“I’m listening.”

  “For it, Mars will supply you with several more warfare pods and a shuttle full of fuel. Does that sound agreeable?”

  “First, I’d have to know what you want us to do.”

  “Only what you’ve been trained for, Mr. Kluge. I want you to develop a storm assault group of our own. I’m not talking about blasting you at the enemy in a missile. What Mars needs are space-capable marines.”

  “You don’t have an enemy with habitats orbiting Mars,” Marten said.

  “No, no, I’m thinking—”

  “Nor do you have the capacity to storm aboard SU warships,” Marten said. “So what is it that you’re really asking, sir?”

  Secretary-General Chavez stared at Marten before he turned away. He bit his lip, and finally he reached into his coat and pulled out the crumpled pack of stimsticks. “Do you mind?”

  Marten shrugged.

  Chavez pulled out a stimstick and began smoking. “It’s a foul habit,” he muttered.

  “You’re the most important man on Mars,” Marten said. “That’s a crushing burden. A few tokes certainly seems like a small price to pay in order to maintain a semblance of normalcy.”

  Chavez took a deep drag before turning away and blowing red smoke into the air. He coughed afterward, and he turned a red-rimmed eye at Marten.

  “Are you familiar with the Valles Marineris?” Chavez asked.

  Marten shook his head.

  Chavez typed along the bottom of the computer scroll. Then he turned it toward Marten. The words had vanished and a map of a portion of Mars appeared. It showed an incredible chasm like a scar across the planet.

  “It’s 5000 kilometers long,” Chavez was saying. He tapped his finger on a large red dot to the chasm’s northern left. “That’s Olympus Mons, where we’re at now.”

  “Got it,” Marten said.

  “This—” Chavez ran his finger along the chasm “—is Valles Marineris. Social Unity still owns it. In some places, it is 80 kilometers wide. Its cliffs are 8 kilometers high.”

  “I hope you’re not expecting me to lead an army into there, conquering it for you.”

  Secretary-General Chavez shook his head. “Nothing so grandiose. For the moment, Social Unity has halted its air strikes out of the chasm. Because of that, we can use the Harrington Launch Sites situated here to ferry equipment into space. We’ve moved tons of supplies to the sites and are about to begin accelerated liftoffs. We must get those supplies to the moons and to the laser platforms. My fear is that Social Unity will recognize the importance of the Harrington fields and begin immediate air strikes against them as they did before the ceasefire.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” Marten asked.

  “We have a few orbital fighters, but not enough to fight past their aircraft and bomb those airfields out of existence. The angle is wrong for our laser platforms to reach the bottom of the canyon. Yes, we could move the platforms. But that would move them out of their optimum location against the Battlefleet, which we expect at any time.”

  “You want to use Special Forces to destroy aircraft?” Marten asked.

  “Yes,” Chavez said.

  Marten leaned over the computer scroll, studying the 5000-kilometer chasm with its 8-kilometer walls. “It looks like it would take suicide teams.”

  “Not for elite soldiers,” Chavez said. “We have skimmers. One hundred well-trained soldiers could do fierce havoc against the airfields. You’ve been trained for exactly that kind of mission.”

  “Once you attack those fields, Social Unity would likely begin air strikes again.”

  “Not necessarily,” Chavez said. He gave Marten a tight smile. It had a hint of cunning, or perhaps desperation. “If we beamed it with lasers, yes, you’re right. But we can say that partisans beyond our control are making the attacks.”

  “Meaning that if we’re caught,” Marten said, “you would make no attempt to regain our freedom.”

  Chavez’s eyes slid away from Marten. “That doesn’t necessarily hold true.”

  “Right,” Marten said.

  Secretary-General Chavez took another drag on the stimstick. “The critical thing is that none of you get captured.”

  “I don’t see why you need me,” Marten said. “I don’t know Mars like—”

  “Mr. Kluge, please. Don’t insult my intelligence. You’re Highborn trained, which means to a higher pitch than anything Social Unity or the Planetary Union could achieve. This is precisely the type of attack in which you excel. We have an elite troop, but we desperately need even a few perfectly trained soldiers to show us what we’re doing wrong, and what we need to do right. You have arrived here as a gift for Mars, Mr. Kluge. After the battle, we will gratefully supply you with the needed fuel and pods. Then you can be off to the Jupiter System or perhaps, if you wish, you can remain here as an officer in our military.”

  Marten sat back as he tapped his fingers on the table. He glanced at Omi, who betrayed nothing. “Let us talk it over.”

  “By all means,” Chavez said. “But—”

  “No,” Marten said. “Don’t add any threats. We’ve had a bellyful of them from the Highborn. Just tell us what you’ll give us, not what you’ll do to screw us if we refuse.”

  Chavez blew smoke through his nose as he stood up. “Yes. I understand. Think it over and give me your decision…” he checked his chronometer. “In ten minutes.”

  “Sure,” Marten said. “Ten minutes it is.”

  -10-

  Commodore Blackstone waited with Three-star Commissar Kursk in the cramped hanger terminal of the Vladimir Lenin.

  The Commodore had shaven, and he wore a pressed uniform. While the lost quality to his eyes had dwindled since he’d joined the hum-a-longs, the pain still lingered in his heart regarding his ex-wife. And if he thought about it too long, the bad thoughts came. The desire to return to Earth, hunt down her lovers, and splatter their flesh and blood with aimed fire from a heavy-duty gyroc. That was better than moping, however, because he transferred his hatred against her lovers toward the damned Mars Rebels. It would be a joy to obliterate their space stations and capture the moon bases.

  Commodore Blackstone rubbed his jaw and glanced sidelong at Commissar Kursk. She had taken to eating with him in his wardroom. She said it was because it was wrong for him to brood alone with his thoughts. She had always brought food with her, a tray for her and a tray for him. A terrible thought now surged through Blackstone, and he wondered how he could have missed it.

  Had she put mood-altering drugs into his food? He’d never felt hatred toward the Martians before. And he’d never considered blowing away his ex-wife’s lovers so their brains rained globules of gray matter against the side of her house. He grinned at the image. He grinned thinking how his ex-wife would scream and scream. She might even melt in remorse and crawl to him on her hands and knees. Maybe right there in the open, with blood dripping down the side of the house, he would take her and—

  “You put something in my food,” Blackstone said.

  Three-star Commissar Kursk was taller than him by a few inches. She wore her cap’s brim low over her eyes. Her uniform was tight against her hips, and her hands were firmly clasped behind her back. The way she stood at attention, if she’d had any kind of breasts at all, they would have jutted against her uniform. Instead, her badge shined in the harsh glare of the terminal’s lighting.

  “This is hardly the place to discuss it,” she whispered.

  Three red-suited PHC enforcers waited behind her. Five of the Commodore’s deck police waited along another wall. They all anticipated the first meeting with the cyborgs from Neptune. The cyborg command pod had docked with the Vladimir Lenin. Beyond the terminal door were clangs and the hissing of returning atmospheric pressure.

  “That is against all regulations,” Blackstone hissed at her.

  She gave him a stern glance. “Don’t be sentimental. Look at you now. You have rage in your veins, as a military man should. You wish to kill. That is good.”

  “You’re drugging me,” he whispered.

  “Nonsense, I’ve re-balanced you to what you were, a fighter and a warrior. These past weeks have seen a marked improvement in the Battlefleet. Morale has been boosted and fighting vigor almost returned to acceptable norms.”

  “I forbid you to administer any more drugs.”

  “You should fall on your knees and clasp me in gratitude for what I’ve done.” She gave him a vicious grin. “I always achieve results. It is why I am a three-star commissar, and why PHC sends me to the hotspots. Rid yourself of weakness. The cyborgs arrive. We must present a united front against them.”

  Blackstone had read Hawthorne’s secret report about Blanche-Aster’s clone from the Neptune System. Hawthorne had clearly stated the danger that the cyborgs possessed a chemical or mechanical way of altering a human’s loyalty. For that reason, Blackstone had issued an order that no one board any cyborg battle pod.

  “Against the cyborgs?” Blackstone asked. “What haven’t you told me about them?”

  Commissar Kursk’s eyes narrowed as she faced the terminal entrance. “This is a critical juncture in Social Unity’s existence. The Highborn run amok. Now we have summoned the cyborgs to help us defeat our scientists’ genetic folly. There are some in PHC…”

  She scowled.

  Commodore Blackstone tugged his uniform straighter. He had noticed Commissar Kursk more, the shape of her hips, the tight fit of her boots and the way her butt swayed when she marched. It was as if she understood he watched her and secretly enticed him. She had stern features, but those features had appeal. If his ex-wife had taken lovers, why couldn’t he indulge in sins of the flesh with this arrogant PHC officer? He would make her whimper. Yes, he would show her the kind of officer he used to be in the old days. Even now, as she scowled at the terminal entrance—

  Blackstone shook his head. These weren’t his normal thoughts. She had drugged him. It had masked his malaise. It had heightened his anger and likely heightened his sexual desires. Wouldn’t she be surprised if he—

  “No,” he whispered.

  “What is wrong now?” she whispered.

  A new clang told Blackstone that an inner hatch had opened. The cyborgs were almost inside the Vladimir Lenin’s pressurized quarters.

  Commissar Kursk had just hinted at PHC rumors. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had warned him that Political Harmony Corps likely had a hidden method of communication with the cyborgs. Hawthorne believed that was why the cyborgs had decelerated for the Mars System instead of for Earth as originally planned. Perhaps as importantly, Hawthorne suspected that PHC and the cyborgs had a hidden understanding between them. Hawthorne had warned him to be careful of the cyborgs and to use critical judgment in dealing with them.

  Blackstone snorted quietly. Now the commissar had drugged him. The jackboot-wearing commissar he’d like to drag into his wardroom and—

  The terminal entrance began to slide open. The cyborgs from Neptune were here.

  Commodore Blackstone stood at attention, curious at what he’d see. Beside him, Three-star Commissar Kursk clicked her jackbooted heels together.

  The terminal entrance slid open, and an abomination strode onto the Vladimir Lenin. He, or perhaps it, wore a blue uniform like a large human, but he looked like a robot with polished metal parts and plastic flesh. His face seemed capable of only minimal expressions. His eyes were shiny silver-metal orbs that moved smoothly in black plastic sockets. He was bald like Blackstone, and he was taller than Commissar Kursk. There was a sense of great weight about him, as if he was solid metal, and yet he moved with a predator’s grace.

  Behind the chief cyborg were three taller, elongated monstrosities of flesh and graphite-bones. They were too long-limbed, and with every motion their motorized joints made faint whirring sounds. They had armored bodies and dead faces that they wore like masks. Their incurious eyes held inhumanity and something worse. They seemed like quickened mechanical zombies, with tiny hints of their lost humanity. Blackstone had never felt such a chill in his heart. Those hints of humanity looked out of the cyborg pupils as a screaming prisoner might, trapped in Hell.

  Commissar Kursk gasped and almost staggered back. Blackstone grabbed her elbow, steadying her. Then he stepped forward and saluted crisply. He wanted to order the deck police to draw and fire until nothing but smoldering electronics and twisted metal parts lay before him. He doubted, however, that his five MPs and the three PHC enforcers would win a gun-battle with these things. The Highborn were out there, conquering Inner Planets. Now Social Unity had called for deadly allies to help tip the balance. Blackstone suppressed a shudder of horror. Sweet bones of Marx, was Hawthorne mad? Social Unity should unite with the Highborn to exterminate every infestation of these mechanical terrors.

  “Welcome aboard the Vladimir Lenin. I am Commodore Blackstone, the commanding officer of the Social Unity Battlefleet Mars.”

  “I am Toll Seven,” the chief cyborg said in a modulated voice. It only hinted at machinery, but it lacked emotive inflection. There was power in the voice, but a coldly logical power that would likely ignore any appeals to love, hope or mercy.

  Blackstone hated the voice as a new dread formed in him of this Toll Seven. Humanity had searched its nightmares and foolishly manufactured this thing. It was inhuman, alien. This was madness.

  Blackstone had to concentrate to listen, as Toll Seven was still speaking.

  “We have arrived to achieve victory for Social Unity. Therefore, it is imperative that we commence with the battle plan.”

  Blackstone felt as if he was floating outside his body. He was looking at the other cyborgs, the elongated things with whiplash limbs, limbs that seemed abnormally strong. Who would have ever agreed to let technicians tear away their humanity to be rebuilt that way? How had the scientists in Neptune found volunteers? It was incomprehensible.

  The Commodore was surprised to hear himself saying, “It has been an incredibly long journey for you. Would you like to rest first?”

  “Logic dictates an immediate attack,” Toll Seven said. “…mingling to initiate friendship can commence upon final victory.” The chief cyborg thereupon smiled, revealing evil steel-colored teeth.

  Certainly, Toll Seven must have meant the smile as a friendly gesture. To Commodore Blackstone, it seemed like a ghoul about to feast on the living.

  -11-

  A day after meeting, Secretary-General Chavez, Marten and Omi went on an inspection tour of the Special Forces equipment and personnel located on Olympus Mons.

  The giant volcano housed hundreds of thousands of people and some of Mars’ most critical military assets. The proton beam was the most important and was located near the volcano’s crater. The volcano’s great height pushed its cone well up into the weak Martian atmosphere. With less gas to burn through, the beam had greater space-destructive capability than the proton beams on Earth. Those on Earth had to fire through dense atmosphere. Massive friction weakened the Earth proton beams and thus limited their range. The Mars proton beam had correspondingly greater outer-space range due to almost negligible atmospheric friction. Unfortunately, the targeting problems were immense.

  The Red Planet rotated and moved through space, both in its orbital path around the Sun and in the Sun’s orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Secondly, as negligible as the Martian atmosphere was, it still caused minute diffraction. A man looking at his foot in a pool of water would notice that his limb didn’t seem to be exactly where he knew it should be. The same problem occurred with the targeting system on Olympus Mons. Unfortunately, long-range beam-fire called for intensely accurate shooting. Thus, the Mars proton beam wasn’t used for truly long-distance fire, which in this case meant anything over 10,000 kilometers.

  The SU Battlefleet was in far orbit, at a distance of 350,000-kilometers from the surface. That was well out of the proton beam’s range. The closer moon Phobos was within the proton beam’s range, but Deimos was well out of reach.

  There was only one deep-core mine on Mars, and it was situated under the mighty volcano. It powered everything on Olympus Mons, and it would power the proton beam.

  There were several merculite missile sites here. But the Martians lacked anything like the barrage of missiles that could fire from the Eurasian landmass on Earth.

  Marten asked the security chief about that.

  The security chief, Major Diaz, was lanky, but had more muscles than most Martians. He’d admitted to heavy growth hormonal use and an equally heavy addiction to weight training. Major Diaz scowled most of the time and was darker-skinned than the rest of his men. His face was sharp and angular, with his dark hair swept back hard. He had a beak of a nose and suspicious brown eyes. He’d muttered something earlier about being almost full Aztec, but Marten hadn’t any idea what he’d meant by that.

  It turned out that the elite Special Forces team was made up of Chavez’s security people. There were about fifty men specially chosen from five hundred or so gunmen. They were able fighters, but Marten was less than impressed.

  Diaz spoke about Mars’ planetary defense as he walked with Marten and Omi around an open-topped skimmer in a vast underground garage. The lights in the underground facility were at low power, and the air was cool. Marten could see his breath, and the air here tasted strange.

  The skimmer was rectangular. Its open area in the center could hold four men and their backpacks. It was silver, had triangular wings and possessed jet power to give it VTOL abilities.

  Marten didn’t like the open tops. He would have preferred enclosed pressurized hovercraft. But this was Mars, and the Planetary Union was poor. Marten rapped his knuckles against the skimmer and was surprised at the aluminum sound. “It isn’t armored.”

  Major Diaz shook his head.

  “We need armored skimmers,” Marten said.

  “Don’t have them,” Diaz said.

  “I don’t get this. You hardly have any defensive missiles, almost no attack aircraft, and now you lack armored skimmers.”