Marten heard himself wheezing, the noise loud in his helmeted ears. He scanned the Martian sky as he trembled. If there were another jet, it would likely kill them all. Slowly it dawned on him that the two aircraft were it. No more appeared.

  Omi put his hand on Marten’s shoulder. Marten whirled around with a snarl. Then he grinned sheepishly and nodded as he settled down.

  “Major Diaz?” Marten asked over the radio. There was nothing but static. Were his troubles with Diaz over? Was the man dead? “Major!” he shouted.

  “Here,” Diaz answered in a choked voice.

  “Glad to still have you among the living, Major,” Marten said. “Rojas.”

  “Here, sir,” Rojas said.

  Gutierrez was also alive, with his entire skimmer crew. Lopez and Barajas were dead, and their skimmers destroyed. There were no survivors from either vehicle.

  Thirteen skimmers were left out of the original twenty. They had destroyed two more jets, but at too high of a cost.

  “Listen up, people,” Marten said over their headphones. “We’re going to use over-watch from now on.”

  Marten waited for Diaz or one of the others to ask him why they hadn’t been using over-watch before this, but none of them did. Omi and he had killed the two jets and likely saved the remainder of the raiding party. Maybe it was finally starting to sink in with them that they weren’t soldiers, and this was a real shooting war, not a guerrilla raid on underground city streets.

  Too soon, their skimmer whined and shook so violently the metal rattled like a child’s toy. They rose higher and higher, using the VTOL jets to reach the next plateau.

  Marten’s throat was dry and tasted like rust. He was sick of the planet’s sandy smell and the gigantically oversized geographical formations. He wanted to get back to the Mayflower and head for Jupiter. Jets, sand, kilometers deep canyons, he yearned for the quiet of outer space.

  What a way to buy fuel. He snarled as the VTOL jets whined down and they flew over the ground by a normal few feet. If Social Unity had done something to his hard-won shuttle…then he was going to find a way to make them pay in a manner that they would never forget.

  -20-

  As Marten and the remnants of his commando team skimmed for Olympus Mons, the SU Battlefleet had already braked to match orbits with Phobos, Deimos and the edge of the Martian atmosphere.

  Commodore Blackstone sat in his wardroom, staring at a still-shot of his ex-wife. The vidscreen showed a young woman with long auburn hair in a three-piece bathing suit. Through bio-sculpture, she had maintained her youthful looks. Through vigorous exercise, she had maintained her shape. To realize now that she hadn’t done it for him, but in order to keep catching new lovers, drove Blackstone near despair.

  There was a soft knock at his door.

  Blackstone’s hand shot out as he pressed his keyboard, switching the screen to a tactical display of the Mars System.

  “Enter,” he said.

  The door opened and General Fromm stepped in and saluted.

  “No need for that,” Blackstone said quietly. “We’re not on the bridge.”

  General Fromm nodded stiffly and then managed an odd smile.

  “Is there something troubling you?” Blackstone asked.

  Fromm cocked his head, blinking at him. The general seemed distant, as if he’d lost his train of thought.

  “If you could make it brief, General,” Blackstone said. “I’m rather busy.” He gestured at his vidscreen. “I’m planning the next maneuver.”

  “Ah…” Fromm said. “Yes. That’s why I’m here, sir.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s about the prisoners on Phobos.”

  “There are prisoners?” Blackstone asked. This was the first he’d heard about them.

  “Strange, I know,” Fromm said. “The cyborgs are so rigorous that it would seem they’d kill everyone. Apparently, they are keen to digest every iota of intelligence they can from the enemy. Toll Seven wishes for my people to interrogate the prisoners.”

  Blackstone frowned. Wasn’t that Commissar Kursk’s task? “It surprises me the cyborg doesn’t want to do it himself.”

  “My thinking exactly,” Fromm said. He touched his neck and rubbed a heavy bandage there.

  Blackstone wondered why he hadn’t noticed the bandage before now. It was flesh colored. He wanted Fromm out of here so he could decide whether to send his ex-wife a message regarding his possible return to Earth. Although he found it irksome, he forced himself to show interest in the general and his request.

  “What happened to you?” Blackstone asked.

  Fromm’s hand shot away from the bandage as if it was suddenly hot.

  “Ah…”

  “Is it a deep injury?” Blackstone asked.

  “I jabbed myself,” Fromm said.

  Blackstone couldn’t really care less. He did note that Fromm spoke in an odd manner, and decided it must be the stress of battle. “Is it healing?” he asked, wishing he’d never brought up the injury.

  “Yes,” Fromm said. “It’s healing very well, sir. Perfectly.”

  Blackstone indifferently waved his hand. “Yes, take care of the interrogations. But be sure to notify Commissar Kursk about it.” He frowned. “Why did Toll Seven ask you? The more I think about it—you realize that interrogations are the commissar’s prerogative?”

  Fromm stiffened and saluted. Then he opened his mouth as if to explain but said nothing.

  Blackstone wondered if Supreme Commander Hawthorne had become a martinet concerning military protocol. Is that why Fromm acted so oddly? Had Fromm gained these strange mannerisms during his time on Hawthorne’s staff?

  “Perhaps the cyborg realizes the commissar is overworked,” Blackstone said, answering his own question. He showed his teeth in a feral grin. “If Toll Seven had asked for the prisoners to interrogate, I’d have said no.”

  General Fromm cocked his head, and his eyes became glassy before he asked, “Is there a reason why you would have refused Toll Seven?”

  Blackstone laughed without mirth. “I don’t trust the cyborgs. I hope you don’t either.”

  “No, no,” Fromm said, “not at all.”

  “Say, whatever happened to that aide of yours?” Blackstone asked. “She used to dog your heels. Now I never see her.”

  “The clone?”

  “That’s right. The Aster clone.”

  Fromm blinked several times. “She’s hard at work monitoring the cyborgs.”

  “The Supreme Commander asked about her in his last lightguide message,” Blackstone said. “If she discovers anything unusual, I want to know about it immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fromm said.

  Blackstone drummed his fingers on his desk. “Was there anything else?”

  “No, sir,” Fromm said. “With your permission, sir, I shall communicate your decision to Toll Seven.”

  Blackstone waved him away, and he switched the tactical display back to a still-shot of his ex-wife. He was hardly aware as the door closed and General Fromm took his leave.

  ***

  Nine minutes later, Fromm secured the door to his cubicle. He double-checked it. Then he sat down on a chair and peeled the thick, flesh-colored bandage from his neck. A deep jack was embedded there.

  Stout General Fromm licked his lips, feeling an odd sense of sexual arousal as he uncoiled a warm flexible tube. It was synthi-flesh. He wormed the tube into the jack in his neck. He shivered with delight as the pseudo-nerve endings linked with nerves in his neck. It always began as pleasure sensations as the insert sent pulses to the needed brain centers. Drool trickled from his slack mouth. He moaned in pleasure and shifted in short sudden movements.

  Then the deeper functions occurred. Mentally, he entered Web-Mind, the unit of the Neptune whole that resided in Toll Seven’s command pod. The general reported directly to Web-Mind about his talk with Commodore Blackstone. With his Web-heightened memories, he relayed the conversation perfectly.

  Afterward, Web-Mind took General Fromm’s consciousness into his favorite simulation. During the episode, Web-Mind continued reprogramming the chaotic mass of the general’s neurons, gaining yet another level of control over the bio-form’s thoughts.

  ***

  The unpleasant task of beginning the conversion process fell to OD12 and three other cyborgs. The Phobos prisoners were a mix of male and female bio-forms.

  Twenty-seven naked humanoids drifted toward the far wall of the storage room as OD12 and three other cyborgs entered. The cyborgs had already shaved off all the hair on their bodies. The prisoners had bruises and scabs, but each was now as hairless as a newborn.

  The bio-forms babbled frightened questions. And they stared at OD12 with wide-eyed horror.

  That troubled her. What troubled OD12 even more was that her internal computer didn’t notice her unease. During the battle for Phobos, a bullet or a shard from an explosion had struck her armored chest with terrific force. Adrenaline had already flown through her system. That adrenaline had accelerated many bio-functions in her, but for too long a period without rest. At the time, OD12 hadn’t noticed either problem. Replaying it later in her computer memories, she’d noticed that a glitch or an electronic burn had surged through her internal computer several microseconds after the impact. Certain data had been lost. OD12 suspected now that the censor program had been damaged. Her computer had repeatedly given her a message to report the incident to Web-Mind. She ignored it, and the computer ignored her disobedience.

  Because of that, OD12 pushed aside the override controls over her emotions with a sustained effort of will.

  She now studied the horror on the faces of the naked prisoners. They babbled questions concerning their fate. Some wept. Some begged for mercy. Two of them scowled horribly.

  OD12 shrugged. She heard servos whine and knew two of the other cyborgs had noticed the shrug. Would their internal computers consider that an anomaly, something foreign to proper cyborg behavior? In that instant OD12 realized she would have to hide her freedom of thought. She must mimic the others perfectly, or she would return to Toll Seven’s pod for repairs.

  No thank you, she told herself. I like my damage just fine.

  In another life, she would have chuckled. She knew, however, that if she chuckled, the other cyborgs might destroy her.

  “That one,” AZ9 said. His voice box was scratchy due to battle damage.

  OD12 swallowed down a sigh. With mechanical detachment, she strode at the chosen bio-form. The male screamed and tried to struggle, using a wrestling hold against her arms.

  Using magnetic footing to walk upright and anchor herself, OD12 plucked him out of the herd. His wrestling grapples only minimally interfered with her task. She moved away from the protesting bio-forms. She twisted him around as if he were a baby. His hysterical strength was useless against her cyborg muscles. She bent his arms behind him and clicked handcuffs over his wrists. Next, she cuffed his ankles, turned on magnetic power and attached him to the metal floor. She put a neural inhibitor on his neck, and all his struggles ceased as if he’d become catatonic. Lastly, she brought up a jack-gun. It was a heavy, bulky piece of equipment. She placed it at the base of his neck, and the jack-gun began to vibrate.

  OD12 looked up and noticed that the herd of bio-forms watched her in fascinated horror. A few babbled whispered questions.

  After three minutes, the unit made a loud noise. OD12 removed the jack-gun from the male’s neck. He now possessed a gleaming jack in his neck, ready to receive a plug into Web-Mind. But that was for later.

  AZ9 pointed out the next bio-form.

  Dutifully, OD12 went into the herd to get the female. Now all the bio-forms tried to fight. It didn’t matter. They were naked, lacked gravity and possessed minimal strength. Still, it was an ugly process. It wounded OD12 to hear their whispered words concerning what they thought she was.

  She wanted to tell them she used to be just like them. She would have told them their screams didn’t matter. They would become cyborgs or Webbies, and the memories of their horror would be overridden. It might not be for the best, but it was inevitable, as escape was impossible.

  OD12 understood that because life was rigged. The only freedom was what she possessed now, a little self-awareness. It saddened her to realize the self-awareness wouldn’t last. It meant.… It meant she had to figure out a way to enjoy it as much as she could while it did last.

  She pressed the jack-gun against another neck, and the machine began to vibrate and dig into the captured female’s flesh.

  -21-

  After passing Pavonis Mons, and with Olympus Mons towering in the distance, Marten saw SU jets once more.

  The commandos skimmed eight meters above huge red dunes, with the sand below drifting in ominous swirls. All day, Marten had fought against an increasingly strong headwind. Omi now tapped his shoulder and pointed into the reddish sky.

  At first, Marten thought Omi meant the wispy ice clouds kilometers high. Then Marten noticed slow-moving specks.

  “Can the jets climb that high?” Marten asked over the comm-link.

  “Did you see that flare?” Omi asked.

  “Flare?”

  “It was near one of those jets, might have been one of them.”

  Marten made a shrewd guess. “Martian orbitals must have jumped the jets.”

  During the next few minutes, there were four more flares. Likely, it was aircraft dying a violent death.

  Marten hoped that meant some Martian space defenses still existed. The thought of being trapped on Mars for good made him queasy. He had been trapped in Australian Sector for years. He wondered sometimes if he ever should have escaped from the Sun-Works Factory the day his parents died. He’d yearned for freedom all those years in Australian Sector. He’d resisted Social Unity just as the Martians had resisted here. The Storm Assault Missile had changed him. He no longer resisted because he no longer accepted either Social Unity or the Highborn as even nominally in charge of his life. Until he found a free society, a free government, he was his own government, his own self-run State.

  Marten squinted up at the wispy ice clouds. He searched for specks, but the jets and orbitals had either perished or left for somewhere else. The Planetary Union was the closest thing to freedom there was in Inner Planets. Yet, they followed Unionist doctrine. It talked a good game but essentially meant the union leaders made the decisions. It leaned heavily on original Social Unity doctrine. The great difference was power. Social Unity wielded it, and the Planetary Union wanted it. Because the Unionists fought like a wounded beast, it granted its individual members greater autonomy than otherwise.

  To pass the long hours riding the skimmer, Marten had spoken to Squad Leader Rojas about the Planetary Union. That’s how he’d discovered the majority of his information concerning Martian ideals.

  Rojas’s major credo, and apparently the Planetary Union’s as well, was—Mars is for the Martians. That was reasonable. But Marten no longer found socialist theories acceptable in any form. As far as he could tell, socialism always led to a police state, with a heavy emphasis on thought control.

  Marten wanted a free state, where free people united to achieve goals they genuinely desired. Instead of Thought Police, individual people would work toward individual goals. His mother had taught him about such systems. They had existed in the past and might possibly exist farther out in the Solar System. Yet, his mother had also taught him another truth. People were not inherently good. All humans had a propensity toward evil. Each person needed a code of conduct that corralled that propensity toward bad actions. For his mother it had been God and the ancient book called the Bible.

  Do not steal was one of the ancient maxims. Social Unity stole a man’s labor and his freedom. Social Unity theory spoke about equality, using it so the State could plunder the production of the individual.

  Marten shook his head. He refused to let anyone plunder him anymore. His stint in the Storm Assault Missile had torn the last veils from his eyes. He had no allegiance to Social Unity or the Highborn. Both systems sought to enslave him. So the Sovereign State of Marten Kluge—the germ to an ancient method of governance—was going to leave Mars before the Planetary Union tried to usurp his freedom and mold him in its likeness.

  The great question was how to achieve his dream. If the SU Battlefleet had moved into near orbit, it meant they had likely captured his shuttle. If they held his shuttle, how was he going to tear it out of their grasp? Perhaps just as importantly, how was he going to get into space again to try to wrest his shuttle back into his rightful control?

  ***

  Twelve hours later, Omi drove the skimmer into a low garage at the base of Olympus Mons. Marten had the men line up in an oxygen zone. They actually looked strange without their EVA helmets on. Most had matted hair and dark circles around their eyes.

  Marten spoke tersely to them, commending some and giving others Highborn axioms concerning combat. Then he dismissed the men and told them to get some sleep.

  As the men filed away, Major Diaz strode up and saluted. The major looked as dangerous as ever, and his hair, incredibly, was swept back hard into perfect form. Diaz had lost weight, but none of the harshness to his features.

  “I will report to the Secretary-General,” Diaz said. “I will tell him you are a crafty soldier. I will tell him your courage and quick action saved the commandos from almost certain destruction. I refer to the jets, of course.”

  Marten waited for the kicker. He didn’t have long to wait.

  “However, I demand satisfaction from your lieutenant,” Diaz said.

  “In what form?” Marten asked.

  “A duel,” Diaz said.

  “Are you tired of living?”

  Major Diaz stiffened. “Without honor, a man is an animal.”

  “I ordered Omi to disarm you,” Marten said. “Therefore, your desire for satisfaction should lie with me.”

  “I have no desire to kill a soldier who could teach the commandos useful skills,” Diaz said.