Bio-Weapon

A weird ecstasy twisted the Praetor’s features. In a husky voice he asked, “Is this true?”

“It is true.”

The Praetor reached for the capsule and hesitated. “Once their capture is known it will strengthen my position.”

“Yes, Praetor, this I realize.”

“Changing them into Neutraloids will also prove that traitorous premen can through my procedure be rehabilitated.”

“Agreed.”

“It would seem I owe you a favor.”

“My only desire is to serve.”

The Praetor nodded. “I order you to the Bangladesh, Training Master. Take your training marshals and do what you can for your doomed shock troops.”

“As you wish, Praetor.” Lycon clicked his heels and dropped the capsule into the Superior’s huge hand.

The Praetor closed his fingers around it, an awful smile on his pearl-white face. “I’ll wait until you’ve cleared the room.”

“Thank you, Praetor.” Lycon strode quickly, and once over the first set of dunes he began to jog. After the third set of dunes, he passed two cages. One held three Neutraloids, savage beings, their muscles strangely quivering and stark and tattooed a deep blue color. They snarled at the fourth Neutraloid, one alone in its own cage. He was thinner, with white bushy eyebrows and a long face. His muscles also quivered and hate blazed from his eyes. He held onto the bars of his cage, watching Lycon as he passed, never taking his eyes from him.

Lycon felt uncomfortable being the object of such hatred. How the Praetor hoped to use these creatures was beyond him. They were brutes, nothing more, berserk killers, unusable in any but the most artificial circumstances.

“Hansen!” snarled one of the Neutraloids, the shortest of the caged three, he with extra-broad shoulders. “We’re gonna skin you alive, Hansen!”

“Eat you!” shouted another, straining, reaching between two bars as if he could clutch the one he hated.

“Kill you, you bastard!” howled the third, rattling his cage as hard as he could.

Hansen shuddered, but he didn’t take his eyes off Lycon.

Then, thankfully, Lycon topped the last set of dunes and hurried for the exit.

30.

Marten waited until the end to get Omi. He didn’t trust Kang. But he was certain the others had spoken honestly. He probably would never have been able to build his jury-rigged craft if they had kept after him.

His ship amounted to two missiles, minus the warheads he’d detached from them. To the missiles, he’d welded several damage control vehicles. Those he had cut apart and re-welded, gutting some to make room for a medical unit, supplies, computers, radar equipment and the like. What his ship amounted to was a seat and toilet for him and a medical rack for Omi, who would remain in his Suspend condition. Unfortunately, Suspend wasn’t cryogenic sleep. It was meant for temporary suspension of cell death until a doctor could repair massive bodily damage. The longest anyone dosed with Suspend had been kept under and brought back to normal was three months. Marten figured his trip would take at least a year, and that would merely bring them to far Earth orbit. From there…

He refused to think about then. One problem at a time was all he could deal with. A year sitting in one spot— He blanked that out too. Survival, the refusal to quit was what drove him. Social Unity hadn’t broken him. He wasn’t going to let the Highborn kill him.

The time finally came to get Omi. He used an engine core-lift with detachable controls, normally used to go into the Fusion Drive and repair damage. From outside the beamship he controlled the core-lift, which drove to where they had put Omi. Under Marten’s guidance, the vehicle picked up the motionless Korean and carried him to an outer lock. There the core-lift deposited Omi, who still wore his battlesuit and helmet. The inner lock closed and the outer one opened ten seconds later. Marten couldn’t know it, but Vip had removed the bug that Kang had put on Omi as well as shut off the alarm rigged to him.

After a long wait, Marten picked up Omi and carried him to his ship, which like a lamprey was clamped to the side of the Bangladesh. His craft’s airlock took up half the free space of the escape vehicle. Inside the ship, he pried Omi out of the battlesuit and hooked him to the medical unit. The battlesuit he stored in the same locker where he’d put his own. Then he settled into his chair and activated the bombs that he’d put on this particle shield’s struts. They blew, and the busted shield detached and floated from the Bangladesh. Marten flipped switches and released his ship’s magnetic locks. He too floated from the beamship.

The mighty Bangladesh braked at two-Gs, although such was its velocity that it still moved from the Sun.

Marten used the hydrogen burners he’d taken off several Zero-G Worksuits and welded to his Joe-Magee capsule. Slowly, he moved toward the floating particle shield and then up and over it and then behind it. From there Omi and he were shielded from the Bangladesh.

Marten stared at the stars. One year sitting in this seat beside his only friend in the medical unit was how long this was going to take.

“Here goes,” whispered Marten. He fired the first missile, and was slammed back into his chair as the rocket burned and accelerated them.

31.

Marten traveled five hundred kilometers from the Bangladesh when the missiles ordered by General Hawthorne slammed into the vast beamship. The missiles had been fired from the missileships that the experimental beamship had been en route to meet—from the flotilla the beamship was to lead to Mars. The nuclear explosions vaporized much of the mighty structure and radiated everything else. More missiles arrived and detonated, chewing up the mass into finer debris.

Marten had fled far enough so that the heat and blast from the explosions had no effect upon him or his ship. The electromagnetic pulse however blew his main controls, prematurely detaching the living quarters from the two missiles. Marten and Omi tumbled end over end as the welded missiles sped in the direction of where Earth would be in a year.

Openmouthed, shocked and uncomprehending Marten stared at the spinning stars. Finally, numbly, he used the hydrogen burners to stop their endless spinning. He wanted to scream, to rave at the injustice and futility of life. Yet he wasn’t vanquished. So he refused to surrender. They still had air and could survive for a long, long time.

In order that he wouldn’t cry and so he didn’t go berserk, he began to sing the songs his mother had taught him in the Sun Works Factory. A Mighty Fortress is Our God by an ancient called Martin Luther was the song he remembered best. He sang until his throat went raw, and as a lunatic absorbed in his dull witlessness, he stared at the vast star-field the entire time.

32.