The ride to the meteor-ship was short and uneventful. They docked with a hiss, a clang and a jolt that threw Marten against his restraints. Then he unbuckled himself and he and his friends floated after the two who had cut them out of the sealed pod.
They entered an airlock. There was more hissing and Marten felt the air-pressure grow around him. The inner lock rotated open and they entered a narrow corridor lit by a diffuse glow. A flexible membrane covered what had the bumpy outline of asteroid rock.
Marten realized they were inside the meteor, and this membrane likely helped seal in the atmosphere. Some rock was porous and would allow air to escape.
The two Jovians unsealed their helmets, cradling them in their arms. The woman had short, brown hair like fuzz, and the roundness of her head was even more pronounced than before. She looked back, waiting for them.
Marten unsealed his helmet, twisted it off and left it hanging from the back of his neck. He tasted the ship’s air. It was recycled from renewers, no doubt. It had a hint of oil and burnt electrical gear. Were they having technical problems aboard ship? Or was it more ominous than that?
Behind him, Omi removed his helmet. Osadar made no move to take off hers, which seemed like a wise precaution.
“There’s something you should know,” Marten began.
The pretty woman frowned, maybe hearing trouble in Marten’s voice.
“Ah….” Marten had been thinking about this the entire trip to the ship. “We came from the Mars System. I know I told you that, but—”
“I’m an artisan,” the woman said, interrupting, “a mechanic. You should save your explanations for the Force- Leader or for the Arbiter and his myrmidons.”
“Excuse me?”
Before the artisan-mechanic could explain, she gasped in horror, staring past Marten.
Marten turned. Osadar had removed her helmet. Her cyborg forehead gleamed, with the stamped letters and numerals OD12 on them. The plastic features and the strange eyes—Marten tried to visualize what the Jovians saw. Osadar had a space-zombie’s features, like one of the living dead that someone had only half-resurrected from Suspend or from a battlefield corpse-pile.
“Quick,” the artisan-mechanic gasped. “Go! Alert the ship-guardians.”
The small man Marten had first aimed his needler at moaned in dread.
“If you’ll just listen for a moment,” Marten tried to say.
Marten’s voice galvanized the small Jovian. He sprang from the chamber and scraped against the membrane of the narrow corridor. He curled his legs and shoved off again. Then he sailed out of sight down a bend in the corridor.
“There’s no need for alarm,” Marten said.
“Emergency!” the pale-faced woman shouted into a com-unit.
Omi shoved against Marten’s shoulder and twisted past him.
The pale-faced woman squeaked. And she lowered the com-unit as she stared at Omi’s needler. It was an inch from her forehead. A tinny voice squawked out of the com-unit.
“Tell them everything is fine,” Omi whispered.
The woman stared at the needler, too terrified to move.
Omi tapped the muzzle against her forehead. He did it twice. She moaned each time. “Tell them now,” he said, in his enforcer’s voice, the one he’d used in the slums of Greater Sydney.
Trembling, the woman lifted the com-unit. “Ah…we’re-we’re fine, just fine.”
“We should flee the ship,” Osadar whispered to Marten.
“They’d just shoot us down,” Marten said. “We have to talk our way out of this.”
“We have a hostage,” Omi said.
The woman’s trembling increased.
“She is an artisan,” Osadar said. “You have nothing with her.”
“What’s that mean?” Omi asked. “Artisan?”
“Put away your needler,” Marten told Omi. “We can’t shoot our way out of this.”
Omi didn’t even glance at Marten. The tough Korean kept his eyes on the woman.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered. She arched her body toward him, seemingly promising her flesh.
“Omi,” Marten said, gripping the Korean’s gun-arm. “We’re in their warship. They must have space marines of some kind.”
Omi glanced at him.
“We’ve come in peace from the Mars System,” Marten told Omi, although he spoke for the woman’s benefit. He wondered if she’d kept the com-line open. Even in her terror, there was something competent about her. He was also speaking for the benefit of whoever listened. “We’re nervous because you became scared. Osadar is a cyborg from the Mars System. But she broke her programming. She’s fighting against the Neptunian cyborgs now.”
The woman bobbed her head in the manner of those willing to agree to anything.
“Put away your needler,” Marten said.
Without a sigh and without saying he was sorry, Omi holstered his weapon.
“Go,” Marten gently told the woman.
With wide eyes, she watched Omi. He nodded.
Woodenly, she turned around. With a tight sob, she began to float down the corridor.
The woman floated through a hatch. Marten followed her into a narrow vacc-suit-rack chamber. It was packed with military personnel in blue uniforms, short-billed caps and stubby hammer-guns aimed at him.
Probably, he should have given the woman his needler in the damaged pod. But it was too late to change that now.
“There are three of you,” a tight-faced woman said, likely the commander of the blue-uniformed people.
Through the hatch, Marten said, “Come in slowly.”
Omi came in first. When Osadar followed, the line of military people stirred uneasily. Hammer-guns rose into firing position.
Marten expected them to discharge. It’s what any Martian would have done—at least any Martian that had met cyborgs. With cyborgs in this system, Marten tensed, expecting a fusillade of shots.
“Who—” The tight-faced ship-guardian tried to form words. Shock stole the last color from her already pale features. “What are you?” she whispered.
“Cyborg,” another ship-guardian said, a man.
“What?” the tight-faced woman asked him.
“That’s a cyborg.”
The tight-faced woman frowned with incomprehension.
“A true cyborg,” the man said, almost in awe, “like the videos from Mars.”
The tight-faced woman looked at Osadar again. The shock was beginning to wear off. Fear, repugnance and horror swept into its place. The woman swallowed uneasily.
Many of the hammer-gun bearers reacted the same way. Any one of them could start firing.
Marten realized that to these people cyborgs conjured up the memory of the horrible videos from Mars. They apparently had no idea they had lost one of their own ships to the cyborgs.
Marten raised his hands until they were over his head. “We’ve escaped from Mars, from the fighting there. Osadar—that’s the name of our cyborg—she deprogrammed herself.”
“What?” the tight-faced woman asked.
“Osadar is deprogrammed,” Marten said.
“Osadar?” the woman asked. She obviously didn’t comprehend.
“The cyborg is deprogrammed,” Marten said.
