’t matter.”

Her tone turned glacial. “I will determine that.”

“He called me a dirty gook.”

“Ah… a racial epithet?”

“Yeah.”

She swung back to Marten. “That is a serious crime, Mr. Kluge. You shall spend ten days in the tank unless you admit to your racial bigotry and make a formal apology to everyone in squad eleven.”

The glassy look left Marten’s eyes. He grew aware of the conversation, playing it back in his mind, as it were. He glanced at Stick, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. A small, tight smile played on Marten’s lips.

“And what do you find so amusing?” asked the major.

Marten fixed his gaze upon her.

“Here, Mr. Kluge, insolence is a costly attitude to sustain.”

Major Orlov could hurt him, hurt him very much. Despite that, Marten let his contempt for her freeze onto his face.

She flushed. She leaned forward and deliberately slapped him across the face. Marten checked his impulse to leap upon her. Instead, he laughed.

She bolted upright, seemed on the verge of falling upon him and then whispered, “Into the tank with him this very instant.”

8.

Nine-foot tall glass cylinders lined the sides of a sterile auditorium. In the middle stood what seemed to be an emergency medical operating theater, complete with green-clad doctors and nurses. Several interns strolled around a working cylinder.

As he was marched past them, Marten saw green-colored water pouring into the cylinder from the top, splashing upon a naked woman inside. The water swirled up to her thighs. Drenched and wretched she worked the lever of a hand-pump built into the cylinder. At every stroke, water exited via a tube and drained out through the auditorium floor.

Marten’s scrotum tightened and he stumbled.

From behind, Major Orlov steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. He felt her breath on his neck.

“Ten days in there, Mr. Kluge. Either that or speak to me now.”

Marten calculated the fall of the water. It wasn’t gushing, but it was constant. He felt dizzy, lightheaded. He considered the medical unit. They wouldn’t let him die, it seemed. So he steeled himself for the worst and kept repeating in his mind how he’d never give in.

“Foolish,” said Major Orlov, perhaps noting the set of his jaw. “There are constant miscalculations. Often the trainee dies of heart failure. Sometimes the pumping malfunctions and more water pours into the tank than was required. Before anyone can draw the trainee to safety, he or she drowns.”

A small, balding doctor with a clipboard stepped up. He kept blinking his eyes rapidly. He said hello and explained the pump to them, the water temperature—icy—and that at times “elements” were added to the tank to increase the discomfort and thereby help prod the recalcitrant to speedier reform.

“Any questions then?” asked the doctor when he had finished.

Marten stared rigidly ahead.

“He refuses to communicate,” Major Orlov explained.

“Indeed? Interesting.”

“Incorrect, Doctor. It is social maladjustment.”

“True, true.” The doctor, with his right cheek twitching, indicated that Marten should enter the tank. Two beefy interns rolled a platform beside the cylinder. They ripped off Marten’s tunic, attached a harness, lifted him with a winch and released him into the nine-foot tube.

An intense feeling of shame filled Marten. Distorted through the glass he saw Major Orlov and the doctor inspecting him, Orlov pointing at his privates. Marten turned his back on them and studied his surroundings. The glass was cold and the floor was wet and slimy under his bare feet. Above, the interns slotted a stopper over the top.

“Are you ready, Mr. Kluge,” the doctor asked over an intercom.

Marten refused to acknowledge him.

“Hmm, I see. Well, in your case, Mr. Kluge, the simple expedient of verbal communication will end your stay. Otherwise—” the doctor glanced at his clipboard. “Ten days?” he asked Major Orlov. “Is that warranted?”

“You exceed your authority, Doctor.”

“No one has survived ten days in the tank. It’s physically impossible.”

Marten glanced over his shoulder at them.

Major Orlov smiled as her eyes lingered on his buttocks. “Yes, that gained your attention. You are a madman, Mr. Kluge. This time you will have to talk.”

“I must protest,” said the doctor, his cheek twitching.

Major Orlov raised her eyebrows.

After a moment, the doctor backed away, his tic worsening. He turned and strode to his place at the medical center.

Major Orlov regarded Marten once more. “Ten days, Mr. Kluge. My estimation is that you’ll break in three.” She waited a moment longer, glanced at the muscles of his back, then turned and made a gesture to someone.

Water gurgled overhead. Marten glanced up as green-colored water splashed him in the face. He groaned. His facial bones ached as if someone had slammed a board against his face. The water swirled at his feet, crept up his ankles and lapped at his calves faster than he’d expected. He grasped the lever. It was a little higher than waist level. The pump resisted movement. He strained, and he found the angle awkward. Then water sluiced out of the tube at the bottom. He worked faster. More water drained away. He pumped as fast as he could. It was hard, and soon he was gasping. By then, the water was no longer icy.

The intercom came on and Orlov’s voice was insidious. “How long do you think you can keep that up, Mr. Kluge?”

Startled, Marten saw that the major still watched him.

“I must admit that you have an excellent physique. Perhaps there are other ways for you to exit the tube.”

Marten ignored her. The idea of sexually wrestling with the major, a brutal woman lacking all femininity, nauseated him.

So he pumped, and time soon lost all meaning. His muscles ached and after each stroke, he yearned to quit. The hours grew second by agonizing second. Sweat poured. His shoulders, arms and torso felt as if they were afire. His eyes burned from lack of sleep. His stomach growled and gurgled by the minute—he was ravenous. When he wanted water, he tilted his head and drank. When he needed to relieve himself, he did so. A hundred different times he almost turned and shouted that okay, yes, he’d talk. Each time something hard and unyielding inside him refused. From time to time, an intern or doctor passed by, stopped, watched a moment or two, sometimes nodded, sometimes shook their head, often marking a slate and finally strolling on. Twice the major returned. She spoke to him over the intercom. He ignored her until she went away. Minute after minute he levered the handle up and down in stupefying monotony. After twenty-eight hours, sharp pains knifed into his back. He groaned, came close to collapsing, but then he gritted his teeth and pumped on.

Finally, he stopped and let the water cascade upon him. It rose to his thighs, his stomach, up to his chest.

“I suggest you pump quickly, Mr. Kluge,” the doctor said over the intercom. “The water acts as a drag and will make pumping later many times more difficult.”

The work stoppage felt so glorious that Marten almost let the water reach his neck. He didn’t really believe they’d let him drown. Then a sudden and elemental wish to live bid him grasp the pump and move it! Pain exploded in his back and shoulders. His forearms knotted and the lever slipped out of his grasp. A desperate cry tore from the depths of his being. He concentrated on grasping the handle and pumped with a will. Water touched his chin. He pumped as air wheezed down his throat. He pumped as the horrible pain in his forearms receded. He pumped as ever so slowly the water inched down to his chest, his stomach and finally to his mid-thighs. Then he could no longer keep up the ferocious pace. He leveled off and tried to think. It was impossible. Life was one long agonized blur of pain and pumping.

Later, through the distortion of his glass and that of the cylinder beside him, he saw a woman drowning. Her hair floated freely as she banged her fists against the stopper. Marten released his pump and banged on his glass. A nearby intern faced him. Marten pointed at the woman. The intern followed the finger, and his mouth opened in shock. The intern shouted. Marten couldn’t hear the words. Men rushed the platform to the tank.

As Marten pumped, he watched them take her out, carry her to the medical center and work on her. After a short time, the doctor shook his head and covered her face with a blanket. Terror filled Marten. The woman had drowned, died, ceased living! They hadn’t paid enough attention. He became depressed and paranoid. He might die in here. Perhaps he should talk. The very idea stole his strength. He felt his pains more than before. His will grew weak.

“What’s the use?” he whispered.

He turned his head to call, but then a burst of pride made him clamp his mouth shut. He pumped the lever. His hands were like lumps and his arm muscles quivered. Air burned down his nostrils. The endless rhythm was agony, and the agony stole pieces of his pride minute after minute. The woman had died. He would die soon. Up and down, up and down. The sheer exhaustion was too much. He couldn’t do this anymore. It was time to give up.

At that precise moment, Major Orlov marched into the room and halted at his cylinder. Perhaps she saw his despair. She grinned, and her eyes roved over his nakedness. Marten closed his eyes, refusing to look at her. But… yes, if that’s what it took. A great and mighty weariness stole over him. He opened his mouth and croaked, “You win.”

In the silence, the water rose around him. Marten opened his eyes. Major Orlov had left. He wildly looked around. She wasn’t in the room.

Marten pumped, and through the fog of exhaustion, he considered what that meant. Slowly, a new form of pride renewed his will and gave him more energy. He checked the wall clock. Thirty hours he’d been here. Could he go ten days?

“Pump,” he whispered.

He did.

At thirty-one hours, a final numbing fog came over Marten. Just a little longer, he told himself.

Then a thud, a shiver, shook the room and shook the cylinder. Marten blinked, wondering what had happened. The doctors, nurses and interns looked alarmed and pointed at the ceiling. Marten glanced up. He didn’t understand what caused their concern. Miraculously, the water falling onto his head slowed. It slowed and became a trickle. The trickle stopped. Marten didn’t understand. He didn’t need too. He simply collapsed and fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of interns removing the stopper. Groggily he looked up. They lowered hooks. He grabbed hold and they lifted him.

Major Orlov brooded at the bottom of the platform. Red-uniformed PHC thugs stood beside her.

“This is highly unusual,” the doctor told her.

Major Orlov glared at him. The doctor fidgeted with his clipboard

An intern draped a tunic over Marten. The thugs each grabbed an arm and marched him out of the auditorium and down a hall. Marten could barely walk. The muscles in his back, shoulders and arms had frozen. The thugs deposited him in the interrogation room with the bench. This time, however, Stick wasn’t there. The two held him up. Otherwise, he’d simply have fallen over.

“Your time runs short, Mr. Kluge.”

Marten wasn’t sure, but Major Orlov sounded desperate. A spark of something bade him keep his mouth shut.

“Give me your agonizer.”

Incredibly, the thug seemed reluctant. But at this point, Marten couldn’t be sure about anything.

Major Orlov twisted the setting and touched the agonizer to his chest. Marten bellowed and fell backward.

“I have decided to accelerate the process,” said the major.

The two thugs picked Marten off the floor and set him back on the bench. Smiles twitched across their lips.

Major Orlov lowered the agonizer for another touch. Marten squirmed as they held him tight.

“Well, Mr. Kluge?”

Marten stared at the agonizer. It moved closer, closer—

The door opened, and a guard said, “You’re needed, Major.”

Major Orlov hesitated. Then she tossed the agonizer to a thug. She glared at Marten and hurried out of the room.

After several moments, the red-uniformed PHC men moved to the door. They whispered urgently together. Somewhere outside a klaxon blared. Marten lay down on the bench. They didn’t say anything about it. So he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

9.

Months away from Earth in terms of space travel time—Tanaka Station orbited blue Neptune. Vast cargo ships circled this commercial clearinghouse. In the distance, a fat ice-skimmer worked its way up from the blue mass of the gas giant.

The Ice Hauler Cartel, which owned much of the Neptune System, also owed Tanaka Station. The habitat was run on strict capitalist lines. The general principle of the Solar System seemed to be that the farther one left the Inner Planets behind the purer became the capitalism. Unfortunately, for a first class-rated space pilot from Jupiter, this “pureness” came as a shock.

Osadar Di huddled miserably in a bar close to the docking bay where she’d berthed her ship. The owner of the vessel had just departed, leaving her in a dim cubicle. She held onto a beer, but she hadn’t sipped it. Around her in the packed bar mingled pilots, dockworkers, sex objects and gamblers. It was different from the Jupiter Confederation where she’d been born and raised, and only recently fled. The bar was like a caricature of an Old Asteroid Mining vid she’d watched as a child. The pilots and gamblers played cards, cheating, drinking and getting into fistfights. In other cubicles, shady deals were being hatched and nefarious plots conceived.

Osadar Di had short dark hair, dark worried eyes and an unremarkable nose. On the tallish side, she had long shapely legs in a tan jumpsuit. Along with her excellent piloting skills, she’d developed a deep-seated paranoia. Beginning at the orphanage, life had been out to get her. Now she was certain her bad luck had run out—from now on she’d have miserable luck.

Her friends had died in the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit. She remembered that time. The Jupiter Confederation had recognized Martian independence, and the rulers had sent a massive expeditionary fleet to the Red Planet. Social Unity had outfitted a reinforcing fleet, and the First Battle of Deep Mars Orbit had surprised everyone. The allied vessels of Mars and Jupiter won an annihilating victory. Back then, Osadar had wondered if she’d made a mistake, as she’d already fled the Jupiter system to escape service. Social Unity had outfitted a huge retaliatory fleet and sent it to Mars. The next battle with its grisly results had proven her wisdom. Ever since then, the Jupiter Confederation had scrambled to rebuild its fleet and had scoured everywhere for pilots.

Two months ago on a seedy hab in the Saturn system—still much too near Jupiter and its extradition treaties—Osadar Di had hired out to a disreputable ship owner who wished to travel to Neptune. Presently, Neptune orbited farther away from the Sun than even icy-dark Pluto with its eccentric orbital path. Now she waited for the ship owner to return from selling his cargo so he could come and pay her.

Osadar stared at the beer. What was the point of being alive anyway? She’d just suffer more. Maybe she’d be better off dead with her friends than sitting in this dump waiting for some sleaze ball who would probably run off with her wages anyway.”

“Osadar Di?”

Startled, she looked up. A beefy man wearing an armored vest and a visored helmet stared down at her. He held a computer slate and seemed to be studying it. A massive stunner rode on his hip.

“W-Who are you?” she stammered.

“Tanaka Station Security. Are you Osadar Di?”

“Yes. But how do you know me?”

He hooked the computer slate to his belt and drew the stunner. “Come with me, please.”

“What did I do?”

“Do you refuse to comply?”

“No, I—”

He waved the stunner. “Stand up and come with me.”

A dejected relief filled her. Here it was—the worst she’d been expecting. All her friends were long dead: space debris still floating around Mars. Why should it be any different for her? Only… she set her face into a grim mask as she marched out of the bar and into a tiny bubble-built vehicle on the street. She had to place her hands into the dash restraints and then they were off. Despite her paranoia, there was a spark within her, a willingness to resist. She was going to go down to some dark fate—she knew that with certainty—but that didn’t mean she had to like or accept it.

“Can you at least tell me what I’ve done?” she asked.

Upon entering the vehicle, he’d punched in the destination code and now watched the various pedestrians, centering upon the slinky women in outrageously revealing costumes. He glanced at her with his dark visor long enough to ask, “You were the pilot, right?”

“What do you mean?”

He snorted and went back to examining the skimpily-clad women who accosted the various dock and office workers along the street.

“Did… Did someone turn me in? Is that it?”

“Save it for the judge,” he said.

Thankfully, the ride was short. By the time they jerked to a halt in front of a squat gray building, Osadar was certain the ship owner had done something illegal, been caught and then spilled his guts in an effort to wriggle out of whatever he was in. In other words, he’d probably sold her out.

The security man released her from the dash restraints and marched her inside. A knot of security people stood to the side by a water dispenser. Other people in outlandishly long suits with enormous collars held onto computer folios and bantered together. Two men wore long red robes that reached the tiled floor. They wore large hats with three sprouting prongs and seemed older and graver than anyone else. Several burly-shouldered, combat-armored protectors hovered at their elbows. Everyone showed deference to the two robed men.

“In here,” said her security man, pointing to a door that had just swished up.

Osadar followed him into a tiny room—it seemed more like a closet—and sat down beside a bored old woman at a computer terminal. She wore a loose orange dress and wore silver bangles on her wrists that clashed as she typed on the keyboard.

“Name?”

“Osadar Di.”

The old woman typed that in and studied the screen. “From the Jupiter system, Taiping Hab?”

“Yes, but—”

“Pilot rated first class?”

“That’s right.”

“You piloted the Manitoba from the Saturn system, Winnipeg Hab?”

“Yes,” Osadar said with a sinking feeling.

“Do you freely admit to smuggling—”

“The owner lied to me about his cargo.”

The old woman glanced at Osadar. Then jangle, jangle, jangle went the bangles as she typed some more. “Your credcard number, please.”

“I don’t see what bearing that has on this.”

The old woman wouldn’t look up, but she said, “Dear, don’t be a trouble-maker. Just give me your card number.”

“MC: 3223-233-6776.”

The old woman typed that in, jangle, jangle, jangle, and she blinked at the screen. Her face tightened.

The security man noticed. He’d been leaning against the wall, watching. He groaned as he stepped near. “No credit?” he asked.

“None,” said the old woman.

“What!” said Osadar Di. “That’s impossible. I have over three thousand credits.”

“Deserters don’t carry credits out of the Jupiter Confederacy,” the old woman said sourly.

“That’s just great,” complained the security man.

“Why are you upset?” Osadar asked him.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her out of the room. The hall was empty now. She squinted. Far down the corridor, she saw the ship owner, a fat man with baby soft skin. He spoke urgently to one of those people with huge collars.

“Hey!” Osadar yelled.

The ship owner looked up and had the decency to blush. Then he turned his back on her and gently led the huge-collared man with the computer folio farther down the corridor.

Osadar tried to follow. The security man tightened his grip. “Forget it,” he said.

“He sold me out.”

“What did you expect?”

“Huh?” Osadar asked, looking into the security man’s dark visor.

“His fine was stiff. So he must have sold information to the court.”

“You mean about me?” Osadar asked angrily.

“You piloted the ship, didn’t you?”

“He hired me.”

“So you admit your guilt. I fail to understand your anger.”

Osadar shook her head. She knew this would happen. It was fated.

He marched her down a different hall. By a side door, they entered a larger room. In the front, a short man in a black robe and with thick gray hair sat behind a computer terminal. The rest of the room contained tables and benches. The two long-robed men with their three pronged hats sat apart in throne-like chairs. Their protectors stood behind them. The others sat at the tables, with computer styluses poised.

The black-robed man, the judge surely, studied his screen as Osadar entered.

“Osadar Di, a deserter from the Jupiter Confederacy Military Branch,” the security man said.

“That’s not right,” Osadar said.

“The smuggler?” asked the judge in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

“Yes, your Honor,” said the security man. “She piloted the Manitoba from the Winnipeg Habitat, Saturn system.”

“Look,” Osadar said, trying to use a reasonable tone, “I think there’s been a mistake.”

“Silence,” said her security man, shaking her. “Stand over there.” He pointed to a red square near the judge.

Osadar debated refusing. She shrugged and stepped deliberately into the red square.

The small judge read from his screen. “Pilot rated first class. Induced into the Jupiter Confederacy Military Force for orbital fighter duty, Two-Five-Twenty-three Thirty-nine, went AWOL the same year. Pilot of the Manitoba, Winnipeg Habitat. Charge: smuggling dream-dust onto Tanaka Station. Status: Vagrant.”

“No credits?” asked a huge-collared woman.

“None,” said the judge.

Another of the huge-collared people, a man, raised his hand.

“Yes?” asked the judge.

“I’d like her to disrobe.”

The judge nodded to Osadar.

She frowned in disbelief, certain that she hadn’t heard correctly.

“Disrobe,” the judge told her.

“What do you mean?” Osadar asked.

“Mean?” asked the judge. “I mean take off your clothes. All of them.”

“B-But why?”

“So the gentleman over there can assess your worth.”

Osadar stared at the man. Between his purple suit and orange hair, his face looked pasty. His small eyes burned hotly as he licked his lips at her.

“No,” Osadar said, disgusted.

The judge raised his bushy eyebrows.

“Contempt of court?” he asked. “That’s a stiff fine. I’m afraid your former employer sold us all the information we need. If you can’t pay, and I don’t see how a creditless person can, that means immediate spacing.”

Outrage filled Osadar. “For not taking off my clothes?”

“Of course not,” said the judge, “for your contempt of court.”

Blank incomprehension filled Osadar.

“Come now,” said the judge in a reasonable tone. “Why the surprise? You have no funds for accommodation. As a deserter, no one will hire you as a pilot. Who would dare with your history? You might simply mutiny and sell the ship cargo elsewhere? Your only hope is indenture status with one of the services.”

“I’m to become a slave?”

“No, of course not,” said the judge. “Indenture status. We in the Neptune System allow anyone to advance if he or she is willing to work. I imagine the gentleman from Sex Objects Incorporated merely wants to see if you have the, er…” the judge coughed into his fist. “If you qualify as a possible… employee.”

“You mean as a prostitute?”

“A crude reference,” said the judge, “but close enough to the mark.”

Osadar Di glanced in horror at the huge-collared man with the hot eyes. She began shaking her head.

“Very well,” said the judge. “Contempt of court. Because of your vagrant status that means immediate spacing.”

“Wait,” said one of the long-robed men from his throne.

“Yes, Dominie Banbury?” the judge asked in a reverent tone.

“You said the rulers of the Jupiter Confederation had inducted her for orbital fighter duty?”

The judge checked his screen. “Yes, Dominie.”

“Yet she piloted a Class II space vessel?”

“That is correct, Dominie.”

The long-robed man pursed his lips. He was a large man with a high forehead and shrewd eyes. “Young lady,” he said, “why did you desert?”

Osadar shrugged. “I didn’t want to die.”

She scanned the seated throng, noticing that some of them looked at her with contempt and haughtiness. “All my friends died in the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit. Social Unity killed them, but at least I’m still alive.”

“Just so,” said Dominie Banbury. “Tell me. Would you like the chance of piloting an experimental space craft for the Ice Hauling Cartel?”

That sounded better than being spaced. “I would.”

“What is the bid?” Dominie Banbury asked the judge.

“Five hundred credits, Dominie.”

“So much?” he asked.

The judge swallowed hard and spread his hands.

Dominie Banbury whispered with a huge-collared woman at a nearby table. A moment later, he looked up. “Yes, done.”

The judge typed that onto his keyboard. In a moment, he said, “Next case.”

“You’re lucky,” said the security man, who grabbed Osadar by the elbow. “And so am I,” he said with a laugh. “I get my finders-fee after all.”

Osadar Di wondered what ‘experimental space craft’ really meant. Maybe it was merely a paranoid premonition, but working for Sex Objects Incorporated would probably have been a better option than the one she’d just chosen.

10.

Marten opened his eyes in terror. Then he squinted against the bright light…. This wasn’t the cylinder. Ah, he’d been having a nightmare.

He tried to sit up, and winced painfully. Back, shoulders and sides, every muscle protested the slightest twitch. If he lay perfectly still and didn’t breathe too deeply he’d be okay.

Then he wondered where everyone was. He’d have to sit up to find out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that badly.

Finally, with a moan, he lifted his torso and swung his feet off the bench. He sat there panting, and groaning. A muscle in his side quivered and cramped. He shot to his feet, yelling, and clutched his side, all his muscles complaining at the movement. He paced until the cramp eased away.

Where was everybody? He might have shrugged, but that would have hurt.

Oh, to finally be out of the dreadful cylinder. A ripple of fear, like electricity, shivered through him. He didn’t ever want to go back. They’d have to kill him first.

Frowning, Marten faced the door. The last thing he remembered was someone calling the major. Was this some sort of test, a means to make him talk? He decided no, that was too sophisticated for these brutes. He shuffled to the door, waited and dared touch it. It didn’t shock him, which he’d half suspected it might.

“Did they steal your balls, Marten?” he whispered.

A hideous smile stretched his lips in lieu of an answer. He twisted the doorknob, his heart pounding. He stared into an empty corridor. Lines of puzzlement creased his forehead. He opened the door wider. The corridor went about twenty paces before coming to a T-junction. He listened, but heard no one.

Okay. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So he moved down the corridor. The lights glowed overhead, and somewhere a generator hummed. He came to the junction, and he knew that to the right was the auditorium. Left were the cells. The only way he wanted to go back to the auditorium was with a machine gun in his hands. So he went left. Where was everybody?

This didn’t make sense.

He laughed bitterly.

Why did it have to make sense? An opportunity should be taken, not analyzed to death.

He crossed a line painted in the middle of the corridor. On one side, the corridor was white. The other side was green. Cells doors lined the green walls. He peered through a tiny glass window in the first door. Empty. He moved to the next. That cell was also empty. He tried the knob. Locked. So he kept moving, increasing his pace. The truth came to him that it frightened him to be alone. He shook his head. It had never frightened him down in Level Sixty.

Marten passed another painted line as he headed for the guard areas. The corridor color changed from green to blue. At the next door he came to, he opened it and went through. The air was damp and hotter than in the hall. He paused. To his left were the showers, the slick-suit dressing room and a hatch to the heat flats. To his right… he didn’t know what lay behind the door he’d always seen the guards enter.

So he tried it, and to his surprise, the door opened. Marten stared into a room with a wall of TV screens and a control panel. His heart thudded as he entered. Then he stopped, unbelieving. A grin transformed him as he picked a shock rod off a chair. He clicked it to its highest setting, feeling it hum in his hands. He barged through the next door. In the room was a lunch box. He tore it open and crammed a sandwich into his mouth. It tasted like egg and hurt his throat because he swallowed such big chunks. He didn’t care. He guzzled orange juice and gnawed on a chocolate bar. For a moment his gut hurt, then strength seemed to ooze into him.

Back in the control room, Marten tested switches. The TV screens flickered into life showing the heat flats. He peered more closely. People in slick-suits floated face down in the scum, with glaring sunlamps hanging three feet above them in the ceiling. Workers usually crawled through the algae, using a bar to break apart clumps and scrape hardened slime from the bottom. Five-hour stints were all a person could take before heat exhaustion set in. Marten cursed under his breath. None of those bodies so much as twitched. He saw that slime had crusted on some of them. That took at least three hours to form.

Marten pressed more switches, jumping views. There were more dead floaters. A lump stuck in his throat. Then he saw movement. He counted them, seven people at a lock—wait. It was this hatch and it looked like his old squad. One man slowly banged against the iron door.

Marten moved out of the room, down the corridor, through the showers and decontamination center. He hurried to the hatch, cranked the lever and spun the wheel. The hatch opened with a whomp.

A vile, swampy stench blew into the room and a blistering humidity caused him to sweat. He staggered from the entrance. Picking up an emergency hose, he waited. His old comrades dragged themselves into the room, flopping onto the plasteel floor. Scum clung tenaciously to them, making them look like swamp monsters.

Marten twisted the nozzle, hosing them with detergent. One of them closed the hatch with a clang. When they were clean, he helped them peel off their slick-suits and masks. They looked worse than he did, with hot, feverish skin, some with tiny blisters on their face, neck and torso. As they crawled to the showers, he sprinted to the control room, experimented until he found the right switch and turned on the water. He hurried back. They lay on their sides or stomachs, slurping water off the floor. Then they lay still, blissful in the drizzle.

Later, they crawled to the drying area. Stick was one of them. He struggled to his feet and tried to face Marten down.

“You want some?” wheezed the street fighter.

Marten wasn’t sure what he felt, whether the man’s bravado was admirable or laughable. The truth was it would be simplicity itself to beat Stick to death. Then the scarred street fighter, the former knifeboy, flexed his hands in classic karate style. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so easy.

“You lied about me,” said Marten

“Yeah?” said Stick, hunching his shoulders.

“They almost killed me for it.”

Stick glanced at the others.

One of them, Marten saw, tried to sit up. Then he noticed another working his way to his feet, a mean-faced, muscle-bound Asian. Marten stepped back so he could keep all three in view.

Stick frowned. “Wait,” he told them. “How come…” He tilted his head in puzzlement.

“How long were you in the heat flats?” Marten asked, giving the knifeboy time to orient himself.

Stick examined the tiny blisters on his arms. He seemed bemused. “Where’d they go?”

Marten shrugged.

“Ain’t anyone here?” asked a tall, stork-like man called Turbo, who leaned heavily against the wall.

“You’re incorrigibles, right?” Marten asked.

That deepened their scowls.

“You’re from the slums, right?”

“So?” said Turbo.

“You feel like eating more crap?” Marten asked, “Or maybe dealing it out for a change?”

Stick cracked his knuckles as he glanced at the other two, the only ones who showed interest in Marten’s words.

“What do you have in mind?” asked the muscle-bound Asian, a Korean.

Marten lowered the baton to a water slick. A spark jumped from the instrument, the electrical current making momentary tracings in the water.

“What about between you and me?” asked Stick.

Marten shrugged. “There is bigger game afoot.”

Stick grinned.

“Yeah?” said Turbo. “Count me in.”

11.

In dull horror, Marten crept into the auditorium. He had to walk carefully because water made the floor slippery. Six of the twenty cylinders contained occupants. They floated rigidly; their hands like claws and pressed against the stoppers.

“What…?” Stick couldn’t finish the question. He was pale.

Turbo made retching noises, but there was nothing in his stomach to vomit. The bullet-headed Asian, a gunman by the name of Omi, stared steely-eyed at the scene.

Marten moved to his old cylinder, noting that it was filled with water. He gazed about the auditorium. For some reason everyone had left. His chest hurt as he visualized what had happened. The water had started again, gushing too fast to pump. Rage gripped him. He stalked to the medical center where Stick yanked open drawers and examined equipment.

“Anything?”

Stick shook his head.

Marten rummaged around and picked up a little black disc. He pressed it against his arm. It beeped as it diagnosed him, a red light winking. It was a medkit, a biomedical-monitoring device and drug dispenser, usually giving Quickheal, Superstim or Hypercoagulin. A pneumospray hypo hissed, using compressed air to inject him with drugs. Marten licked his lips and tossed the kit to greedy-eyed Turbo.

“Oh yeah,” whispered Turbo. He punched in override codes and pressed the disc to his lean chest. Then he moaned pleasurably and shivered.

“Sweet.” Stick drew a long knife out of a drawer and by clicking a switch made it hum. It was a vibroblade, a hideous close-combat weapon. The blade vibrated thousands of times per second, so fast the motion was invisible. The knifeboy’s delight was obvious.

Then they froze. From the nearest corridor, there sounded the pounding footsteps of someone in a hurry.

Marten and Stick exchanged glances hardly daring to breathe. Marten flanked the door, his two-handed grip tight upon the baton. Stick waited on the other side. The sounds came closer and closer. Plastic body armor rattled. Then a guard exploded through the door, a short-barreled gun in his hand. Stick chopped and his knife sang. The guard’s knee disintegrated in a spray of blood and bone. With a scream, he went down. Marten roared and swung. ZAP! The guard’s head flipped back and his helmet went spinning. ZAP! The guard’s chin snapped against the floor as his entire body flopped downward. Rage, fear and hatred drove Marten’s muscles. Zap, zap, zap! He hammered the guard’s head until Turbo and Stick dragged him off.

Marten nodded after a moment. They let go.

Without a word, Omi picked up the dead guard’s short barreled .44 off the floor. He checked the slide and tested its heft. Then he rummaged the dead man for extra bullets.

Stick knelt beside the corpse and began unbuckling the body armor.

“What about me?” complained Turbo.

“The helmet is still good,” Stick said.

Turbo scooped it off the floor, inspected it, put it on and snapped the chinstrap. “What do you think?”

“Beautiful,” said Stick.

Marten trembled and forced himself to move. He wiped the gory shock rod on the dead man’s clothes. He felt surreal. Hollow. Used up.

Stick said, “Bet I know what happened.”

“Huh?”

“Where everyone went, bet I know.”

Marten focused on him. “Yeah?”

“Highborn! They must’ve finally got here and gone underground. The army needed the cops to help fight.”

Marten nodded. Could be.

“So what now?” asked Turbo, his face twitching in the manner of the over-stimulated.

Marten glanced at the cylinders, at the floaters, at their dull stares. Something in him hardened. He said, “We kill more of them.”

12.

Endless corridors and empty rooms, wherever they trudged the vast algae production center had become a desert. They found regular clothes in a storage bin and donned splay jackets, dungarees and boots. Marten found an extra energy cell for his baton. In a guardroom, Turbo shattered a candy bar machine. Several floors down, they opened a hatch into a settling tank. Turbo peered at the thick soup below. He blanched, drew back and shook his head.

Marten looked in. About a hundred workers floated dead in the brine. They’d been shot in the back or in the back of the head. Their blood slicked the goop like oil.

Marten clenched his teeth until they ached.

“Mass murder,” slurred Turbo.

“Like they’re covering their tracks,” said Stick.

“Who is?” snapped Marten.

“PHC.” Stick must have noticed Marten’s incomprehension. “Things got really rough in the pits several months ago.”

“Yeah,” said Turbo. “When the war started.”

Stick nodded in agreement. “When Major Orlov arrived.”

“No way are they gonna lose to the Supremacists,” Turbo said.

“But why are they gunning down all the prisoners?” growled Marten.

Omi smiled sourly.

“Did I ask something stupid?”

“Naw,” said Stick. “It’s just that Omi does the same thing, only in the slums. He takes out the troublemakers, makes sure those he’s hurt can never come around to hurt him back.”

“It’s insurance,” Omi said flatly.

“It is cold-blooded murder,” slurred Turbo. “It’s because they’re bastards.”

Omi shrugged.

They moved on warily, to scenes of greater mass death. Gleaming corridors often ended in piles of gory butchery. Many of the dead had been dumped unceremoniously into the various stages of algae production.

They rode an elevator down to an office section and prowled the next corridor. The halls were shorter and narrower, constantly twisting and turning.

Marten felt overwhelmed. The mass death appalled him. What kind of choice was there for anyone? Earth was trapped between implacable enemies, with PHC killers on one hand and Highborn on the other. There was no hope for a better future.

Turbo stopped short, his long face twitching. “No, no, no!”

The others watched him.

Turbo tore off his helmet and threw it at the floor. “Why’d they kill everybody?” he yelled. “It don’t make sense.”

“Easy,” said Stick.

“Easy?” shouted Turbo. He laughed wildly.

Marten jerked around. He thought he heard a click from ahead.

“You’re just feeling the stims wearing off,” Stick told his friend.

Turbo laughed even more wildly, a bit hysterically.

“Look—”

“Duck!” shouted Marten. He hurled his body against Omi, throwing him to the floor. He saw a blur fly past, strike the wall, bounce and ricochet around the corner. It exploded with a roar, hot metal pinging off the walls.

With eyes blazing and mouth open, Turbo zigzagged in a crazy-man’s rush around the corner. They heard him roar an insane oath, and then a thud and a rattle sounded. A second later, Turbo yelled, “It’s safe!”

Gingerly, they turned the corner and found Turbo with a short, stubby, shotgun-like weapon, the Electromag Grenade Launcher. It was a small mass-driver that used a magnetic impulse to propel grenades. The guard who’d shot it lay on the floor, gasping. There was a trail of blood leading up to him. It was like a smeared barcode, thicker in the places where he’d stopped to rest. The man had been crawling a ways to get this far.

“Someone must’ve gut-shot him,” said Turbo, his voice ominously flat.

The man’s face was pinched and his eyes were glassy. He had thinning white hair plastered to a sweaty skull and a colonel’s emblem on his shoulders.

Omi crouched before him. “Why’d you shoot at us?”

The colonel lay panting, his life ebbing away.

Marten marveled at the trail of blood: so thick and wet.

“What made him to crawl so far?” asked Stick.

“Wonder who shot him?” said Turbo.

“And why?” Stick added.

Marten crouched beside Omi as he dug the medkit out of his jacket. He pressed it to the colonel’s neck. For a moment, it did nothing. Then it beeped shrilly, as if it couldn’t figure out what to do.

“Override it,” suggested Stick.

Marten waited.

Turbo swore and bent down to do it. Omi grabbed his arm.

Marten thought about it. “No. Let him.”

Omi’s stiff face stiffened a little, but he let go of the lanky junkie. Turbo tapped in override and shot a batch of stims into the dying man. The colonel’s eyes flickered. He shuddered and drew an agonizing gasp.

Deep in thought concerning the colonel, Marten reclaimed the medkit.

The colonel groaned as he dragged his hand from his wound and examined his own blood.

“Can you tell us what happened?” asked Marten.

“Help me sit up,” whispered the colonel.

Marten found him surprisingly light as he propped the colonel against the wall. Blood soaked the colonel’s pants and half his shirt. Marten never knew so much blood could be in a man. A gaping wound in the colonel’s gut kept pumping out more.

“Bastards couldn’t even shoot me face to face,” the colonel wheezed. “Had to do it to me in the back.”

“Exploding bullet,” said Omi with professional detachment. “You should be dead.”

“I am,” the colonel said wearily.

“Who did it?” asked Marten.

“PHC.”

“Why?”

A great and final weariness seemed to settle on the colonel. Before their eyes, he aged into a brittle old man. The drugs gave him a final burst, but at a terrible cost.

“I thought you were them,” he said, “coming back.”

“Where’d they go?” Marten asked.

“Down.”

Marten frowned at the others. Then he told the colonel, “They’ve shot everyone.”

“Wretched villains, murderers, scum. They don’t want to leave anybody for the Highborn.”

“What do you mean?”

The colonel made a supreme effort to focus. With his bloody hand, he clutched Marten’s wrist. “Sydney’s lost, son. All Australian Sector is lost.”

“That’s no reason to go on a murder spree.”

“Don’t tell PHC that.” The dying colonel coughed blood. His pale skin turned sickly yellow.

“You said they headed down,” Marten prodded.

“To the deep-core station, the bottom one.”

“And?”

“And they’re gonna blow it.”

Marten was puzzled. “They’re going to destroy the mine?”

“No!” The old, old man wheezed air. He had maybe ten seconds left. “They’re gonna let it spew, geyser. They’re gonna use lava to destroy Sydney.” His eyelids fluttered and his head almost drooped for the last time. He kept it up with an iron will. “Use the heat flats to the flow canal. Elevator there goes to level forty. There’s an emergency drop to the deep-core station. Stop them. Stop them or everyone in Sydney’s dead.”

They glanced at each other for about three seconds, long enough for the colonel to die.

“We gotta get out of Sydney,” whispered Turbo.

“How are you gonna do that?” asked Stick.

Fear washed over Turbo. He began to tremble.

Omi rose, his face hardening.

Marten considered the colonel’s information, turned it over and thought about the implications. “We can’t go up, right?”

“Not with the Highborn coming down,” said Stick.

“We don’t know that,” said Turbo.

“If you don’t then you’re an idiot,” Stick told him.

“Or a junkie,” Omi added.

“Yeah, that too,” agreed Stick.

“Okay,” said Marten. “Then we have to down.”

“Meaning what?” asked Stick.

“I mean to stop them like the colonel said,” Marten told them.

Surprise and then comprehension filled the knifeboy. He seemed bemused rather than fearful. Turbo kept shaking his head.

“If we don’t stop them nobody will,” Marten said.

“You can’t know that,” Omi said.

“That’s right,” Marten said. “So we hide and cross our fingers and hope somebody else stops them. Is that it?”

“What else can we do?” Turbo whined.

“We can stop them,” said Marten.

“You’re crazy,” said Turbo.

“Crazy is better than waiting to die,” Marten countered.

“I don’t know,” Stick said. “It sounds like quick suicide to me.”

“It’s like this,” Marten said. “Either we do it ourselves or it’s not going to get done. Now we can sit tight and hope the State sends someone else to do the job. Only right now the State is dying and turning on itself and wants to die in a pyre of immolation.”

“What?” Turbo asked.

Marten stood, glancing at each of them. “You coming?”

The three slum dwellers wouldn’t meet his eyes. But as the moment stretched into silent discomfort, Omi finally shrugged.

“Yeah, why not, it’s as good a way as any to die.”

13.

Transcript of Directorate Interrogation of Secret Police General James Hawthorne #7

10.13.2349

Page 11

Q. General Hawthorne, I’m concerned about the wording of one of your statements yesterday. Hmm, let’s see…. ‘Civilian sacrifices cannot be too great for Highborn unit destruction of company or higher.’ Please elaborate on that statement.

A. Director?

Q. Please don’t be evasive, General.

A. I believe the wording is as accurate as I could state it.

Q. Do you? Do you indeed? Then let us see if we can narrow the definition. By ‘cannot be too great,’ does that mean up to and including a million people?

A. Most definitely.

Q. (pause) For a company of Highborn?

A. Yes.

Q. And a company is how large?

A. A Highborn drop troop company’s estimated strength would be approximately two hundred and fifty soldiers.

Q. You would willingly trade a million of our people for two hundred and fifty enemies?

A. A million civilians, Director.

Q. Civilians or soldiers, either way the comparison is incredible.

A. I disagree, Director. A million civilians are largely useless. Two hundred and fifty Highborn are deadly in the extreme.

Q. (coldly) I see. Then you would trade a city perhaps for a battalion of these heroes?

A. It would depend on the size of the city.

Q. Let us say a major city. One hundred million civilians?

A. I would hope for a division of the enemy in such an exchange.

Q. (pause) I find your sanity questionable, General.

A. Sacrifices are never easy, Director. Two million super-soldiers are, however, not an endless supply. Nor do we even need to exchange on the levels you’re suggesting for all two million warriors. Once their casualties rise to a certain level, their defeat becomes inevitable. The trick is to make them take staggering losses as quickly as possible. Hence, what seems at first glance to be irrational exchanges quickly transfers into a logical strategy.

Q. I’m uncertain my colleagues or I agree with you, General.

A. The Dutch of the Sixteenth and Twentieth Centuries likewise faced such decisions. Much of their land had been reclaimed from the sea. When first the Spaniards and later the Germans tramped across the land in conquest, the Dutch broke their dykes and allowed the sea to swamp their hard-won farms. In each incidence, the flooding proved invaluable in military terms.

Q. We’re speaking of people, General, not land.

A. In a war, people and land are similar in this regard: they are ciphers that lead to victory or defeat. Not enough land often spells defeat. Too few people likewise can be devastating. To defeat the Highborn we must decrease their numbers to manageable levels. Out of a population well over forty billion, we can easily afford to lose three quarters of our people and come out ahead. Many cities will be destroyed in the coming conflict. Why not make their losses constructive to our eventual victory?

Q. (different Director) You have a particular strategy in mind?

A. Indeed.

Q. Elaborate.

A. I’m thinking of cities that use thermal power, the deep-core mines in particular. Studies have shown how to breach the safety features.

Q. (long pause) No one would survive a lava flow, General.

A. Correct.

Q. But…

Q. (different Director) The entire populace of Earth might well rise up in rebellion if it found out we that engineered core bursts.

A. Agreed. Thus, the Highborn will be blamed for such ‘savage’ attacks. It will help whip up war frenzy.

Q. Quite ingenious, General. But I must point out that the safety features of each deep-core mine are embedded in the deepest levels.

A. True.

Q. In other words, General, only someone willing to die could bypass the safety features. For each deep-core has such codes and preventive devices built into it. I believe these security measures are to prevent terrorist core bursts by remote control.

A. Your information is quite accurate, Director.

Q. Then I am at a loss. Who would do such a deed? Only madmen would, and you couldn’t trust a madman.

A. A madman, maybe, but I was thinking of PHC officers.

Q. They are the last people one thinks of as suicidal.

A. Correct. Hypnotic commands would have to be embedded deep within the chosen officer’s psyche.

Q. PHC Command is willing to do this to its operatives?

A. Directors, PHC is your tool. Willing or not, the deed must be done if you command it.

Q. You recommend this action?

A. Yes.

Q. When and how?

A. My recommendation is the soonest opportunity possible. After such a deed, and with blame laid on the Highborn, Earth will fight every battle with back-to-the-wall ferocity.

End of transcript Interrogation of Secret Police General James Hawthorne #7

14.

The exhausted quartet halted behind a flipped-over, bullet-riddled police cruiser. Several SU infantrymen lay dead within it. Squat, gray cylinders hummed all around them—Sydney’s power generators. The lift they’d tried to take to Level Forty had pinged an emergency warning and they’d been forced to exit at Level Thirty-eight. They were looking for a stairwell down. Up the street they heard the crump of mortars, the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns, explosions and screaming.

“I don’t wanna be no hero,” whined Turbo.

“What’cha you gonna do then?” asked Stick.

“Pop topside and run.”

“How many times I gotta tell you that you’d never get to the surface. The Highborn would blast you.”

“Right,” Turbo said. “I’ve been thinking about that. We could tell them about the deep-core as our ticket out.”

Stick jeered. “Sure! They’re gonna believe a junkie.”

“Why not? I ain’t no liar.”

“Yes you are,” Stick said. “And look where we’re at: in the middle of a battle. Soldiers shoot first and ask later.”

Turbo blew snot out his long icicle of a nose as he grumbled. His drugs had worn off a half-hour ago and Marten had refused to hand him the medkit for more.

Their eyes were hollow, and like Marten sweat shone on their faces and their chests heaved. Marten’s legs quivered as he leaned against a twisted piece of car framing.

“Look,” Omi said, pointing into the crumpled police cruiser. “There are guns in there.”

“Where?” asked Stick.

“In there with the soldiers.”

Stick looked into the wrecked vehicle, but made no move for the guns.

With a grunt, Marten rolled onto his belly and crawled into the pile of dead men. They stank of blood and guts and he avoided looking into their staring eyes. With their dead fingers, some of them held on to their weapons tightly, forcing him to pry and jerk to free them. He rummaged through torn armor, body parts and slags of metal. Soon he handed back short assault carbines and extra ammo clips. He even found a few grenades for Turbo’s Electro-launcher. He crawled out and wiped gore from his hands and checks. A small part warned him that it wasn’t good he was becoming used to such carnage.

“Hey, you’re not saying we join them up there?” Turbo said as he slapped the grenade clip into his launcher.

Marten peered over the wreckage. Omi rose and peered with him. He saw explosive flashes among the smoking rubble and half walls of former generators. Most of the sunlamps over there were broken shards in the ceiling, so it was eerily dark amid the red glares. Marten jerked his head, and in a crouch, he sprinted for a gray building closer to the firefight, one that still seemed intact. Omi sprinted after him. They threw their backs to the wall and slid toward a corner, peering around it.

Tracer rounds, plasma and lasers crisscrossed the darkened street in either direction. Orange plasma gobs gouged sections of wall, causing them to slide molten to the ground. Bullets chipped concrete. The bright lasers hurt their eyes.

Marten and Omi ducked back around the corner.

“That route’s blocked,” said the tough Korean.

“Perceptive. But did you notice the dead?”

Omi shook his head.

Marten found that he was shaking. Watching war videos was one thing, being near the real thing was infinitely more straining.

“Several of the dead were PHC,” Marten said.

“Red suits?”

Marten gave him a wan smile. Then he sprinted back for the overturned police cruiser. He soon lay panting behind it. Turbo and Stick chewed on protein bars, a pile of them at their feet. Marten noticed that some of the wrappers were bloody.

“You didn’t get them from in there?” Marten asked in outrage, jerking his thumb at the dead infantrymen.

Turbo shrugged.

Marten blanched. “That’s… that’s ghoulish.”

“You grabbed the guns,” Turbo said, his mouth full of chewed bar.

“I’m not eating my gun!”

“Relax,” said Stick. “It’s not like we’re cannibals.”

Marten dropped it. He inspected his assault carbine, figuring out how it worked.

Omi shook his shoulder. “The red-suits must have gotten caught before they made it to the emergency elevator. My guess is they’ve having a tough time ordering people out of their way.”

“You think the red-suits are in charge of Sydney?” asked Stick.

Omi jerked his thumb at the firefight. “The Highborn are deep in the city. Bet they know, or guess at least, what the PHC are capable of.”

“So what?” said Stick. “What I wanna know is how to get around this battle and to deep-core.”

Marten cudgeled his mind, thinking back to his planning meetings in Construction of Level Sixty. There were three different types of levels, each conforming to a preplanned pattern. The ones with power generators like here on Level Thirty-eight were business levels, so…. He snapped his fingers. “There should be a maintenance shaft….” He glanced at the ceiling to get his bearings. “South,” he said, pointing away from the firefight.

“Down to Level Forty?” asked Omi.

Marten nodded.

Omi took off running the direction Marten had pointed. Stick and Turbo followed, getting away from the firefight as fast as possible.

Marten glanced at the leftover pile of bloody protein bars. He wrinkled his nose, shrugged and grabbed a fistful, shoving them into his pockets. Then he took off after the others.

15.

Conflicting emotions, fear predominating, warred within Major Orlov as she bulled through a terrified sea of civilians—they choked the streets with their masses and kept pouring out of the complexes. As loud and elemental as thunder, their combined shouts echoed off the ceiling and rolled from one building to the next. It created an emotional, supercharged atmosphere that drained everyone of reason. Individuals weren’t strong enough to resist such power, and a new entity had been born: the mob. Primeval, powerful, pregnant with horror, the mob paralyzed the lower sections of Sydney. The hordes within it surged like waves first one way and then another. Eddies, currents and treacherous riptides developed without apparent reason, which was deceptive. A rational mind couldn’t comprehend, but the grim thing that yet reeked of the primordial slime—the mob—understood perfectly.

The beings who had once been human—and who would be again if they survived this night—bore tightly strapped packs or clutched onto prized heirlooms. Their hysterical faces spoke more eloquently than words. Children were often torn from their parents’ grasp and became flotsam in the fleshy ocean. The major, as best she could, used her bulk and bearish strength to shove toward the Deep-Core Station. Behind her followed the picked men of her flying squad. The screaming crowds flinched from her killers. The crowds retained enough sense for that. Women and children cringed. Some men, however, dared to scowl behind their backs. Terrified, the major knew that one thrown bottle, or any hard object in fact, could send the mob howling upon them. She shoved more brutally. Mercy would only be seen as weakness, or even worse, as fear.

Each of her men wore the red uniform of Political Harmony Corps. Beneath it they wore body armor. Silver packs attached by wires joined the slim pistols in their fists. Behind their clear visors, glazed eyes showed their post-hypnotic conditioning, and so perhaps did the set of their lips. They marched to death, to supreme suicide, and it had turned them into something akin to zombies. That in turn gave them an aura even the mob dreaded.

Wherever the squad went, they had left a litter of the dead and dying. The major had ordered scattered army formations directly into the fray against the Highborn with orders that no one retreat in face of the enemy. A few times the lasers flared and stubborn police units fell dead at their posts. The truth was that nobody had expected the Highborn to fight with such grim elan underground. In Greater Sydney, everybody had agreed, the traitors from space would learn what real fighting was all about. Once the Highborn crawled in the Earth like moles, their vaunted superiority would prove false. That thought had been the illusion.

Major Orlov staggered through the last of the shoulder-to-shoulder masses, which now surged toward Stairwell One hundred and six to Level Forty-one. Groups of people huddled together on the street in shock or dashed off to points unknown as fast as they could. Slowly the size of the mobs thinned. Still, wherever Major Orlov marched, people ran by screaming or grimly silent or stood numb as they gazed intently at the ceiling, as if expecting it to collapse at any moment.

The major squared her massive shoulders and tugged her uniform straight. The berserk hordes frightened her. Some people had actually dared to hiss as they’d passed. Terror, as she well knew from those she’d tortured, often destroyed a lifetime of social conditioning. She shook her head, silently berating herself. She had played too long with Marten Kluge, had wished too fervently to see him broken. That was why Highborn had gotten so far into Sydney before she’d moved, why they had been able to block the normal route to her destination. It amazed her how efficient the enemy was. How extraordinary their martial accomplishments. She’d wasted time with Marten Kluge. And there had been something else, something she wouldn’t allow herself to admit. It’s why she hadn’t killed him in the interrogation room. She glanced at her men. No matter. Marten Kluge along with everyone else in Sydney would serve the greater good by their sacrifice.

Yet…

Major Orlov ran a dry tongue over equally dry lips. She didn’t want to perish, to become nonbeing. The idea made her guts churn. After this life, nothing, blank, deleted. But… sweat prickled her collar. What if the old legends—the nonsense from the ancient world—really were true? That was foolish. There was no Hell, no Judge in the afterlife. There was this one life, then nonexistence. She’d lived well. But she wanted to live still! And maybe Hell was real. Maybe for all the wretched evil she’d done—

“I did it for the good of the State,” she told herself.

Major Orlov removed her cap and wiped sweat from her forehead. The she placed the cap firmly on her head. A sick feeling thumped in her chest. What if the Great Judge didn’t view it that way? What if He consigned her to Hell for her errors of judgment?

She left the blocks of barracks-like living complexes and entered a financial zone. In the distance roared the mobs. It made her shiver and hope with everything she had that they didn’t turn this way. The buildings changed from long edifices to smaller cubes of credit unions, banks, repo-houses and travel agencies. Plants and trees abounded in greater profusion. The streets and sidewalks switched from plain ferroconcrete to colorful bricks. They made eye-pleasing plazas with umbrellas, and table and chairs outside small eateries.

The major stopped and tried to get her bearings. Being out of the mob was like leaving a high-pressure cage. She could breathe again, normally, but she felt funny just the same. Every so often, a group of people raced by, running to join the mob or to get far away from it. They avoided her, but they no longer seemed in awe. She didn’t like that. They thought perhaps that they had a new master to fear. Well they were wrong! She snarled at her zombies. They stiffened to attention, alert, eager to kill again before their finality.

A sergeant hurried beside her and brought an electronic map. She traced her blunt finger over it, tapping the red dot.

“Here.”

He gazed at the buildings around them. Then he grunted, “Seven blocks over. That way.”

“Yes.”

“Major?”

She squinted at him, a little man with a deadly laser. Not that he was so small really, just that all her life she’d been bigger, larger than practically everyone. Sometimes she found it annoying; mostly it proved useful for intimidation purposes.

“They will be wary,” the sergeant said. “They might shoot first.”

Major Orlov bit back the retort that maybe it would be just as well if they did shoot. That thought she mustn’t allow herself, not after such an illustrious career. So she lifted a haughty chin and rapped an order. The squad, their trigger fingers overly sensitive, jogged behind at the double as she marched to face down the Deep-Core Personnel.

Deep-Core took orders straight from the SU Directorate and no other. Neither the Army nor the PHC nor the Political Action Committee had any authority over them. To ensure Deep-Core’s independence and protection from terrorists they had their own police units and security directives. Some called them a state within a state. The practically limitless energy that came from this advanced technology and the awful risks it entailed demanded such a condition. Deep-Core Security guarded the emergency elevator on Level Forty that sank far into the Earth. The Regular Army had demanded reinforcements from them. The answer, as always, had been, “Don’t be absurd.”

After a brisk walk, Major Orlov rounded the last corner and marched toward the entrance of a low-built building that looked just like the others in this district. A spacious plaza fronted the glass entrance, not for gracious living, but to provide a wide field of fire. The building looked like a bank, but that was illusion. It would be a vault over a vault, in other words, a well-constructed fortress. Apple trees rustled along the brick-laid plaza, while soft music played overhead. The war hadn’t yet reached here, although a bloodstain here and there showed where Security had slain refugees foolish enough to head here for safety. And of course, Security had quickly removed the bodies, undoubtedly dropping the corpses down the chute to the core waste dump.

Major Orlov knew weapons tracked her. Security operatives watched their every move. It made her back itch, and she wondered if they would simply cut her down without a warning. The farther she walked, the more certain she became they waited until none of them could get away before they opened fire. Her belly muscles clenched and her mouth grew drier. It became agony to take another step.

“Halt!” rumbled a command, as if out of the very air.

Major Orlov almost collapsed right there. She froze in the middle of the plaza and waited. The short hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Her red-suited zombies halted behind her, their programmed eyes absorbing every detail. She vaguely wondered if being so near to death heightened one’s senses. Did knowing that she would soon not-be make her want to live these last few hours with all the zest she could muster? The seconds dragged, and she wondered if security personnel debated about talking first or just going ahead and killing them. She wanted to scream, ‘Wait, we’re PHC!’ Yet maybe that fact was going against them in the debate.

Her thoughts stopped as the glass door opened. Her knees felt weak, and she felt absurdly happy that she could live a few more hours.

Out marched a slender man in a brown uniform. He smoked a stimstick, the tip glowing red, and he wore his cap at a rakish angle. He smiled at them, but his mean little eyes took in their lasers, their red uniforms.

He smiled to show her she didn’t frighten him. Major Orlov was certain of it, the arrogant prick! He probably relished his position. He no doubt delighted in cowing people when he knew snipers would back his every word. So she took a wide stance and put her hands on her heavy hips. She glowered at him with the PHC look.

It didn’t impress. He saluted, allowed himself another drag on his stub of a stimstick, then took it with his slim fingers and flicked it far. In fright, Major Orlov and her men watched the smoldering stub. It seemed too much like a signal. When the stub hit the bricks and broke into sparks they all winced. But nothing bad happened.

“It’s major, I believe,” he said, with a cursory glance at her epaulets.

Major Orlov maintained her glower, and she hated him more by the nanosecond. She wasn’t used to such disrespect and she silently damned him for scaring her.

He darted a glance at her killers, and the down turn at the corner of his lips said he saw something nasty about them that one shouldn’t really talk about. So he regarded her again. “This is a restricted area, as I’m sure you know.”

Major Orlov drew a plastic computer card from her side. It was her directive. She thrust it at him.

He made no move to take it. “You must move along now, Major, and, uh, take your men with you.”

“This is direct from Beijing.” The first hint of uncertainty entered his eyes, and oh, that thrilled her.

“This is Deep-Core.” He spoke reverently.

“The SU Directorate supersedes Deep-Core.”

Momentary awe flickered across his face—that she could bear orders stamped by a Director. He suppressed the awe, and then he snatched the card and dropped it into a scanner slung on his belt. He stared at the scanner longer than necessary. Finally, he glanced at her, murmuring, “This is highly unusual.”

“Notice the seal.” She couldn’t keep the glee out of her voice. “SU Directorate.”

“Hmm.” He spoke into his cuff. Then he drew a second stimstick from his uniform.

Her men stiffened, as if this slender officer would actually do the killing. He need merely twitch his finger and lasers would cut them down. He had no need to draw a gun, not out here.

The Deep-Core officer inhaled, and the end of his stimstick glowed into life. He blew narcotic smoke into the air. Suddenly he cocked his head as if he heard an inner voice. No doubt, an implant communicator had been embedded in his skull. He lifted his eyebrows, glanced at Orlov. It took him a moment to formulate the words. “This way then,” he said, “but your goons stay behind.”

“I beg to differ. My orders clearly state I’m to help defend your station.”

“You can’t mean inside?” he asked in outrage, finally shedding his calm.

“My orders are explicit.”

“But…. That just isn’t done.”

“If you need to, reread the directive,” she said.

He spoke into his cuff again, sharply. The answer returned faster. He blinked and took the longest drag of his stimstick yet, holding the smoke in his lungs. He exhaled as if sighing. Finally, he composed himself and muttered, “Very well then, follow me.”

Major Orlov marched across the plaza toward the Deep-Core Station, her squad behind her. Inside would be armored security. They would be just as suspicious as this man was. This was a delicate operation. The elevator down would be Security’s inner sanctum, the holy of holies for these officers. Deep-Core’s orders, training and special conditioning were to destroy the elevator rather than to lose control of it. Oh yes, this would be a very delicate operation, perhaps the greatest of her career.

A pain flared in her ponderous left breast. Major Orlov feared the end, yet…. The good of the many outweighed that of the few. She knew that. It beat in her brain until she wanted to retch. So she set her teeth and marched after the slender Deep-Core officer. At least she’d take all the bastards of Greater Sydney with her, there was that much to console her. And she’d take out the hated Highborn who had brought this awful fate to pass.

Hot molten metal would spew into Greater Sydney, slaying, searing and destroying all. No one could escape. It brought an odd smile to Orlov’s lips. Then the brown-uniformed officer opened the glass door into the Deep-Core building. She followed. Behind came her killers. The extra special operation was about to begin.

16.

The frenzied hordes appalled Marten. Faintly, from down the stairwells came the sounds of gunfire and plasma cannons. The sounds lashed the crowds, the masses, and they trampled weaker people, clawed and fought to get away. Illegal weapons appeared. Shots rang out. The moans of the dying mingled with groans of terror. Hundred-man fights raged. Big men with crank bats, wearing the uniform of a local sports team, waded through the mob. Their heavy bats rose and fell. People collapsed, their skulls crushed and their faces bleeding. Kitchen knives appeared in fists, were plunged into tightly packed bodies. An overturned car plugged one lane. People scrambled to get over it, trampling a knot of school kids underneath. The old hobbled, infirm and begging for help, to be thrown aside by stronger, younger people again and again. Some of the frail gave up. Others held up their arms, pleading. Outside a theater, chorus girls screamed offers to whoever would save them.

Where any of these people thought they could hide was a mystery to Marten. But that didn’t matter. Panic overrode logic.

The lights flickered as a dreadful quake caused masonry to rain upon the mob. Shrieks and bellows rose to a crescendo as trapped people turned, clawing those nearest them in the need to get away. The crank-bat wielders were attacked from all sides and the big men went down under an avalanche of screaming people. Waves of human flesh turned in any open direction and bolted for safety. Twenty office managers in tweed suits sprinted into a building, to come tumbling back out as a drunken mob bashed them with bowling balls. Crammed bodies jammed the nearest stairwell; several young men climbed atop that packed crowd and slithered over the heaving mass. One was pulled headfirst back into the throng, his screams lost in the noise as boots and shoes crushed the life out of him. A boy, his face pale with terror, refused to move as he stood there, ashen and silent.

To Marten’s horror, a mob charged them, led by a tall man with long hair. Inhuman fear stamped their features. Demented, they could not grasp that there was no way out in this direction. Marten and the Incorrigibles were sheltered in a small cul-de-sac. Once the mob reached them, they’d be trampled, perhaps to death.

Omi raised his assault carbine to his shoulder. Flames leapt from the short snout and he trembled from the vibration. Marten couldn’t hear the shots over the wild sounds around them. The lead man blew apart in a spray of blood and bone. Behind him, others plunged to the ground, gut and chest-shot. The survivors turned as they bellowed like maddened bulls.

Trembling, Stick led them to a nearby hole in the wall. An artillery shell must have created it earlier. They ducked into what looked like a hotel lobby. There they waited as if sheltering from a storm. The mob had become like a force of nature, this one particularly unpredictable.

“Why’d you do that?” Turbo roared into Omi’s ear. It was the only way to make himself heard.

Omi didn’t say why. Like Marten and Stick, he crouched with his back against a wall. He closed his eyes and pressed the hot barrel of his gun against his forehead. Perhaps he felt bad for what he’d done. Perhaps he merely rested.

“We gotta keep moving,” Marten said.

“Why’d he kill them?” shouted Turbo.

“I don’t know.”

“We ain’t murders!” the junkie bellowed.

Omi moved like a spark, jumping into Turbo’s face. “They would’ve trampled us! That’s why!”

“You murdered them!” shouted Turbo, saliva spraying out of his mouth.

Omi swung the butt of the carbine into Turbo’s gut. The tall junkie bent at the waist, falling backward. The gunman fed a bullet into the chamber and raised his weapon.

“No!” shouted Marten. He leaped beside Omi and yanked down the barrel.

For a moment, it seemed Omi would use the same trick on him. Then the Korean’s shoulders sagged and he threw himself against the wall, his eyes closed as he rested his forehead against the hot barrel of his gun.

Marten helped Turbo.

“He’s crazy.”

“Maybe we all are,” Marten said.

Turbo laughed harshly. “Not like him, baby. He’s Class-A crazy.”

Stick moved beside them. “Listen.”

They did.

“The crowd’s thinning out,” Stick said.

“Yeah,” Marten said. “I’m not shouting anymore.”

Omi opened his eyes. He wouldn’t look at Turbo. “I have one question.”

“Name it,” said Marten.

“What’s our plan?”

“I plan on living, you murdering bastard,” Turbo said.

Omi acted as if he didn’t hear. He asked Marten, “You tell me our plan.”

“We have to stop PHC,” Marten said.

“From doing what?”

“What do you think?” Marten exploded. “From blowing the deep-core mine.”

Omi rose, and now he stared at Turbo. “Exactly.”

“So you can gun down anybody now?” shouted Turbo. “Is that your excuse?”

“So we can save Sydney. Yes.”

“Just like the cops say,” Turbo sneered. “You’re doing this for everyone else, huh?”

“That’s right,” the gunman said.

“Yeah?” said Turbo. “Well—”

Marten grabbed Turbo’s skinny arm, shaking him. “Save it. Let’s go.”

They followed him out of the hotel and back onto the street. A group of teenagers armed with bricks sprinted past. They hurled the bricks at windows, cars, stores or dwelling places, their laughter hysterical. Two old men helped up an old woman with a bleeding gash on her forehead. Crushed bodies lay everywhere. The relative quiet after the mob had passed an eerie feeling to it, making the world strange.

“Come on,” said Marten.

Exhaustion dragged at their muscles. They’d been tortured for many months, Marten not as long but to the point of death. So he allowed each of them another shot of Superstim. Turbo begged for more, until he noticed Omi’s haughty eyes. After that, the tall junkie slouched down the street without complaining.

Luckily, they made a straight run to the Deep-Core Station. Most of the crowds streamed to a lower level, starting stampedes there. Marten wondered what would happen when they reached end of the line Sydney, Level Sixty.

“There it is,” whispered Omi, who held up his hand to stop them.

They peered around a corner at the bank-like building. The large plaza was empty, rather silent compared to the noises of only shortly ago.

“If we charge across they’ll just shoot us down,” Omi said.

Marten shook his head. “We have to bank this on PHC already being successful.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning PHC will have taken this place out, killed everyone so there aren’t any witnesses.”

“You can’t know that,” Omi said. “Maybe Deep-Core is in with PHC.”

“I doubt it,” said Stick. “Remember how the Reform people hated PHC sticking their nose into their racket?”

“Yeah,” Omi said.

“What’s wrong,” Turbo jeered, “don’t have anybody to point a gun at?”

Omi narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, real tough,” said Turbo. “How about you watch this. Marten!”

“What?”

Turbo pointed at his pocket, the one holding the medkit.

Marten thought he understood. Dubiously, he drew out the medkit, weighed it a moment and then handed it to Turbo.

Turbo’s fingers flicked over the buttons as he pressed it to his arm. The medkit hissed, shooting him with more stims. “Ahhhh,” whispered Turbo, his face one of ecstasy. He pitched the medkit back and strode onto the plaza, his carbine ready. Then he broke into a sprint for the glass door.

“Fool,” Omi hissed. “They’ll kill him.”

They didn’t. Turbo made it to the door and bounded within.

“He guessed right,” said Marten, who now broke into a sprint after Turbo.

Inside they found more carnage. DCM personnel lay sprawled everywhere with laser holes neatly drilled into them. A few times, they found a red-suit with an ugly bullet hole in his skull or torso.

Stick savagely kicked one. Turbo spat on them all indiscriminately.

The door into the elevator room stood ajar. Blood and gore lay splashed on the controls, but the bodies had been cleared.

“PHC beat us here,” said Omi.

“So it would appear,” Marten said.

“You doubt?” Omi asked.

“No….” Marten said.

“What then?”

Marten looked up, swallowed. “We have to go down after them.”

“What?” Turbo asked. “Down? How about up?”

“Highborn say no,” Omi said.

“Yeah? And how do you know that?” Turbo asked.

“By thinking.”

Marten thought Turbo would jeer. Instead, the lanky man shuffled off to sulk. Marten studied the controls. They seemed basic enough. He pressed a red button. Ping! The nearest elevator opened, and before them stood the plush box that could take them farther down into the planet than anything else possibly could. None of them, however, made a move.

“I once heard an old, old saying,” Marten finally said.

Turbo refused to be drawn. Omi grunted, but seemed lost in thought. Stick, who stropped his vibroblade on his pant leg, looked up. “Yeah?”

“Those who would lose their life will gain it. Those who would gain their life will lose it.”

“That don’t make sense,” the knifeboy said.

“Here it does.”

Stick thought about, shrugged. “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it,” Omi said. “He’s right. So let’s go.”

17.

They plunged toward the center of the Earth, picking up speed until the elevator whined and vibrated so it shook their teeth. Speech was impossible. Turbo thumped against the nearest wall, cradling the grenade launcher between his bony knees as he stuck his fingers in his ears. He closed his eyes and it almost seemed as if he fell asleep. Stick sat beside him and stared fixedly at his vibroblade, switching it on and off with his thumb. Of course, it was impossible to hear its hum. Marten wasn’t sure the knifeboy could even feel its vibration. Omi stood and watched the depth gauge and heat-meter. His features showed an increasing dread and desperation.

Marten clamped his teeth together on the nervous urge to laugh. He’d seen far too many people in the last while high on violence. He didn’t want to become as uncontrolled as they had been.

Down, down, down they plunged, toward the molten core of the planet. Heavy oppression squeezed these lifelong underground dwellers. A sense, an aura, a feeling of extreme pressure bore upon each of them. No python ever tightened its coils like this. Breathing became difficult. Strange sounds, groans, hisses and screeches abraded their hearing, their very awareness.

On the outside of the shaft, the temperature of the Earth increased thirty degrees Celsius for every kilometer they dropped. At one hundred kilometers it would became white hot. Then the rate of temperature increase would slow. No metal or ceramic substance man had ever used in construction could have survived the blasting heat of the deeper reaches of the Earth. Yet incredible heat was the lesser of the two problems. The greater technical difficulty lay in pressure, awful, mind-numbing pressure. Just as a swimmer in a pool experienced pressure as he dove as little as six feet down, so the Earth increased in pressure the farther down one went. At three hundred and twenty kilometers, it reached one hundred thousand atmospheres, twelve hundred times the pressure of the deepest point in the ocean.

Omi threw an agonizing glance at Marten. Marten grunted and moved beside the gunman, watching the deep gauge and heat-meter. Deep-Core personnel were intensely trained for five years before they dared go down. Psychological tests weeded out over three-quarters of the personnel. Many often cracked after a little more than a week in the deep station. Not that any human could withstand one hundred thousand atmospheres. That was impossible.

Omi tapped the depth gauge.

Marten nodded.

They left the Earth’s crust and entered the mantle.

A solid layer of rock circled the outer Earth, its crust. On the ocean floor, the crust could be as little as sixteen kilometers thick. On the continents, the crust reached a thickness of forty kilometers. Basalt composed the ocean floor, a combination of oxygen, silicon, aluminum, magnesium and iron. The continental mass was mostly granite. Granite was of lower density than basalt. Thus, the continental granite plates floated on the basalt. The entire crust floated on the mantle.

Twenty-nine hundred kilometers thick, the mantle was composed of molten olivine rock: iron and magnesium combined with silicon and oxygen. Overall, the mantle was solid, but under these terrific pressures, it behaved like a plastic. Under the slow, steady pressure the material flowed like extra-thick molasses, but sudden changes in pressure would cause it to snap and fragment like glass.

Beneath the mantle pulsed the outer core. The Earth’s inner core was solid. Both halves were constituted mainly of iron in an alloy form with a small amount of sulfur or oxygen. Because of the heat and pressure, the outer core was molten iron, hot to a degree almost unimaginable.

Heat and pressure of such extremes prevented the use of any known material in shaft construction.. Magnetic force alone formed the walls of the long narrow mine sunk deep into the Earth. Incredibly powerful magnetic shields shoved against the unrelenting pressure of crust, mantle and outer core. The terrible heat from the Earth itself powered these shields, and everything livable had to stay within them. Generators of brutal efficiency and power cooled the temperature inside the shaft. A breech anywhere along the line would destroy the entire deep-core mine. This core heat provided Greater Sydney and much of Australian Sector with its energy needs.

Therefore, the main safety feature was already built into the deep-core. The only way lava could possibly geyser up the mine and onto the surface was to send a tiny plug of it, like a man spitting—a little spurt of molten metal would destroy the magnetic tube behind it as it went. But such was the Earth’s ability to spit that Sydney and everything around it for fifty kilometers would be annihilated. The design and safety features of the mine ensured that process could only be triggered at the deepest section of human habitation, the bottom core station, which hung just above the Earth’s outer core.

The bottom core station was the elevator’s destination.

For a time, Omi and Marten watched the gauges. Suddenly Marten trembled. The psychological weight around him became more than he could bear. He staggered to a cot conveniently provided and slumped upon it. He shut his eyes and his breathing grew even. Exhaustion claimed him. He dreamed of being crushed to death, of Major Orlov sitting on his chest and smothering his mouth with a rag. He clawed against her brawny forearms to no avail. Then, sluggishly, with infinite slowness, he grew aware that he dreamed and fought to wake up. His eyelids unglued and his vision swam in blurry confusion. He groaned, but couldn’t hear himself. Nausea burned the back of his throat with threatened vomit. He concentrated, swung his legs off the cot and rubbed his eyes. A horrible headache pounded. He squinted. The blurs wouldn’t go away. A bolt of fear stabbed him. He bent his head between his knees and told himself to relax, to breathe deeply. He did, and he found that if he pressed his hands on either side of his head that he could focus.

Turbo lay sprawled on the floor, drool spilling from his open mouth. He stared glazed-eyed at the wall. Stick squeezed his eyes closed with ferocious intensity and breathed in and out as if he were a bellows. Omi kept jerking the slide to his assault carbine open and shut, open and shut. Fifty cartridges lay at his feet, but he seemed oblivious to them.

Marten willed himself to his feet, but found that he couldn’t move. Weird gusts of air puffed his cheeks. He frowned. Then he realized that he brayed moronic laughter minus the sound, or the elevator was too noisy to let him hear his own laughter. He slapped a hand over his mouth. Then, after he’d settled himself, he put his hands to his knees and slowly rose to his feet. Systematically he lurched to the depth gauge. The others ignored him. He positioned himself before it and concentrated with everything he had. It swam into view: 2850 kilometers. Just as slowly, he realized they were almost there. It seemed impossible that the pressure could affect them, no matter how terrific, when kept at bay by technology. Maybe man wasn’t conditioned to take it, or maybe some sixth sense felt the world’s weight. Millions of pounds of pressure per square inch… or maybe the awareness of being buried alive more horribly than any dream was too much for the human psyche. Only a superior will could stand it, only a stubborn mule of a man.

There was something just on the edge of Marten’s awareness. It could help him, he knew, but he couldn’t think of it. Oh! Yes, of course. He dug the medkit out of his jacket and pressed it against his arm. The red light flashed and stopped. He hadn’t felt anything. Was it broken? Then a wave of cool relief flooded through him.

He laughed, normally, although still without sound. He stepped beside Omi and put his hand over the gunman’s, the one working the slide. Omi squinted at him, but it didn’t seem that he saw Marten. So Marten pressed the medkit to Omi’s arm. No red light winked. Nothing. Marten checked the medkit and found that it was empty, or empty of whatever drug could help the gunman.

Marten shook Omi.

Omi scowled, but there still wasn’t any focus in his eyes.

Marten went to each of them in turn. It was as if they were in cocoons, in their own worlds. He didn’t know the deep-core term for their condition, although he was sure there was one. One thing seemed to make sense, if they had gone schizoid then surely some of the red-suits had too—he hoped.

Marten also hoped the drug in his bloodstream would last long enough so he could do the job. He readied his assault carbine. And on impulse, he went and pried the vibroblade out of Stick’s grip, sliding it in his boot. Then he went back to the depth gauge and watched.

In time, the noise level lowered. He shouted, and was rewarded with a new sound: his voice. That made his heart pound. Here it was—savior of Sydney or just another loser to Social Unity. Marten didn’t know it, but a vicious snarl twisted his lips.

The elevator pinged.

Marten staggered to the door. It was like wading through gel, slow, difficult work. He had to concentrate to move.

A hand on his shoulder caused him to whip his head around. Omi glared at him, a death’s head grin exposing his teeth.

“Do it,” hissed Omi.

The box shuddered to a halt, the doors slid open and Marten Kluge waded alone into the deep-core station.

18.

The floor of the deep-core station thrummed. A prickly sensation scratched at Marten’s nerves. He’d heard before from a news show or a spy video, he couldn’t remember which, that the discharges of magnetic force off the molten metal created strange electrical currents within the station. It felt as if spiders with sandpaper feet scurried across him. He kept rubbing his arms and rolling his shoulders. And he kept a sharp lookout for red-suits.

The station was grimly utilitarian. Thick ablative foam walls, dull gray in color, sectioned the place into what seemed like hundreds of tiny rooms. The hall ceilings hung uncomfortably low. The light-globes embedded in them radiated almost no heat. Every time he entered a new room through a hatch, he had to duck his head.

His mother had once taken him to a museum. He remembered seeing submarines from the Twentieth Century. It had been in a conflict called World War Two. The rooms and the narrow hatchways of the deep-core station seemed similar to those WWII subs. Gauges, dials, control boards and computer screens abounded everywhere. Emergency breathing masks hung on all the walls, along with fire extinguishers and heavy-duty tanks filled with construction foam. When sprayed and exposed to air, the foam quickhardened into a lightweight, durable wall. Riot police and soldiers used construction foam, as did firefighters creating a fast firebreak. Marten realized that fires must be a constant hazard on the station.

He touched the ablative foam wall. Hot. He looked around warily. The foam walls seemed to mute sound. He barely heard his footsteps. They were muffled, almost noiseless.

He crept down a small, steep set of stairs and peered onto the next floor. It was just like the previous floor. Then an odd clang sounded. It seemed to come from all around. An eerie c-r-e-a-k of ghostly quality followed. The entire station shuddered. In his fright and surprise, Marten almost lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.

His heart thudded as he hurried up them instead. Those noises didn’t sound good. He wondered if it was stage one of Major Orlov’s objective. Or was it merely regular deep station occurrences? He had no way to judge, but he felt that time was running out. Assault carbine at the ready, he hunted from room to room, straining to hear anything that would lead him to the enemy. The thick foam walls absorbed sound, so that the station seemed empty, lifeless, dead. It gave Marten an evil, creepy feeling. Was he too late to change anything?

Then he stumbled onto PHC-created carnage. It looked like a kitchen, a food center with a microwave and a refrigerator. Pockmarked ablative foam lined the wall, where laser beams had hit. Gray smoke curled from each pockmark and gave off a horrible stink. Draped over several small tables were six bodies, each in the brown coveralls of Deep-Core. The laser burns that had killed them still smoldered.

Rage filled Marten, at such wanton murder, senseless slaughter. He had to stop Major Orlov and her killers.

He increased his pace, but it was impossible to run. The psychological pressure wouldn’t allow it. It felt as if he dragged his legs against a horizontal gravity. Then he heard a sound, a voice. He slowed to a creep, peering ahead so hard it seemed as if his eyeballs would spill out. He mouth went dry. His fingers stiffened.

Two men spoke in monotone voices, and they were just around the hatch. They said that maybe they should rape the system specialist after the major was finished with her.

Marten’s rage burned in him and loosened his stiff fingers. He rounded the hatchway and stepped through.

Two red-suits sat at a small table. Their lasers lay in their laps as they stared at their drinks. They looked up as Marten stepped through the hatch. They had hard, tanned faces, like bloodthirsty weasels given human form. For a nanosecond, Marten and they stared at each other.

“You,” one of them said in a dull monotone.

Marten vaguely recognized the pointed chin. Yeah, that man had given the major the agonizer. That seemed like an age ago.

The nanosecond ended, and the red-suits lunged out of their chairs, spilling their drinks. They were deadly as serpents, almost as fast. Their lasers lifted into firing position as red beams hosed the floor. Marten’s assault carbine spoke—a quiet cha-cha-cha. The two red-suits hit the floor dead, riddled and twisted into grotesque positions.

Marten stepped over them, moving faster now. He was certain that because of the walls the sound of his gunfire wouldn’t carry far.

The next moment a red-suit walking like a deprogrammed android almost bumped into him. Marten blew him aside, the red-suit only beginning to realize what had happened as his eyes fluttered for the last time. Marten moved like a killer robot now, a machine. Down a steep set of stairs, turn left, right, right. A red-suit tried to poke a stimstick between his own compressed lips. His face was filled with intense concentration, but he kept hitting his cheek or nose with the end of the stimstick. Marten gunned him down, thankful that the deep-core pressure was making them stupid.

Marten kept striding, but it felt as if he moved through water. His head started hurting and it was hard to concentrate. So he watched his feet, willing them forward one step at a time. When had control of them again, he looked up, hunting, searching. He hurried through a hatchway—and he tripped over a foot. Marten threw out his arms to catch himself. His weapon went spinning, but he landed without knocking out his teeth. When nothing more happened, he looked back.

A red-suit pointed a laser at him. The man had razor-thin eyebrows and the deadly intent eyes of a pit bull. On his suit was the name: Ngo Drang. He was the second guard that had helped the major torture him in the interrogation room.

Drang frowned. “I… I should shoot you.”

Marten sagged in defeat. He didn’t know why Ngo Drang hadn’t already done it. Then he looked at the tight face, at the empty, odd stare in the killer’s eyes.

“Hissss—splat,” said Drang. “A neat laser hole in your forehead.”

“You should take me to the major,” Marten said.

Drang shook his head. “No. I… I should kill you. I don’t know why I haven’t done it already. It’s…” He shook his head, frowning.

“The major wants you to take me to her,” Marten said.

“Yeah?”

Marten rose slowly, noting how the laser tracked his forehead. Deep-core pressure was all he had between him and death. “We’d better go.”

The intense frown left Ngo Drang’s face. “That way,” he said, gesturing with the laser.

19.

When Marten had first stepped off the elevator into the deep-core station, Major Orlov had been twining her thick fingers into the long dark hair of System Specialist Ah Chen. The Chinese technician was exactly the type the major passionately hated: Petite, pretty, with luxurious dark hair and eyes like a vid star. Ah Chen made her baggy brown overalls seem sexy and provocative. Major Orlov hated her on sight. So she gripped the system specialist’s thick hair and yanked her head.

“You’re going to help us obliterate Sydney, my smooth-skinned harlot.”

Ah Chen remained speechless. Tears welled in her fawn eyes and streaked her oval face. She’d squealed in terror until Orlov had forced her to watch the quick and efficient slaughter of her deep station colleagues. The major had grinned and made a running commentary as her killers had hosed the room with beams. Sobs still racked the tiny thing.

“No crying!” Orlov shouted, jerking the small head from side to side.

The little beauty sniffled and sobbed. So the major slammed her face against the wall, listening to the little button nose crunch and break.

“Did you hear me!” roared Orlov, enjoying herself hugely.

Ah Chen bowed her head. Her blood dripped to the floor.

Major Orlov shoved the tiny system specialist ahead of her into the hall, and did so all the way to the main reactor room. It contained a bewildering array of computer screens and keyboards. Openmouthed, terrified technicians stared at them.

Major Orlov shook Ah Chen’s head. Then she leaned low and whispered into her ear, telling her what was expected of her.

The tiny Chinese technician turned in amazement. “No. I-I-I cannot do as you ask.”

“Pity.” Major Orlov gestured to her killers.

The little technician cringed as lasers beamed. More of her colleagues collapsed amid bloody butchery.

She whispered, “You might as well kill me too. I’m no good to you.”

Major Orlov barked harsh laughter. “Kill you? I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.” She indicated the room. “I know several of the steps for prepping the station for a geyser, but not all of them. No. You will help me destroy Sydney.”

The small technician’s dread was palpable as color drained from her face. So very slowly, she shook her head.

“Are you brave, my dear?”

“No. But I cannot do as you ask.”

“Conditioning?”

“You are correct.”

“Don’t you know that Political Harmony Corps can break conditioning?”

“I must inform you that you cannot break Deep-Core’s.”

“Oh yes, most certainly we can break Deep-Core’s.” Major Orlov snapped her fingers.

A pot-bellied PHC officer, with thinning hair and droopy eyes, opened a black case. He had pudgy little hands with dirt under the fingernails. No laser pack was slung on his back. No pistol was cradled at his side. He was known simply as ‘the Doctor.’ He now took out a pneumospray hypo.

Ah Chen’s fawn eyes grew wide with fright.

The Doctor explained. “Oh, it isn’t painful, I assure you. This is simply a hyperaesthesic.”

The small technician appeared bewildered.

“It heightens your senses,” he said, as he pressed the hypo to her arm, letting it hiss.

She jerked her arm back, rubbing it.

“No, I advise against that,” said the Doctor.

Her hand shot off her arm as pain creased her features.

“As I said, a fast-acting hyperaesthesic. Your heart rate and breathing will increase, and your senses will become many times more sensitive. For instance, the light in this room will soon hurt your eyes. The clothes you wear will begin to chafe unbearably. Certain odors you’ve never noticed will now become most pronounced. It’s possible that what you now consider an awful stench will make you vomit. In the quantity you’ve been given—a large dosage, believe me—these new sensations will become….” He exposed small teeth in a rather nasty smile, “…decidedly uncomfortable.”

Major Orlov laughed. “You’ll never have felt pain like this.”

Already the tiny technician twitched this way and that. But that only increased the obvious discomfort she felt from her clothes.

“Let me help you,” said Major Orlov. She took hold of Ah Chen’s garment and ripped off the top half, exposing the petite Chinese technician from the waist up. “Not too well endowed, are you?”

The little technician covered herself with her hands.

The major took each tiny wrist and swung the arms behind Ah Chen’s back, snapping handcuffs onto her. The system specialist painfully sucked in her breath.

“It hurts?” asked the Doctor.

“Why are you doing this?” asked Ah Chen.

The Doctor reached into his black bang, pulling out a wand. “The nerve lash,” he said professionally. “Notice, I position the switch at one, the lowest setting.” The wand purred evilly. “I then apply the tip to your belly.”

Ah Chen screamed, her face twisting hideously.

The Doctor popped a rubber ball into her mouth. The technician’s eyes widened in shock. “You’ll become quite a bit louder,” the Doctor told her. “We don’t care to wear ear plugs, so you must accommodate us.”

Major Orlov giggled wickedly.

“Examine your belly,” the Doctor said, taking away the nerve lash.

Ah Chen did. There was no mark.

“This is a marvelous instrument,” the Doctor said. “Now notice, I set it to level two. The pain will now increase.” He touched it to her left breast.

Ah Chen collapsed into a thrashing heap onto the floor.

Major Orlov cracked her knuckles in anticipation.

20.

Marten stumbled into the reactor room. A small, nude Chinese woman lay in a sweaty heap on the floor. A pot-bellied red-suit straightened, clutching a nerve lash in his dirty hands. Major Orlov sat back in a chair. Her big boots were propped up on a com-board. With obvious relish, she watched the Chinese woman.

Marten took in the scene at a glance. More torture, more PHC brutality. Something snapped in him. This was his last chance anyway. He kept stumbling and allowed himself to trip over his own feet. He fell to the floor, and while lying on his stomach, he reached to his boot and drew the vibroknife. His thumb settled onto the on/off switch.

“Marten Kluge?” the major asked, as if heaven had sent her the gift of a lifetime.

“Can you believe it?” asked Drang.

“Where did you find him?”

“In the halls.”

“Amazing. No, shocking.” Major Orlov chuckled. “This… This is simply wonderful. Marten! Marten, dear, did you miss mommy?”

“I thought you’d want to see him again,” said Drang.

“Doctor,” said Orlov, “do you have any more hyperaesthesic left?”

“Certainly.”

“Doesn’t the system specialist need a rest?” suggested the major.

“Your sense of timing is impeccable, as always,” the Doctor said. “I was just about to suggest a cooling off period. She’s reached the tertiary point, in any case.”

“Gentlemen,” said Major Orlov, “I pronounce our deeds approved. For if there is any Higher Form after death—”

“You can’t really believe that?” Drang asked.

“Don’t interrupt me.” Major Orlov cleared her throat. “As I was saying, if there is any Higher Form after death, He can only be showing us His approval by gifting me with these two. Oh yes, Marten and a young pretty. This is splendid!”

“If I’m to inject him I want him standing,” said the Doctor.

“Marten. Oh, Marten,” called Major Orlov.

Marten lay on his belly, waiting, willing them closer.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked the major.

“Perhaps he’s finally succumbed to deep pressure,” the Doctor said.

“Well, get him up!” snapped Major Orlov.

Drang approached Marten.

“Be careful,” said the major.

Drang grabbed Marten by the shoulder, the pistol digging into his back. “On your feet, slum-dog.”

Marten groaned, but he allowed himself to be pulled up. Then he twisted around, flicked the knife on and drove the vibroblade into Drang’s belly. The blade dug in with ease, singing all the way. Marten sidestepped and jerked the blade out sideways, slicing the laser coil just as Drang clicked the trigger. Substance spilled from the coil, burning Drang, who howled. Marten chopped at the man’s head. He had no idea of the blade’s power. It sawed through part of the skull, spraying brain and gore. The corpse pitched forward.

Ah Chen screamed.

Marten turned. The Doctor thrust at him with the nerve lash. Marten parried, cutting the lash in two. With a croak of dismay, the Doctor drew back his ruined torture device. Marten snarled, hewing at the Doctor’s chest. The knife whined in high glee, punching into the chest. Blood sprayed and drenched Marten. The vibroblade was a messy weapon.

Major Orlov had leaped to her feet and clawed at her holster.

The small Chinese technician, still lying on the floor, used her tiny foot to kick the major’s boot at the ankle. The major cried out and momentarily lost her balance. She both drew her pistol and let go at the same moment. The pistol clattered to the floor. Marten whooped savagely, attacked and thrust. Major Orlov, for all her bulk and unbalance, twisted and dodged the singing, bloody blade. She then pivoted on her heel and swung a ham-like fist. Marten heard a rib crack as the air whooshed out of him. The major’s touch hurt horribly. She followed with another smashing blow. It rocked him backward and stole his breath. She was incredibly strong, with more than twice his mass.

“Little man!” she snarled.

Marten backpedaled to give himself time, and almost slipped on all the blood and gore.

Orlov checked herself, then turned and lunged for her gun.

Wildly, Marten threw the vibroblade. Orlov dodged. It hit a panel, singing loudly as it buried itself into it. Marten followed. Major Orlov laughed and crashed upon him like an auto-sweeper. They wrestled on the floor. The slick of blood made it hard for either of them to get a good hold. Orlov had size, strength and weight. Marten was faster. She tried to twist his head around, but her hands keep slipping off. He dug his fingers into her nose. She moaned, and bit his wrist. He jabbed with his other hand, using his thumb like a pick. Bone, bone, he jabbed deeply into an eye, digging until Major Orlov shrieked, using her hands and feet to hurl him away. He landed heavily and rose off the floor. So did she, with ichor dripping from her ruined left eye.

“Hey!” cried Ah Chen. Marten glanced at her. The small Chinese woman handed him the vibroblade. It was turned off.

“No!” howled Major Orlov, charging.

Marten sidestepped to her blind side, flicked on the blade and chopped. Like a thing alive, the blade hummed. It seemed satisfied beyond measure. Major Orlov’s head separated from her body and thumped onto the floor. The huge torso jetted blood everywhere. Then it crashed onto the deck, spent, finished, ended forever.

Ah Chen clutched Marten, burying her face in his chest and crying.

He couldn’t believe it. He stood there dazed, looking at the carnage. Finally, it came to him that he held a naked woman in his arms and that they were both covered with other people’s blood. He flicked off the knife and pitched it aside.

Sydney had been saved from annihilation. Marten wondered if he’d be able to do the same for himself.

21.

Transcript #30,499 Highborn Archives of an exchange of notes between: Paenus, Inspector General, Earth, and Cassius, Grand Admiral of Highborn. Dates: December 15 to December 20, 2349.

December 15

To Paenus:

The training schedule must be accelerated. Hawk Assault Teams and panzer crews are especially needed for the pending Australian Sector Campaign.

To Cassius:

Your Excellency is surely aware of the lack of qualified recruits. Combined with enemy sleeper agents, worldwide anti-Highborn propaganda and terrorist assassinations makes the accelerated training program, especially for these elite units, a daunting, perhaps a hopeless task.

December 17

To Paenus:

Surely not hopeless my dear Inspector General.

To Cassius:

Your Excellency must know that most of my recruits are herded to me at gunpoint. As fodder for bombs and lasers, they excel. As warriors, they are sadly lacking. Hawk Assault Teams and panzer crews require a certain elan for maximum effectiveness. Still, I shall comply with your wishes to the best of my ability.

December 18

To Paenus:

I thank the Inspector General for informing me of the need for elan in certain shock and exploitation troops. Such graciousness should be returned. Thus, I have decided to solve your training problems as way of reward.

The easiest expedient to help instill fervor in recruits is to show them the folly of lacking it. For instance, a bullet in the back of the head, preferably where many recruits can witness the event, will help energize the others. Every recruit must learn that orders are to be obeyed. Sleeper agents abound, you say. I recommend strenuous mind-probing. When an offender is found, brain-wipe him and send him to a penal battalion. These battalions should be highly visible as deterrents to the others. Therefore, all penal battalions must be designated as suicide troops. All suicide troops must have a mini-explosive implanted in their cortex. Detonation devices will be in the control of the battalion’s colonel, captains and lieutenants. I believe that all our Earth draftees should have a cortex bomb, but at some point, the enemy will learn the code and frequency of various sets and they will explode them before it is desirable.

Let me point out to the Inspector General the very urgent need of these soldiers for the coming Australian campaign. Actual Highborn deaths took an alarming turn in the New Zealand and Java Island Campaigns. Yet we cannot afford to slacken the speed of our advance, thus the need for your Earth levies at the earliest possible date.

I surely do not need to point out to the Inspector General that victory in the field automatically diminishes the effectiveness of enemy propaganda. We must strike hard and fast NOW, but we must keep Highborn losses to a minimum. I cannot overstate this need for trained Earth soldiers who can fight. Brutality, my dear Paenus, done in calculated doses, will save lives and ensure us a golden future sooner rather than later.

December 19

To Cassius:

I hear and obey you, Grand Admiral.

To Paenus:

I know you too well, my dear Paenus. You held back. I know, because your curt reply plays repeatedly in my mind. Please, share with a fellow warrior what ails you.

December 20

To Cassius:

I am indeed troubled, Grand Admiral. I feel that we are somehow going about this the wrong way. I realize that brutality and hard training can make soldiers of civilians in short order. And yes, our technology allows us a certain leeway that warriors in the past never had. I refer to brain scans, wipes and cortex bombs. I ask myself, however, will we have to garrison our conquests forever? Our enemy blares on the vids and holos against us, and on the airwaves and in the streets.

Grand Admiral, to a space battle we bring Doom Stars, tac-craft and long-range lasers. To a land assault, we brings orbital fighters, heavy panzers and drop troops. My question, Grand Admiral, is what does one bring to a propaganda war?

To Paenus:

My brilliant friend. You are quite right. You fight an idea with a better idea.

22.

The elevator sped toward the surface, bearing its cargo of five survivors. As the horrible pressure of the great deep lessened, Omi repackaged the cartridges littered around him, until his carbine clips brimmed with shells. Turbo wiped spittle from his chin and tried to make conversation with Ah Chen. She huddled beside Marten, who rested his head against the vibrating wall. Stick reclaimed his knife and wanted to hear again how Major Orlov had lost her head.

A tired smile touched Marten’s lips.

“That’s right,” Stick said. “A knife’s better than anything else. You feel them die. You don’t stand back and let technology do your dirty work. Not like gunmen do it.”

“Meaning what?” asked Omi from his side of the elevator.

“Meaning shooting out kneecaps,” said Stick.

“And your knife isn’t technological?” the muscled Korean asked.

“You know what I mean,” said Stick. “You gotta drive the blade into them. It’s your own strength that does it, not just pulling a trigger.”

“In case you’re interested,” said Omi, “I’ve never shot out anyone’s kneecap.”

“That’s right,” Turbo sneered. “He once had his buddies hold a guy down while he slipped on a leather glove. Then he beat the poor sap to death.”

“Well, at least that’s better than using bullets,” said Stick. “He’s doing it himself. That’s what counts.”

“I don’t see how that’s any better to the man getting beat,” said Turbo.

“Of course it is,” argued Stick. “It’s more personal. It’s between men.”

“Between a sadist and his victim, more like.”

“Maybe that too, but it’s personal.”

“So is rape,” said Ah Chen. “But I would rather be shot or run over by a car.”

Stick scowled until he brightened. “I’m only talking man to man. When you bring women in it’s an entirely different thing.”

Turbo threw up his hands and started pacing.

“You gotta admit it takes more balls to knife someone than shoot him,” Stick said.

“You’ve been in the slime pits too long,” Turbo muttered.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it.” Stick turned to Omi. “Am I right?”

Omi shrugged.

“Come on,” Stick said. “You gotta admit beating a man with your fists is more manly than using a bat. I mean, you can break your hand doing it.”

“Then I’d rather use a bat,” Omi said dryly.

“Not me!” said Stick. He slapped his chest. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way every time.”

“What are we going to do next?” Marten asked, trying to change the topic.

“Sneak out of Sydney,” Turbo said. “That’s my plan.”

“And how are you going to manage this feat?” Omi asked.

“Maybe she knows of some secret elevator to the surface,” Turbo said.

All four men glanced at Ah Chen. She shook her head and snuggled closer to Marten.

“You must know of a way out,” Turbo pleaded.

“Leave her alone,” Marten said. “She’s been through enough you don’t have to hound her.”

“Sorry,” muttered Turbo. He went back to pacing.

Omi glanced at the gauge. “Almost there,” he said.

Marten struggled to his feet and then he helped Ah Chen. She wore an oversized coat and still trembled from the abuse and the drugs they’d given her. Marten checked his carbine, then stood before the door, waiting.

Omi stepped near. “We can’t head to the lower levels with the mobs. Not if we plan to survive.”

“Maybe we can hide out the war in the slums,” said Marten.

Turbo snorted.

Marten glanced at him.

“You ain’t ever lived in the slums,” said Turbo.

“What are we going to do then?”

No one answered Marten.

“You’re a hero for saving the deep-core mine,” Ah Chen timidly said. “If we could reach Deep-Core Central, they would take care of you.”

Omi shook his head. “Forget about that. Marten broke a Directorate plan. There’s no hope for him with Social Unity.”

“I know one thing,” said Stick. “I’m sure not turning traitor.” The others gave him their attention. “You’re thinking about joining the Highborn,” he told Omi.

“Whichever gang is strongest,” said Omi.

“Don’t you have any loyalty?” asked Stick.

“Yes,” said Omi, “to my continued existence.”

The elevator slowed.

“Get ready,” said Marten, interrupting whatever Stick had planned to retort.

The others crowded around him, their weapons ready.

“We should have an emergency plan,” said Turbo. “Just stepping into danger every time and hoping for the best is…. It isn’t smart.”

The elevator pinged. The door swished open and a huge, nine-foot soldier in powered black armor turned to face them. Servos whined as the giant soldier aimed an auto-cannon that had an extremely pitted nozzle—his oversized weapon had obviously seen plenty of use. The combination plasteel/ceramic armor gave him a robotic, knightly look. Humming power packs supplied the energy and an exo-skeleton multiplied his strength so that if there had been enough room he could have leaped a hundred meters in a single bound. Shock absorbers and a Highborn physique allowed him to withstand the landing. A missile launcher was fixed to his slab of a back and the auto-cannon he aimed at their faces fired twenty-millimeter-sized shells.

“Drop your weapons!” boomed his helmet, the faceplate darkened so they couldn’t see his face.

Marten dropped his carbine, then so did the others. It was questionable whether their slugs would have even been able to penetrate the armor. Maybe they could have shot out his faceplate if they had hit several times in quick succession. But by then they’d have been obliterated. They raised their hands.

A second Highborn stepped into view. His servos were geared to their lowest setting. He too towered nine feet tall. This one didn’t aim an auto-cannon at them. Instead, with his powered gloves, he reached up, twisted the helmet to the left and lifted it off his head. He had china-plate-colored white skin, with harsh features angled in a most inhuman manner. His lips were razor thin and his hair was cut down almost to his scalp. It was more like a synthetic rug than anything else. He had fierce black eyes, and there was an intense, almost pathological energy to him, a hysteria to slay, rend and destroy that was only kept in check by an inhumanly vital will.

“You are not PHC,” he said in a deep voice.

“We killed them,” Marten said matter-of-factly.

The fierce eyes tightened, as if the Highborn could judge the truth of Marten’s statement by an act of will. Perhaps he could.

Marten said, “They were going to blow the deep-core mine and destroy everyone in Sydney.”

The Highborn raised his brows. His eyes were sunken deeper into his face than a normal man’s. It gave him a skull-like appearance. “It is a worthy way to die, taking down your enemies.”

Marten wondered if the man was crazy.

The nine-foot tall Highborn took a deep draught of air, and he lifted his auto-cannon. “By decree of the Imperial High Command—since you showed resistance to your unlawful government—I am forced to offer you the chance to volunteer for the Free Earth Corps.”

“And if we don’t volunteer?” asked Turbo.

A wicked grin exposed perfect teeth, and a loud clack from within the auto-cannon told of its readiness. The first Highborn, the one who hadn’t removed his helmet, lifted a humming sword three times the length of Stick’s vibroblade.

“Hey!” Turbo told Stick. “That should you make you happy: a personal sort of death.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Marten took a step toward the pitted nozzle of the auto-cannon. “I wish to volunteer,” he said.