scientists there.
The Prime Web-Mind paused in its ruminations, playing back an unsatisfying memory. Because of its design and unique functions, the memories had the clarity of a holo-video.
In a white sterile room, cyborgs strapped a struggling Homo sapien with a high forehead and frightened although shrewd eyes onto a gurney. His shredded robes of office lay on the floor. Despite his advanced age, the human had supple muscles and joints. He was designated as Dominie Banbury, one of the chief capitalists of the Neptune System. Capturing him had cost seven cyborgs and two assault craft, an unwarranted expenditure of hardware.
Banbury’s personnel were in the process of boarding a cargo vessel and heading to the Number Nine converter. The Prime Web-Mind had recognized Banbury’s uniqueness, the subtly of the human’s mind. It had desired the specialist knowledge and wished to enslave the mind.
“I will pay good money or services—anything—if you will let me go!” the human shouted.
The cyborgs ignored the pleas as they remorselessly laid him down and strapped him to the gurney. Dominie Banbury soon began to rave as he thrashed, forcing the cyborgs to immobilize him with their titanium-reinforced hands. They wheeled him into an operating chamber.
“Please,” Banbury wept. “Let me go.”
The cyborgs rolled the gurney to a brain extractor, shoving his head into a helmet-like device. The unit vibrated and the lasers began to slice open the skull.
“No!” Banbury howled, his eyes bulging.
An injector stabbed his flesh, pumping various drugs into his system. Soon, Banbury’s eyes closed and he breathed evenly, relaxing.
Twenty-nine minutes later, the unit teased Banbury’s brain-mass from the skull cavity. Normally, choppers would divide the tissue as chemical scrubbers deleted old memories and pathways. The tissue would be rearranged on slates and later inserted into computing gel. Banbury’s fate was different. The Prime Web-Mind desired his memories. Thus, the brain-mass entered an obedience cylinder as a fine web of melds attached directly to the tissues.
Theoretically, it should have worked. The Prime had run through ninety-seven thousand possibilities. Banbury’s brain had taken the ninety-seven thousand and
It was the first of twenty-nine failures. Twenty-nine Homo sapien minds of unusual quality each chose or inflicted self-elimination rather than exist as a cyborg-slaved brain. The Prime had thus lost the special services of those minds.
That was a bitter loss indeed. For each of those minds had contained creativity that Web-Minds with their mass integration of human brain tissue lacked. The Prime had not yet discovered the reason for this. And that was angering.
Therefore, it kept several unmodified Homo sapien scientists and technicians alive in special chambers on Nereid. It tortured critical information from him or her, and it learned what each human feared the most.
The Prime had long ago concluded that fear was induced, love was given. Therefore, it was better to be feared than loved, leaving the decision of the action to itself.
The scientists and technicians were on the verge of an incredible discovery: an FTL drive. If they succeeded, no combination of events could defeat it.
The campaign for the Inner Planets was already underway. The Prime Web-Mind was aware of the alliance of the humans. Fortunately, it was too late for the unmodified bio-forms. It had methods for splintering the alliance, as it had agents on several of the worlds. The Highborn were the most dangerous, but they were also incredibly volatile.
With part of its conscience, the Prime continuously ran through simulations and hypotheses. It had concluded that the Highborn would have one secret weapon it would not discover until the moment of employment. Therefore, it needed the greatest flexibility in order to respond to whatever presented itself. To that end, it had sent several Lurker Assault-ships to the Inner Planets.
Those stealth missions neared their objectives. Mars was the first on the list. As the humans struggled in their chaotic manner, it would continue the war with unrelenting pressure.
One other thought gave it pause. The Prime wanted those scientists on Charon. Through a small lead, the tiniest tidbit of data, it now believed a critical human had escaped from Dominie Banbury’s service. If that key Homo sapien added his knowledge to the captured scientists, the breakthrough technology, the FTL drive, was all but assured.
A feeling of contentment surged through the brain-tissues of the Prime Web-Mind. The war proceeded well within the parameters. The Jupiter System was nearly enslaved and the Mars Stealth Assault would soon enter its next phase.
Battle for the Solar System
-1-
Captain Ricardo Sandoval sat hunched over a computerized tactical map. He was in Salvador Dome on Mars, in an armored environmental chamber, attempting to devise a winning combination against the cyborgs.
His suit, rebreather and gyroc rifle lay to the side. He wore a ragged uniform rank with sweat. It had been weeks since he’d had a bath. His eyes were red, his face pitted and his morale all but worn down by endless defeats.
His gritty eyes tightened as he adjusted the screen. He wasn’t Marten, but that didn’t mean he was going to give up. You did that when you were dead,
Ricardo shuddered. That’s what made this war so bitter, so hateful and evil. The cyborgs didn’t just kill you. They captured and dragged you down to their converter. Mars Command had captured a video of it—the skin- peelers, the choppers, the brain-scrubbers and the mech-melding—what a gruesome process.
Rubbing his forehead, Ricardo tried to concentrate. It was just a few more days until liftoff. A few more days while the cyborgs overran the planet like a killer virus, infecting one underground city after another. Instead of weakening the enemy with increasing casualties, each attack strengthened the aliens as the cyborgs processed the defeated through the converters.
Ricardo clenched his teeth and tightened his fists. Mars was dying and he wasn’t going to die with it. What else could he do but run? The cyborgs were invincible. Nothing on Mars could stop them and there was no help from anyone—not from the Highborn, Social Unity or the Jovians who had ignored their pleas.
“Bastards,” he whispered. Ricardo struck the tactical map with his fist. He still remembered the day they had asked the Jovians for help. He had been with Secretary-General Gomez as she spoke to the Sub-Strategist through a long-distance radio.
The last of the Jovians had three damaged meteor-ships. They had accelerated hard for the Alliance Fleet headed for Neptune, trying to catch up.
