“If he’s going to do anything…” Omi said.
The guardian bit his lip, and he rubbed his cheek. As Osadar regarded him from the table, he looked down once more.
“He’s a five,” Marten said, writing down the number beside the ship-guardian’s name on his computer slate.
Omi pressed a button.
A door opened on the opposite side of the room. Pelias was there, motioning for the slapped man to exit the room.
“I thought I was going to be interviewed,” the man objected. “The cyborg just slapped me.”
“Hurry,” Pelias said. “Come this way.”
Avoiding the table and Osadar seated there, the short guardian slunk for the exit.
“I hope some of them show more guts than that,” Omi said.
Marten recalled the day he’d entered a room like this. A huge Highborn had slapped his face. He’d attack the HB for it and he’d found his hand stamped with a “2”.
The first door opened and another ship-guardian entered the room. Marten readied his computer-stylus. Like Omi, he hoped there were enough Jovians who fought back. They were going to need the tough ones to have any hope of defeating what awaited them on Carme.
-4-
In a low chamber on Athena Station were countless rows of pallets containing twitching bodies. On the seventh pallet in row two, lay Webbie Octagon. Like the other subjects, a synthi-flesh tube had been inserted into the jack at the base of his neck. It surged every seventeen seconds, expanding as if pumping blood. Pseudo-nerve endings were linked in him, sending the Web-Mind monitored impulses.
Like the other humanoids, Octagon wore a black skin-suit. It showed every gaunt limb and the sunken curvature of his stomach. He had lost weight. The skin was slack under his jaw, giving him jowls for the first time in his life. It also showed the rigid state of his sex organ. Drool spilled from his mouth, and every time the synthi-tube expanded in the neck-jack, Octagon gave an obscene moan of pleasure.
During his stay on the pallet, Octagon had undergone massive brain retraining. The Web-Mind reconditioned him, although there was a stubborn core of hatred in Octagon. The hatred pulsed as two words in mind-numbing repetition. Pain sensations, fear, loneliness and erotic pleasure hit against the hatred like feathers against lead. The words made little sense to the Web-Mind. To Webbie Octagon, they were like a holy creed, a litany of promised revenge.
Because of the stubbornness of the memory-clot, the Web-Mind had chosen Webbie Octagon as the next human to head to the cyborg converter. His pallet had originally been slated for conversion five days from now. Instead, a door slid open, and a cyborg pushed a magnetic gurney into the low-ceilinged chamber. The repulsers caused the gurney to hover. The melded biped with highly-controlled brain functions glanced in short, high-speed jerks of his head from right to left. The red-dotted pupils fixated on pallet seven-two. With the whine of knee- servos, the cyborg headed to Webbie Octagon’s pallet.
The cyborg waited until the synthi-tube pulsed and Octagon moaned. With a deft twist and a slight sucking noise, the cyborg removed the plug.
Octagon’s eyes flashed open. He turned his head, regarding the tall cyborg. Then he cringed as his sex organ began to shrink to normal size. It hurt badly because the organ had been in a rigidly erect state for forty-three hours.
The cyborg slid Octagon’s inert form onto the gurney and efficiently strapped him down. Without a word, and with the quiet ever-present whine of servos, the cyborg turned the hovering gurney and pushed Octagon toward the exit. No other cyborgs entered the chamber. No other twitching humanoids left their pallets. From this bin-room, only Octagon was slated for conversion. Only he possessed the stubborn memory-clot, which had reduced his efficiency as a Webbie.
Octagon’s awareness returned as the cyborg pushed him deeper into Athena Station. He had no idea that he was heading toward the converter deep in the core of the asteroid-moon.
Gharlane stood on the bridge of the
Cyborgs had replaced the former crewmembers. Several on the
Gharlane clicked his hand-component, changing the display. Should he summon the dreadnaught at Carme, enhancing the power of his fleet here?
The superiority of Genus Cyborgus versus Homo sapiens was most apparent on the ground, when individual cyborgs faced humans. Combat in space lessened the differences, although a cyborg taskforce still possessed certain advantages over the humans.
As Gharlane debated strategies, a signal arrived from the Web-Mind. The biomass brain still resided in its original stealth-capsule, parked in a deep hanger on Athena Station.
“Yes?” Gharlane asked.
Gharlane’s head lifted. “Is that possible?”
“Are there new enemy warships?”
Gharlane didn’t like the sound of that. It was usually wiser to keep to a single strategic goal instead of switching goals midway through a campaign. “What could be wiser than gathering into a single battle group and annihilating enemy concentrations one at a time? Afterward, nuclear bombardment and cyborg occupation of the major moons will garner us millions of recruits and nearly unlimited raw resources. In time, we can construct a massive strike-force composed of multiple planet-wreckers.”
Gharlane used his hand-component, changing the holo-images and studying the Jovian moons and the various positions of warships, corporation craft and the largest pleasure liners. The Web-Mind retained control of the lightguide lasers linking them to Saturn and to Neptune. Thus, Gharlane had no way to argue the point or know precisely what occurred outside this system.
Gharlane stiffened as images and codes flashed into his modified brain. He learned that the conquest of the Saturn System had been swift, brilliant and overwhelming. The Saturn planet-wreckers and accompanying meteor- craft already built up speed, circling the ringed gas giant. The Web-Mind pulsed times, schedules, distances and the orbital positions of Mars, Earth and Venus as compared to the Saturn-launched strike.
