Bio-Weapon

“I’m late already.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry. Tomorrow—”

She kissed him. “Are you really sure you want to go?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Let’s hide together like the Nonconformists.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. “What about my friends? I won’t be able to slip into the barracks and get them if the Highborn are hunting for me. Especially now. The Training Master is worried about something.”

“Is Hansen—?”

“There’s no time to explain. I need a class 5a fuse box and a cylinder of hydrogen propellant. The way you’ll get them—I’d better write it down so you won’t forget.”

She disengaged, stared into his eyes and turned away. “…I don’t know if can do this.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll have the trip to the Jupiter Confederation together.”

“With all your friends along?” she asked.

“Nadia!”

She turned and forced a smile. “What do I need?”

She wrote as he removed his vacc suit, telling her. He then stored the suit in a locker by the airlock.

“Tomorrow, same time,” he said.

She nodded, but brooded.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. He turned to go, came back, hugged her and kissed her again.  They lingered.

“I’ll come back,” he said.

“You’d better.”

He touched her face, pulled free and hurried for the barracks.

18.

Hansen’s stomach cramped, so he popped another pill and suppressed a groan. He hurried down the same street where Chief Monitor Bock had been slain. Pain creased Hansen’s sly features. The doctors said he couldn’t feel the stitches in his abdominal region where Marten Kluge had shot him. Where the ice slivers had melted and drugged him. But he didn’t trust the doctors. He felt those stitches all right.

Hansen mopped his face with his sleeve. He would have scowled, but that increased the pain, the eternal cramp. Ah! It tightened. Hansen leaned against a holo-pine on the wall, breathing heavily.

Here in this very street Chief Monitor Bock had spoken with Training Master Lycon. Hansen had talked to a monitor who had witnessed everything. He had warned Bock against bringing the charges to the Training Master. Highborn were notoriously touchy about their areas of authority. Stubborn Bock, outraged at how the shock troopers had stolen from him and killed one of his top operatives in the cutting room, Bock had claimed he had them. Shootings in public, assaulting policemen Bock had ranted. Well, Bock was dead, slain by the Training Master. It was amazing really. The files said that Lycon was a paragon of Highborn virtue. Yet he had killed the Chief Monitor in order to protect Marten Kluge and his allies. It was very strange and unusual. Despite his warning to Bock, Hansen still couldn’t fathom it.

And now he’d been summoned to see the Praetor.

Hansen mopped his face and dared touch his stomach. Pain flared. He groaned. The Praetor—why did the lord of the Sun Works Factory want to speak with him?

He popped another painkiller, straightened his uniform and hurried down the street.

Had the Training Master known about the dust? Is that why he’d killed Bock? Hansen dreaded the pain booth and even more, he dreaded the, the… He groaned. He didn’t even want to envision the punishment worse than the pain booth, no, not for a moment. The Highborn were unbelievably cruel and savage. Oh, why had he ever agreed to help Bock make and sell dream dust? They had money, lots and lots of money, that’s true. They were almost millionaires now—well, Bock had been a near millionaire—but that was meaningless before the wrath of the Highborn.

“Why, Bock?” whispered Hansen. “Why tell the Training Master?”

He swallowed, straightened his uniform once more and knocked on the Praetor’s door.

A stern-eyed woman with ponderous breasts ushered him down a hall where others strode this way and that. She brought him to a steel chair and told him to sit. He did, and he fidgeted, sweated and gritted his teeth whenever a cramp came.

“Monitor?”

Hansen almost yelped in terror. Instead, he sat straighter and nodded.

“This way, please,” said a husky, uniformed man.

Hansen followed him down another plain hall. The man pointed at an open office door. Hansen peered in, gulped and tiptoed into a spartan room. The huge Praetor in his stiff uniform, with his back to him, sat behind a mammoth desk with a model of a Doom Star the only thing on it. The dull blue walls were bare. Nothing hung on them, no paintings, mementos or plaques, nothing. The Praetor spoke softly into a wall-phone. It sounded like the rumblings of a tiger. Suddenly, the huge Praetor turned and stared at him with those eerie pink eyes. The eyes tightened, and menace, a near hysterical rage barely held under control swept into the room.

Hansen was horrified to realize that he stared at the Praetor. He immediately looked at the floor, at his feet. He almost apologized, but then he would have spoken first, a taboo breaking of the worst sort. The Praetor’s presence, his vitality and excellence seemed to expand and roll against him. Hansen felt smaller and smaller, and his knees quaked and the worst cramp of all roiled in his gut.

“Monitor Hansen.”

“Yes, Highborn.”

“You have heard of Chief Monitor Bock’s death?”

“Yes, Highborn.” Hansen oozed sweat and fear.

The Praetor paused. “Are you ill, Monitor? You sway and your pulse races. I detect abnormal fear.”

“I’ll be fine, Highborn. May, may I speak?”

“Speak.”

“I’m awed to be here, Highborn. I truly am not worthy. Perhaps that is the ‘abnormal fear’ you sense.”

“Hmm. Perhaps. Training Master Lycon slew the Chief Monitor.”

Hansen remained silent, as he hadn’t been directly addressed.

“Did you know the Chief Monitor well?”

“Yes, Highborn,” Hansen whispered.

“Speak up, preman.”

“Yes, Highborn,” Hansen almost shouted.

“Would you like to avenge his death?”

Hansen looked up in surprise. The Praetor stared strangely at him. Hansen dropped his gaze and peered at the spotless floor.

“When I ask a question, preman, I want an answer.”

“Highborn, I-I would never dream of doing anything against one of the Master Race.”

“Have you ever seen the Training Master?”

“No, Highborn.”

“He is not a true Highborn. He is an original, a beta.”

Hansen said nothing. He didn’t understand what was going on.

“A beta slew my Chief Monitor. Now I lack. I have studied the files and I find that Chief Monitor Bock relied heavily upon you. You will be the new Chief Monitor.”

“Thank you, Highborn,” Hansen said, his mind racing.

“Your first order of business will be to watch the shock troops. I want you to find anything out of the ordinary.