Battle Pod

with the stars.”

Omi’s eyes narrowed.

With barely restrained glee, Marten told Omi how he’d spaced the three Highborn. A part of Marten scolded himself for his enthusiasm. He had killed three humans in cold blood. It was true the Highborn had treated him like an animal. They had caused the death of all his friends. Yet there was something too bloodthirsty about taking such inordinate joy in having spaced three of the Master Race.

Omi stared at him, with that cold, hard smile playing along his lips. “I would like to have seen them die.” Then Omi closed his eyes and fell asleep.

-2-

Commodore Joseph Blackstone’s body ached most of the time from radiation poisoning. He sat before his vidscreen in his tiny wardroom aboard the Vladimir Lenin. It was a Zhukov-class battleship in far-Mars orbit.

The Vladimir Lenin had taken hits from a Doom Star. The super-ship had previously been orbiting Mars. They had finally repaired the engine damage and stopped the radiation leakage, but his crew and he had been weakened by the ordeal. Now, everyone took anti-radiation tablets and tissue regeneration drugs.

Commodore Blackstone was a short man, noted for his decathlon victories in his younger years. Once, he had been vigorous, a dynamo of energy and self-confidence. Unfortunately, he had seen better days. He had seen better years. The war, the extended voyage and the grim encounter with the Doom Star had caught him at the worst possible moment in his life.

He had dearly loved his wife, had always looked forward to their time together during his shore leave. Then his wife had sent him a divorce decree through official channels. He’d discovered that she’d had a string of lovers for years. Worst of all, she had kept a careful dossier on his sarcastic comments regarding Political Harmony Corps and the Directorate of Inner Planets. Learning those things had been horrible enough. The fourth blow had arrived a month before the beginning of the Highborn Rebellion. His only daughter had been horribly mutilated in a flyer accident on Venus. For some inexplicable reason, she hadn’t taken to regeneration therapy. He desperately wanted to see her, to hold and comfort her as he had when she’d been a little girl after her hoverpad accident that had chipped her two front teeth.

His once smooth features had become slack as he lost weight. He had bags under his eyes and too often forgot to shave. He was listless and thin, never smiled, and lived far too much in his memories of happier days.

Blackstone doubted that Supreme Commander Hawthorne was aware of any of his personal problems. Hawthorne had been an old friend from Academy days. Blackstone suspected that he knew nothing of the attributes of the political officer assigned to the Vladimir Lenin. Because of his ex-wife’s files, the political officer had boarded the battleship with a company of PHC enforcers and with extra-military authority. She was a three-star commissar, a daunting woman with a bruising personality and heavy-handed attention to protocol.

Commodore Blackstone lifted a shaking hand and turned on the vidscreen. The Vladimir Lenin had a task to perform. He’d never failed before. He studied the Supreme Commander’s operational plan for the reduction of the Rebel Mars Planetary Union orbital defenses.

“Destroy Doom Stars,” Commodore Blackstone whispered later. He was supposed to take Mars in order to lure Doom Stars here. The ache in his bones told of the danger of attempting any engagement with the super- ships.

Blackstone tapped at his desk screen. A simulation of the Mars System appeared. Mars’ average distance from the Sun was 1.52 AU. (An AU was an Astronomical Unit, the average distance of the Earth from the Sun.) The Earth and Mars were on the same side of the Sun presently, so it should have been a short journey for the convoy fleet. The closest the Earth ever came to Mars was 56 million kilometers. Now, however, Mars was nearing its farthest orbital distance from the Sun. It was also 100 million kilometers from Earth and made the convoy fleet’s journey nearly twice as long.

Commodore Blackstone rubbed his bristly chin. He needed a shave. He had forgotten that daily ritual for two mornings now.

He began to read the bulletins and study spaceship velocities. He read deceleration schedules and reports concerning the structure and position of the battle pods these cyborgs from the Neptune System came in. Blackstone had seen bionic soldiers before and assumed the cyborgs must have advanced prosthetics. How the cyborgs could benefit the coming assault, he had little idea. Hawthorne’s plans for them were patently absurd.

The scattered units gathered here in far-Mars orbit simply couldn’t do what the Supreme Commander fantasized they could do. Blackstone had toured a missile-ship yesterday that had escaped the Venus System. He had been appalled at the sloppy uniforms, the lackluster salutes and the depleted ship’s supplies. If the other warships were in similar shape, he doubted there would be enough firepower left in his growing fleet to give the Highborn much worry.

How was a commander supposed to gather a dispirited fleet in the far orbit of any planet? Then he was supposed to re-supply them, ship-to-ship, without any base facilities. Then he was supposed to effect repairs, erasing previous battle-damage.

James Hawthorne had always been far too prone to try risky endeavors. It meant that if his plans worked, they were brilliant. But if they failed, they were disasters. Who would be blamed for the disaster this time? Not Supreme Commander Hawthorne. No, it would be Blackstone, Hawthorne’s old comrade from the Academy days.

The thought brought a spark of anger to Commodore Blackstone. The spark showed in his eyes and replaced the sadness that usually dwelled there. It momentarily tightened the sagging flesh on his face.

A loud rap against the wardroom door startled Blackstone out of his anger. He flinched as he looked up. The rapping sound came again, and there was a muffled voice that demanded he unlock the door immediately.

The Commodore was hardly aware that he had locked it. He realized belatedly that the Commissar had ordered every door aboard the Vladimir Lenin remain unlocked. Comrade soldiers of Social Unity had nothing to hide from each other. Locked doors implied privacy and that hinted at property and capitalist possessions.

“Enter,” Blackstone said.

The door automatically unlocked itself and swished open. Three-Star Commissar Kursk strode in. She was a fierce woman in an overly tight, brown uniform. She had severe Slavic features that would have appealed to those who lusted after a latex-fetish dominatrix. She wore her cap so the brim was low over her eyes. Those eyes were black, intense and demanding. Surprisingly, she had a flat chest. The rest of her was lean, with just enough curvature to her hips so men turned to watch her walk away. She wore her Order of Solidarity Badge, Second Class. It was big, shiny and pinned on her chest. She’d won it several years ago suppressing individualist mania among the space-welders of the Sun-Works Factory.

Behind her followed two enforcers in red PHC uniforms, natural sadists with agonizers clipped to their belts. Their long-fingered hands never strayed far from their stun guns. These two had strange stares.

Blackstone suspected their stares were from post-hypnotic commands and an over-indulgence of glaze. Blackstone had heard rumors that some Political Harmony Corps enforcers and slime pit operators developed strange psychosis after eliminating too many enemies of the State. Many of them turned to glaze, which helped for a time but eventually made most users paranoid.

“Your door was locked,” Commissar Kursk complained. There was a hint of the agonizer in her voice. It made Blackstone wince.

“Having you been taking your tablets?” Commissar Kursk asked.

The Commodore nodded his bald head.