Then there was a massive flash of light and my vision was gone. I lost count of heartbeats, but tuned back in a few seconds later. The sensation of acceleration was gone.
My dim vision focused on the gauge. It read: 0.00 percent. I blinked, thinking that it must be damaged. I looked out the front dome and saw that the drone had vanished. More incredibly, the entire universe had vanished.
I was sitting inside what looked like a rocky cavern. The stars, planets and asteroids were gone. The ship was moving. It glided very slowly along on a sliding portion of rock, like a conveyor belt, that led deeper into the cavern. For a few moments I couldn’t think, I couldn’t react. I was dazed. Then I saw the General’s ship and his body, and I kicked into action.
The cavern was full of Bugs, at least ten of them. Two and a half feet tall, moving on six legs with two upraised mandibles held close to the thorax like a wary mantis, I watched one scuttle forward toward my ship. All around the cavern, which was about the size of a school gymnasium, were odd-looking alien machines and partially dismantled test ships. Against one wall was a large freezer with transparent walls. Through the misted surface I could see a dozen or so men in the blue uniforms of our pilots, or rather pieces of them. They seemed to have all been dissected.
I slapped the emergency release button and the hatch popped up. Grabbing at my belt, I clawed out the General’s Colt. 45 and prayed that he kept it loaded.
When the first two alien scientists rushed me, I learned that he did keep it loaded. The gun kicked twice and blew their jewel-eyed heads off. The aliens weren’t armed, this puzzled me until I had time to really look at the General’s ship. It was cut in half, which had removed his legs. Perhaps their device for grabbing ships did the job for them of cutting the vessel in half. Or maybe that was just an unfortunate side effect of dropping from near light speed to zero in an instant. It seemed that having the drone in front of me had saved my life, although it had nothing to do with how fast I was going.
It took two entire clips-fortunately the General always kept spares on his belt-but I finally managed to kill all the Bugs in the cavern. Apparently, their system for grabbing pilots who got too close to the goal took a little bit of time, and since I had brought two ships and went for it right after the General, they had not quite been ready.
Before any more of them could show up, possibly better-armed, I managed to escape through the airlock at the end of the tunnel, through the same portal that had snatched me out of the void. Steering the vessel around in a circle, I quickly got my bearings.
I shook my head grimly, marveling at the simple horror of it. The Bugs were ingenious, you have to give them that. I was in the middle of Saturn’s beautiful rings. The enemy base was hidden inside one of the small rock-and- ice, chunk-sized moons that orbited with the rings. They must have stashed this base away during the first invasion while we were too busy dodging clusterbombs and maser blasts to pay attention. Basically, I was right back where I had started.
On the way back to the Ulysses I could not help but feel exalted. The Barrier had been artificial, and I had personally exterminated the little demons behind it. Light speed was now achievable for our fleet, and best of all, when we came back and took their base we would have much more of their technology to study before the enemy fleet arrived.
Symptoms of Godhood
“I need to warm up, Suzy. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything for your people,” Mulciber told his employer. Mulciber Sten sat with Suzy in a high class Chicago office, twenty-eight floors below ground level. Hidden vents circulated filtered air around the office. Mulciber could hear the distant, low thrumming of fans somewhere far above.
He sat rigidly upright in his seat. Only his eyes moved, examining the newly reconstructed muscles and veins of his ruddy-skinned hands. No hair grew on the backs of his new hands and his fingertips were just rounded points of flesh, lacking any sign of nails or cuticles.
“Why don’t you warm up here?” Suzy suggested in a warm voice. “I would like that.” She leaned forward, placing her elbows on the expensive desk of molded cellulose that separated them. Her smile mixed with her perfume and washed over Mulciber like a bath of sweet oils. Suzy was a cop. An official of the United Chicago police force, who held the ambiguous title of District Executive.
Mulciber himself was referred to as a ‘special forces unit’ in his dossier. He was a one-man unit; he always worked alone.
Mulciber stood up slowly. It seemed to take a long time for him to rise to his full height. He moved with grace and care, in the smooth manner of a predator that does not wish to startle its prey. He took a stance in the middle of the room and began stretching.
Mulciber was a heavily modified man. His nervous system was only remotely similar to the one he had been born with. His reactions, his senses, and the coordination of the two had been greatly improved. Body-shop surgeons had taken him apart and rebuilt him, doing genetic regrows on most of his muscles and organs, and using synthetic replacements for the rest. They had in fact overbuilt him, perhaps being curious to see what they could create with their skills fully unbridled. He had many unique and experimental features to aid him in surviving, the pet theories of anatomical designers in proto-type form. One of these experiments was his skin. It was tougher, thicker and healed faster than human skin. It was less porous than normal skin and had an artificial texture to it, a shiny smoothness. It also lacked the capability to grow body hair or nails. This didn’t bother Mulciber much, as some women, such as Suzy, said that they found his baldness exciting.
Suzy clicked briefly at the keyboard built into her desk. Her blue-polished fingernails flicked over the plastic keys efficiently. The computer’s printer buzzed, spitting out several sheets of thin, synthetic paper onto the desk. She examined the printout. “Your target is leaving for the Tau planets on the two A.M. shuttle tonight.”
Mulciber made no sign of acknowledgement. He had finished stretching his muscles and tendons. He paused, then with a specific mental effort shifted his modified nervous system to battle-speed. His perceptions slowed time, allowing his brain to keep control of his blinding speed of movement. He was fast enough and strong enough to damage or kill accidentally in one careless moment of action. First he loosed a flying kick at head-level that would have smashed through a wall of cinder block. He followed through with a five-punch combination of straight-armed body blows intended to rupture an opponent’s abdominal wall and shatter his ribcage.
Suzy wriggled up into a better position to watch. She was also the product of body-shops, but for her the surgeons had been artists, working to create beauty. Her long hair-golden blonde this week, her natural color-spilled from her shoulders to hang around her face. She absently curled a yellow lock around one finger while she stared at him. Her eyes shone, reflecting the florescent lights in the ceiling.
Mulciber sped up. His fists and feet snapped out and whipped back like the pistons of a combustion engine gone mad. The air hissed over the smooth unnatural skin of his limbs.
Then he found himself doing something he never did when he was up to full speed. He found himself thinking. He thought about the Tau planets, the destination that his victim would never see. Colony ships were leaving from all the orbiting ports. Every city was sending up all the volunteers they could gather on upper deck tickets and cramming criminals from their swollen prisons into the holds below. The Tau planets were advertised to be nothing but vast rolling gardens, but things were rarely as they were advertised to be. Mulciber had never been in any kind of garden. He thought, just for a moment, of what it would be like to live in the midst of a sea of living things.
Mulciber misjudged a kick. Soundlessly, a tiny crease appeared in the plasti-foam wall of Suzy’s office. He halted his warm-up immediately. A matching crease appeared on his forehead, the equivalent of a fierce scowl for him. He reproached himself silently for his carelessness. Thinking at full battle-speed about anything but combat was dangerous. Suzy gave no sign of having noticed his error. Mulciber sat down and took up the computer file print-out from her desk quickly, so as to keep her eyes away from the dent in her office wall. He flipped through the file quickly to the most important part, the physical description. He always wanted to know first what he was up against. His eyes were arrested by a single item on the page, almost before he had had time to read anything.
What caught his eye was the age. Nine. They wanted him to kill a nine-year-old. For a second time his forehead creased in uncommon emotion. But this time the emotion was that of disgust. He flipped quickly to the slightly grainy, computer-generated color image of the child. His target looked back at him, a sturdy-looking boy
