looking at a living mannequin or at a statue that had supernaturally come to life. Her face was so immobile. Her arms and legs were more like metal rods, with bigger, motorized joints that moved them. It was unholy, a cruel joke against the living and a mockery of humanity. Marten had to tell himself constantly that inside this mostly mechanical machine was a living being, a person just like himself with hopes and dreams.
“Osadar,” he said, lifting his gaze from the map, forcing himself to stare into her strange eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”
There was no change of expression on her face. He had no idea what she was thinking.
“Go on,” she said in her metallic voice.
Marten kept himself from flinching and kept his eyes from darting away. “Mars is doomed,” he said.
“We’re all doomed,” Osadar said. Her voice was like a heavy bell, a gong of certain defeat.
“I don’t believe that,” Marten said.
“What you believe makes no difference.”
“…if you think we can’t win,” Marten said, stung, “why do you help us?”
“Shooting gyroc rounds out here is better than those fools asking me a thousand questions in the labs. Do you know they kept me in a sealed vault, only speaking to me via a screen?”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Marten said.
“Do you think I belong in a vault?” she asked.
“I know you terrify my men.”
“Do I terrify you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Marten admitted, “but I’m trying to learn to control that.”
She nodded, and she tapped a metal finger on the map. “What you propose with this attack, it’s a suicide mission.”
“Do you want to escape Mars?” Marten asked.
Her longish head moved fast, faster than a human could twitch, and she nodded yes.
Marten broke eye contact, and he felt relief doing it. On the computer-map, he indicated an orbital hanger high up on Olympus Mons. “The commando raid’s secondary objective is to reach here. Here we will take an orbital and you, hopefully, will fly us into space.”
“The SU Battlefleet will target and eliminate any stray orbitals,” Osadar said.
“I’m hoping they will be too busy right then,” Marten said.
“How can one orbital affect the battle for—” A grim smile moved her plastic lips. “You wish me to ram the orbital into Toll Seven’s command pod?”
Marten shivered. Osadar Di usually seemed emotionless like a computer. For the first time, Marten felt her hatred, her intense desire to hurt Toll Seven and likely Web-Mind. That expressed hatred coming from an emotionless machine was unnerving.
“There is a better way to hurt the cyborgs,” he said.
“How?”
The single word had sounded metallic and emotionless. But Marten wasn’t fooled. A lifetime of pain, of hope, of bitterness seemed rolled into that one question.
Marten began to tell Osadar his plan and his hope. He also had a new idea. It had sprouted a week ago as he’d accepted the diplomatic credentials Chavez had handed him. Marten had shoved the credentials into a special pouch in his suit. He now told Osadar about his new idea.
When he’d finished talking, she said, “Your plan is impossible.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said.
“No. It is impossible.”
Marten slammed a fist against the computer-map and almost broke the fold-up table. He glared at her, glared into her strange eyes. For those seconds he forgot that she was a cyborg. He forgot to be squeamish or afraid of her bizarreness.
“What does impossible have to do with anything?” he shouted. “We fight until we’re dead! Nothing is impossible until you shrivel up and quit. Then it is impossible. If you want out, tell me. I’ll pilot the damn orbital myself, or I’ll die trying.”
“If Toll Seven or any other cyborg captures you—”
“Are you in or out?” Marten asked.
Osadar Di broke eye contact as she stared at the roll-up computer-map. “A madman to lead us and a damned thing to pilot his orbital fighter, we are doomed before we begin. It is the law of the universe, an inexorable truth.”
“Your gaining freedom from Web-Mind was also against all the odds.”
Osadar turned away. “You have a beautiful dream, Marten Kluge. To find the Neptune habitat and burn it—I can conceive of nothing more worthy to do with my miserable existence. Yes, I am in.”
“You won’t regret this,” Marten said.
Osadar regarded him. She had the saddest smile Marten had ever seen. It hurt his heart to witness it. “I hope
Osadar turned away abruptly and hesitated. Then in silence, she began to don her EVA gear. It was time to get moving.
-8-
A little over a week after Marten’s talk with Osadar, the three Doom Stars sailed majestically into far orbit around Mars. Their average velocity for the last seven weeks had been approximately two million kilometers per Earth day.
That velocity had lessened since the hard braking. The three Doom Stars now serenely moved into their firing-range, one million kilometers. For the next three days, all the SU warships, the moons and orbital platforms would be in range of the heavy lasers without being able to fire back with anything but missiles.
The one million kilometers was an immense distance. Light traveled at 300,000 kilometers per second. It would take a fired beam more than three full seconds to travel to the target. In those three seconds, the target could have shifted minutely enough to upset targeting. Thus, the targeting personnel, equipment and computers needed to compute were the target would be in a little over three seconds after the shot. That, however, was nothing compared to the need for precise accuracy. To hit with the beam at one million kilometers was comparable to a sniper hitting a penny on Olympus Mons from orbit.
The Highborn possessed such molecular accuracy, another factor that made them so deadly. Like ill omens of destruction, the three Doom Stars with their heavy laser-ports eerily glided through the stellar void and toward the bright disc of Mars.
The
On the bridge of the
