Battle Pod

impossible that Social Unity even knew the Thutmosis III had circled Sol to build up speed.

Until they fired missiles, fired the engines or lasers, it was unlikely Social Unity would ever realize the stealth ship was there.

The Praetor twitched his fingers, using his VR goggles to peer through the ship’s teleoptic sights. Mars was brighter now than any other object in the scopes except for the Sun, which was presently at the Praetor’s viewing back. At Mars waited the last SU fleet worthy of the name. In a little over two weeks, as the Doom Stars neared to within 1-million kilometers, huge prismatic-crystal fields would begin to spew into existence at Mars, along with aerosol-gel clouds. Those fields and clouds were supposed to protect whatever needed protecting from heavy lasers or possible Highborn proton beams.

The Praetor’s lips peeled back to reveal strong white teeth. The false smile concealed his nervousness. Because of its stealth-mission, the Thutmosis III would not send any radio or lightguide signals until the very last minute. Despite its impressive size, the stealth-ship was less than a tiny mote in the voids of space. As an almost microscopic speck, it still held life, energy and missiles. Compared to the planets, the stealth-ship was next to nothing. Compared to the SU warships, its stealth-missiles and drones would hopefully be thunderclaps out of the blackness. Yet because of the nature of his mission, the Praetor now had to wait for the next critical move.

If the Grand Admiral had miscalculated—

The Praetor let out a hiss, sounding like an angry snake. The Grand Admiral had calculated it to a nicety. The Doom Stars’ engines burned brightly and massively ahead of the Thutmosis III. The gargantuan warships poured out energy and began hard deceleration. That should conceal his actions.

Immediately, the Praetor spoke loudly but calmly to his command crew. It would not do at this recorded moment to show emotion. He must present the picture of the perfect soldier. From his command chair, with the VR goggles firmly in place, he struck a martial pose and gave the order.

The Praetor hid his smile as the command crew began to move with practiced ease. The Praetor used the VR goggles to watch through a recording device to see how they all looked. He and the crew had literally gone through a hundred and seventeen dry runs of this procedure. They were Highborn, the greatest soldiers in the Solar System. They, however, would not rely just on their excellence, but on dedicated training.

Huge stealth-missiles and drones were now magnetically ejected from the ship’s tubes. For the next twenty minutes, every warhead must exit the ship. Time passed, and everything went off perfectly. The Praetor gave another calm order. Highborn ran their big hands over various controls. Magnetic coils cooled down and firing tubes closed.

Each of the stealth drones and missiles were cold black objects, difficult to detect until the last moment. They would reach the Mars System as the Doom Stars reached the one-million kilometer range. Because of the angle of the approaches, as the stealth weapons reached the Mars System, the Thutmosis III would already be flying past Mars, no longer toward it. The Praetor’s ship would thus be able to use its teleoptic scopes to see behind whatever prismatic-crystal fields and aerosol-gel clouds the enemy had. It could lightguide and radio-message that targeting data to the Doom Stars. Just as importantly, the Thutmosis III could send targeting data to readjust the flight of its drones and the stealth-missiles so they struck the most militarily worthy objects.

It was the Grand Admiral’s surprise stroke, and it would likely open the Last Battle for Mars.

Pride surged through the Praetor. They had much to do in the coming two-and-a-half weeks. For now, however, each Highborn of his command had done splendidly.

“We have them,” the Praetor said, using, he thought, the perfect pitch in which to say it. He spoke toward a video-recorder, knowing that his words were something that future Highborn would likely replay on files for generations to come.

-6-

The new cyborg LA31, once known as Lisa Aster, climbed into a stealth capsule. She was different from the tall cyborgs with the skeletal limbs. She still had a fleshy human face, although with a steel dome in place of her former bone-skull. Bionic parts had replaced her arms and legs, and her spine had been reinforced with graphite rods. A Neptune-made cyborg could likely defeat any four emergency-made cyborgs from Toll Seven’s command pod. Still, these models fulfilled a needed function, at this, the most critical hour of the Inner Planets assault.

LA31 had undergone speed programming. She had less hardware governing her emotions or actions than Neptune-made cyborgs. Thus, as she settled into the stealth-capsule, a prearranged command forced her to jack a plug into the slot for her brain. Immediately, a lightguide laser linked her to the controlling Web-Mind. Toll Seven and the Web-Mind had decided that it—the Web-Mind—should remain in the command pod instead of coming down in sections and being rebuilt in Olympus Mons. That would happen later as Mars received its Web-Mind Master.

LA31 jacked the plug into the slot for her brain. She frowned for a moment. She’d had a mother once, someone very important. She shrugged. She couldn’t remember who that had been, although she did recall that she’d been a clone.

LA31 went rigid as a training reprimand surged through her. The plug into Web-Mind caused chemical reactions in her bio-form brain. Her face contorted and tears leaked from her eyes. Unknown to her, she had received a harsh emergency brain overlay. It sought to expunge old memories and lay down new ones, false ones generated by Web-Mind.

LA31 groaned and her throat became unbearably dry. Pain made her head throb, and it almost caused her to open her eyes. Another impulse-surge went through the prong in her jack. It caused soothing chemical reactions in her brain, along the nerve endings.

LA31 twitched once. Then she relaxed. She would sleep now as an SU stealth-ship carefully maneuvered her capsule into position. Her capsule contained a modified vacc-suit, hand weapons and an abundance of ammo. The capsule’s outer skin was asteroid rock. Soon, the capsule would float alone near Mars, as if the Red Planet had long-ago captured a piece of space flotsam. There were more like her, and they would be sprinkled at strategically and psychologically reasonable locals. They were the secret cyborg weapon, the one that was supposed to defeat the Highborn.

LA31 knew nothing about that. She sighed, remembering a happier time as a cyborg dropping on Triton, a moon of Neptune. It was a false memory. Most of her old ones had been chemically raped away. Like a mental vulture, Web-Mind watched for any resurgence of them, ready to expunge the last of the personality of the clone Lisa Aster.

-7-

The next week rapidly passed as Marten Kluge trained the commandos on the sands of Mars. Osadar Di practiced with them. She demoralized the men with her amazing bounding leaps like a Highborn battleoid, her uncanny reaction time and precision, long-range shooting.

Near the end of the week, Marten spoke to her in an EVA tent. It was larger than the survival tents they’d used for the raid into Valles Marineris. He preferred the tents to remaining in New Tijuana. Marten hated the black- visored police there, the similar city strictures as practiced on Earth and the possibility that Chavez could change his mind at any moment and imprison them.

Marten sat on a folding chair, with a folding table between them. On the table was a rollout computer-sheet. It showed Olympus Mons, its various entrance points and the orbital hangers.

Osadar Di stood, with her head near the tent’s ceiling. It was still hard for Marten to look at her. It was like