were at hand. They were more stubborn at the end than they had been at any other time in the Siege of Tokyo.
Showing no mercy, the FEC soldiers kept coming. After silencing the heavy machinegun ports and blowing the underground locks, the last of the 93rd Slumlords had stormed into the station. Behind the super-thick station walls and below the four-thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete, the merculite station was a vast fortress filled with rows upon rows of heavy merculite rockets.
Perhaps sixty of the huge, armored missiles waited on a conveyer. They looked like bullets on a machinegun belt, and were fed to four blast pans: the launch sites. Between the blast pans raged the gun battles. Bullets and shrapnel bounced off the vast missiles.
Heavy body armor turned the battle in favor of the Slumlords. Remorselessly, they advanced toward the control room. Men in tattered rags crawled along the girders, dropping grenades. They popped out of supply tunnels, guns blazing. Each time, lasers and gyrocs cut them down. Then a last remaining squad of Samurais leapfrogged to the attack. They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and blown to bits. Their blood stained three of the rockets that were closest to the blast pans.
Marten led his assault group, their weapons smoking from constant use. Alone or grouped in twos or threes they sprinted, bounded or crawled to new positions. Lasers beamed, machine pistols chattered and gyrocs barked. All around the FEC soldiers, the colossal missiles towered over them. To Marten, they seemed like idols, things that should be worshiped and most of all feared. The merculite missile station was a cathedral to war, to man’s madness and killer instinct. It was only right then that men murder men in this place.
“Why don’t they surrender?” shouted Stick, slapping a new clip of grenades into his electromag launcher.
“They can’t,” said Omi, lifting his laser and burning a hole in an engineer that raced at them with a wrench.
“Why not?” said Stick, laying down a pattern of grenade fire that slew another four unfortunates.
“Because they’re insane,” Omi said, “beyond reason.”
Marten marveled at these last Japanese even as he killed them. A squad of political police officers screamed a war cry as they ran at them. They fired stunners, utterly ineffectual against combat-armored soldiers. Some of Marten’s men actually stood up, taking the brunt of the stunner fire as they blew apart the pathetic, would-be warriors.
When the last police officer fell, Marten rose. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned his men forward. Sigmir’s assault group rose and followed.
Marten paused at the corpse of one of the stunner men. The man must have known his weapon couldn’t hurt armored soldiers. So why had…. Marten’s chest tightened. He reached down and took a tangler that was attached to the corpse’s belt. He hadn’t seen one of these since…. His stomach fluttered as he thought about the Sun-Works Factory circling Mercury. For years there with his parents, all he’d ever used was a tangler, one just like this. It was a policeman’s weapon, useless on the battlefield.
A feeling suddenly came over him, an insight into himself. These Japanese were like his parents. They’d never given in, but had died for freedom. Yet what good was dying? He stuffed the tangler in his pack and hurried after his assault group. They knelt behind some missiles, trading fire with….
Marten threw himself onto the concrete floor, an enemy grenade flying over him.
“Look out!” he yelled. He rolled left, behind the nearest missile.
A flash and a scream told of another FEC death. How many had to die before the Siege for Tokyo was over? Then he saw motion, the bomb-thrower sprinting to get nearer them. In a single, liquid move, Marten rose and fired. Riddled with bullets, the bomb-thrower staggered backward, a look of shock on his face.
Marten hated Social Unity, but he felt pity for these poor sods. Then he squinted thoughtfully. He didn’t love the Highborn either. He laughed—at last understanding who he was.
“What is it?” shouted Stick, who stood nearby, slapping yet another grenade clip into his launcher.
Marten shook his head. But it had come to him, finally. He belonged to neither side. He was his own side, as his parents had been their own side.
In that instant, he conceived something new within himself, the germ of a new country, or perhaps one that was very, very old and would be reborn again. In his land—the one he now bore in himself, as a pregnant woman bears a new life—a murderer would pay for stealing another man’s life.
“I see it!” shouted Petor.
Marten snapped out of his musing and peered around his missile. He saw it too. It was a door marked CONTROL ROOM.
Sigmir howled, and he dashed toward the entrance. Amazed at the berserk rush, the FEC soldiers of the 93rd Slumlord Battalion watched the huge Lot Six Highborn hurl himself at the door. It burst apart on impact. Sigmir rolled in amidst gunfire. He roared a battle cry as he leaped up and let his gyroc bark.
At the very same instant, the clamshell top whirled open to the nighttime sky. A loud clank sounded as the heavy missiles lurched toward the four blast pans.
“Look at that,” shouted Stick. He pointed up into the sky. “What is it?”
Marten peered where Stick pointed. His jaw dropped.
Through a break in the smoke, he saw the full moon. It had a dirty color because of the haze. In front of the moon slid a perfectly circular shape. It too seemed far away. But for something so far away to block out even part of the moon’s light, the thing would have to be enormous.
Then it came to Marten, and goosebumps ran up and down his spine.
“What is it?” shouted Stick.
“…Doom Star,” whispered Marten.
Stick looked at him as if he were crazy. “Doom Stars don’t come close enough to Earth to be seen by the likes of us.”
“What else can it be?” asked Omi, who looked up too.
Stick shrugged, and all three of them studied the huge circular shape that slowly slid in front of the moon. Each gasped as the huge shape lit up. Beams, missiles, or that weird gel they’d heard about, something leaving the ship made a play of pretty colors. One of those pretty colors became a beam that slashed through the clouds. Before it could stab within the site, into the merculite missile station, the four-thousand-ton dome whirled shut on its gargantuan hydraulic sleds.
Omi, Stick and Marten exchanged glances. Within the merculite station, the sounds of gunfire, of battle, died down.
“It’s finished,” said Stick.
Omi raised his eyebrows.
“We’ve taken the merculite missile battery,” the former knifeboy said.
“You mean that Sigmir has,” Omi corrected.
“Yeah,” said Marten. He knew now that he carried something critical within himself. But if freedom were to be reborn, he had to act the part of a true man today. He nodded sharply to his two friends, asking, “Do you two remember Turbo?”
Their faces hardened.
Stick said, “We remember. But we can’t do anything about that now.”
“Why not?” asked Marten.
“Because it would mean our deaths,” Omi said.
“Given that we’d even be able to kill him,” Stick added.
“Do you doubt our abilities?” Marten asked.
Neither of them answered.
“I don’t,” Marten said. He turned and marched for the control room. A moment later, he heard Stick and Omi behind him.
As Marten entered the bloody room, Stick whispered, “How you gonna make it so we don’t die in return?”
Sigmir sat the controls—the panels circled the room. A heap of dead technicians lay on the floor.
The huge Highborn spun in his chair, facing them. “Gentlemen, it is done and I have won.”
Marten stopped, with Stick flanking one side of him, Omi the other.
Sigmir glanced at each of them in turn, his dead-seeming eyes searching theirs. With the reactions of an
