Assur now ruled out the idea of sending any warships to Neptune to help his mother. He must protect Titan at all costs. Besides, the odds were with the Akkad. If he lost the Akkad—

  Assur shrugged. The Valiants could easily survive that. But they could not survive losing Titan or the growing skeleton of the dreadnought.

  Assur exhaled, nodding to himself. The enemy was making his moves. There was danger here, but nothing untoward, it seemed to him.

  The truth would appear in time when the two sides engaged in direct battle. He needed to make some dispositions and instruct the Valiants on the Akkad on the correct course for them.

  This was the humans’ response to their invasion of the solar system. The Earthlings would fight, but in the end, that would not matter.

  Unless I’m missing something, Assur told himself. He would continue to ponder and watch the new developments as they came. But as of now, he was confident of victory in the coming encounters.

  -60-

  HEADING FOR NEPTUNE

  SEPTEMBER 2063

  Twenty days into the 150-day glide from Jupiter to Neptune, Colonel Steele lay in his cubicle staring up at the bulkhead. At times, he shivered and moaned. Then he would squeeze his eyes shut and breathe rapidly, and he would tremble all over. At those times, he gripped his hands so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms. Several times, that drew blood.

  He yearned to take the slope dope and go numb, feeling nothing. But if he took it, he would never stop. There were too many cases of addicts stealing from their mates. He knew how it worked.

  That meant Colonel Steele squeezed his eyes shut even tighter as tears leaked from them. It was the spacings—they’d torn him apart.

  What twisted his guts the most was the responsibility of sending one man after another through the airlock, at times bleeding, at others, having a man glare at him with monumental hatred so that he could actually feel the palpable force strike him. He’d nod. The marines on detail would shove the doomed individual into the airlock, the inner hatch sliding shut. Then a marine manually opened the outer hatch, and the individual tumbled into space, propelled by the rushing atmosphere blown from the airlock.

  Fifteen days ago, there had been a mass mutiny. The mutineers had come within a hair’s breadth of succeeding. They wanted to burst into the crew compartment of the Orion ship and rape the women to their lust’s content.

  According to the mutineers, the women were dazzling beauties, sex fiends who wanted it more than life itself.

  Steele wondered how long the mutineers had concocted these scenarios in their minds until it had built into a grim fixation.

  It didn’t matter, though. With Daniel Leatherwood, First Sergeant Wyatt Jones, and others of the original company, they had fought the mutineers with bare hands and feet. It had been a brutal free-fall fight, leaving twenty dead. In the end, Steele’s men grabbed the ringleaders.

  Steele ordered Jones to throttle them with a rope, and the First Sergeant had. Afterward, they took ten other ringleaders and spaced them with the corpses. It had been a horrific, brutal, but expedient way to deal with mutiny.

  Unfortunately, Steele could no longer pay the psychological cost of having shoved doomed men through the airlock, marines from his battalion.

  Yes, he knew the argument. Earth’s future could rest on him and on what happened at Neptune. But it was hard to believe that anymore. He followed his orders grimly, brutally, but not callously. It had never been callous for him. That meant his kill orders were tearing him apart inside. He wanted someone else to lead, anyone else to lead and take over for him.

  Steele shuddered. He knew what his ancestors had done. He knew about the guy who had fought the Comanches and won his wife.

  Wasn’t that a joke? Steele’s wife had divorced him. Who knew what his son was like under her authority and precepts?

  A stomach cramp clenched Steele’s gut. He doubled over and moaned. When he looked up, he saw that Daniel Leatherwood and Wyatt Jones stared at him. They had red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. They looked at him as if they meant to throttle him.

  Steele glanced at Jones’ hands, but there was no strangling cord in evidence.

  “What?” Steele asked in a voice racked with hoarseness.

  “You’re to come with me, sir,” Jones said. The sergeant’s voice didn’t sound strong. Maybe that was because Jones looked old, with lines in his face, with his big shoulders slumped. “But if you do come,” Jones added, “you’ve got to look like the colonel.”

  Steele did not comprehend any of this.

  “I think we may be finished, sir,” Jones said.

  “Why do you say that?” Steele said in a dead voice.

  Jones glanced at Leatherwood. Leatherwood shrugged. Jones regarded Steele again. “The captain has personally asked to see you, sir.”

  Steele blinked several times and looked around. There was no one else near. He noticed some of the strongest of the space marines kept the others at bay. Despite that, everyone craned to watch him.

  “I don’t get it,” Steele said. “I didn’t hear the captain speak.”

  Then it struck Steele. None of them had heard the captain speak for weeks. A different woman had taken the captain’s place at the intercom. The first time that had happened, it had caused a near-riot.

  Steele frowned, remembering that this had caused the mutiny. They had all fallen in love with the captain, and now some other woman had taken the captain’s place? The captain was sick. This was just a temporary situation. The other woman, a lieutenant, spoke soothing words, but not the same way as the captain. The new voice had been sexy—

  Steele shook his head, trying to focus on the here and now and on Jones.

  “Okay, you’re back with us,” Jones said. “I can see it in your eyes. Look, sir, this is critical. They’ve asked to see you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Steele said. “There are thick seals between our two compartments.”

  “I know,” Jones said. “The hatch cracked open an hour ago, and a woman spoke to Leatherwood. He came and got me. I spoke to her. She wants to see you.”

  “I’m to go into the crew compartment?” asked Steele.

  “Yeah, you lucky dog,” Jones said. “You’re probably going to have sex with all of them, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Steele said.

  “Come on, sir,” Jones said. “We’ve all dreamt a thousand times of being called there to service the crew in the other compartment. You don’t know about the fights and bloody noses and cracked heads when the men learned the hatch opened. The desire to go through, sir, we may have another mutiny on our hands. Unless you can get it together fast, sir, our mission will be scrubbed by us, at least as far as the George Patton is concerned.”

  Steele ingested that as a cold, calculating, part of his psyche began to bubble to the surface. On the George Patton, civilized ways had vanished. They had gone beyond the frontier days of America, beyond the days of the savagery of Russia in 1812. They were back at the most brutal and fiercest days of humanity. This was about the survival of the band or tribe against the forces of nature.

  Steele sat up in his cubicle as the bubbling viciousness hardened his muscles, face and eyes.

  A crooked smile appeared on Jones’ face. “Okay, Colonel, if you’ll follow me, yes.”

  Steele proceeded, soon floating toward a special corridor that was usually guarded by two marines. Now, a squad of space marines stared at Steele.

  He felt their intensity, their rage. It might have wilted him even a few minutes ago. Now, his resolve hardened. He was like a man waking up from sleep as home invaders rushed through his house, a man with a pump shotgun blowing away the invaders without a thought of remorse.

  Steele floated past the guarding marines and down the corridor. Soon, he reached the strongest hatch in the ship. To his amazement, it cracked open.

  Steele felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at Jones.

  “You lucky bastard, sir,” Jones said.

  “Right,” Steele said. “I’ll be back soon. Keep the men from swarming this hatch and killing each other until I come back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jones said. “But for heaven’s sake, don’t take too long.”

  -61-

  A uniformed woman greeted Steele, and then the hatch clanged shut behind him. He jumped at that, although he couldn’t take his eyes off the woman.

  Short and on the plump side, she was the most marvelous beauty he had ever seen. As an afterthought, he realized he had a raging hard on pressing against his pants. The desire to jump her bones was nearly overpowering.

  She must have seen that in his eyes because she shrank back. Then she smiled shyly, looking up at him provocatively. “It’s good to see a man,” she said.

  Steele lurched toward her, but with vice-like control, knowing if he succumbed, he’d lose his mind, he stopped. While trembling at the effort, he said, “Go. I’ll follow you.”

  She nodded. She had short dark hair with bangs almost in her eyes. Peeling her Velcro-shoed feet from the carpet, she floated away.

  Steele pushed after her.

  The wonderful and delightful scent of women washed over him. It was so different from the rank stench of their marine compartment of the ship. Steele didn’t know it, but he groaned aloud as he trembled with excitement. A grin nearly cracked open his face.

  He floated into a different room with a taller, certainly more beautiful brunette in a uniform waiting for him.

  “You’re Colonel Steele,” she said, dropping her gaze against his ferocious intensity.

  “I am,” Steele said in a husky voice.

  She looked up. “You’re going to have to contain yourself, Colonel. We can’t do this if you go crazy.”

  He nodded, trying to control himself. It was hard. That’s what she said, he told himself.

  “Look to your left,” said the taller woman.

  He did.

  Two other female crewmembers aimed weapons at him.

  “This is a volatile situation,” the taller woman said. “I’m Lieutenant Moore. If you can’t contain yourself, this isn’t going to work.”

  “I recognize your voice,” he said thickly. “Now I can put a face to it every time I hear you speak.” Despite his resolve and effort, that proved too much. He laughed in a provocative manner. Women surrounded him. He should take those weapons and start ripping off clothes.

  “Colonel, this is an insane situation,” Moore said. “You must contain yourself, I beg you. The whole point of the mission may be about to collapse. I think you’re the only one who can save it.”

  That barely penetrated his fog of arousal. Women everywhere he looked. How he’d longed for this moment. He… he…

  Steele looked down at the carpet and took five deep deliberate breaths. He held each one for several seconds and let it out slowly. He tried to remember something as he did that. Yes! God considered it a sin if one was gripped by ferocious lust for someone other than his wife.

  Steele hardly cared if that was so. But there was one spark in him that combined with his ferocious, ruthless quality. He forced himself to stop trembling with desire. When he felt control returning to his mind, he looked up and nodded.

  “I can listen for a little while,” he said. “Then I have to leave.” He indicated all of them, “You’re like… It is all I can do from tearing the clothes off my body and then ripping off yours. I just, I just—”

  “I know,” Moore said. “I understand better than you realize.”

  “How’s that?” asked Steele. “Do you feel the same way?”

  “No,” Moore said. “Before we admitted you, we all took sedatives. That’s partly helping. The other part is that we know what happened on the Georgy Zhukov. It’s critical that you learn about it.”

  Steele forced his arousal down another notch. Something terrible had happened. He needed to know what. “Okay. Tell me about it.”

  Moore led the way. He followed, and the weapon-bearing women followed him. They all used float rails and passed through an open hatch into a private room. He could tell because there were posters on the wall of Earth and of an ugly looking man in various places, one of them Paris. Strapped to the cot was a pale, sickly woman with splotches on her face.

  With a shock, Steele realized— “Is that the captain?”

  The captain turned her head, staring at him with bloodshot eyes. “It’s me,” the captain said.

  Steele could almost hear the voice that used to speak to them.

  “Cancer,” the captain whispered.

  “Are you dying?” Steele blurted.

  “Yes,” the captain said hoarsely.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. All the men will be sorry.”

  The captain closed her eyes as if she’d fallen unconscious. She must be far-gone.

  Steele turned to Moore. “Are you in charge now?”

  Moore nodded.

  “And you don’t know what to do?” Steele said.

  “I know exactly what to do,” Moore said. “Before I explain, you should learn what happened on the Zhukov.”

  Steele nodded. “So tell me.”

  Moore glanced at the others, then back at him. “Do you want to hear the logs, see it on a screen or should I just tell you?”

  Steele studied the sleeping captain before telling Moore, “You should show me something so I’ll actually believe it later.”

  “Right,” Moore said, turning to go.

  “Just a minute.” Steele floated to the cot and put a hand on the captain’s shoulder. “You don’t know,” he said. Then he couldn’t say more as tears welled in his eyes. She’d spoken to them for so long. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he snatched his hand back as if he’d violated her by his touch.

  The others watched him.

  “I’m ready,” Steele said.

  He followed Lieutenant Moore onto the bridge. There were padded seats and a blizzard of blinking lights, a viewing port and screens showing space in all directions.

  Steele floated to a screen showing the brilliant speck of the sun. He was speechless. The sun was so far away and it was so damn beautiful.

  He looked at them.

  Moore pointed at a different screen.

  Steele went to it.

  Moore slid into the seat and manipulated controls until an Orion ship appeared. That had to be the Georgy Zhukov. From it—

  “What the hell,” Steele said, “are those the launch missiles leaving?”

  “Yes,” Moore said.

  Steele watched amazed and sickened. All five of the launch missiles detached from the Orion ship, their thrusters igniting and spewing exhaust. The launch missiles left the Georgy Zhukov as they roared in different directions into space.

  “This is real?” Steele said.

  “It is very real,” Moore said.

  “I don’t understand. What’s going on? Why are the missiles doing that?”

  “That’s what I want to explain to you,” Moore said.

  “Go ahead. You have my attention.”

  Moore told him an awful story of fraternization, but not with the enemy. The fraternization had been between the all-female crew with the space marines of the Georgy Zhukov. The fraternization quickly caused a breakdown as the men vied for the attention of the women and had sex with them. Soon, the marines fought savagely against each other for the women’s favor.

  Harems and kingdoms rose and fell in the ensuing days until finally those who considered themselves as the unlucky ones rose up and slaughtered most of the toughest space marines. The new victors grabbed the women and rushed to the various launch missiles. The men were quite mad, according to Moore. They’d blasted off with their females, ready to indulge in wild times. Of course, soon, each launch missile would run out of breathable oxygen.

  Barely two hundred space marines were left aboard the Georgy Zhukov. The Russian Orion ship lacked any crew—pilots, navigators, and others. General Konev and some of his highest officers remained, although many were badly injured. They had access to the bridge and had agreed to take the forefront in the attack on Neptune.

  “This is a disaster,” Steele said.

  “Oh yes,” Moore said. “It is a disaster, but we haven’t lost everything. We still have the George Patton. We still have the Third Space Marine Battalion. You’ve kept your men sane and have kept order.”

  Steele shook his head. Could his brutal, savage ways, and adherence to the rules, been the correct thing to do?

  “We all wanted to open the hatch and join you men,” Moore said suddenly.

  Steele looked up at her in amazement.

  “But we waited while those in the Georgy Zhukov did so,” Moore said. “When we learned what happened, we knew we could never join you men. Allowing you in here…” Moore shrugged. “We’ve seen through our monitors what’s been happening to the Third Battalion. Colonel, you have to continue to keep order, you have to keep your men ready for combat.”

  Steele turned away and wiped his eyes.

  “There are no backups out here,” Moore said. “There’s only you and the launch missiles. I know you’ve lost too many men of your battalion… The Zhukov is taking the lead. If it can, Konev will ram the enemy generational vessel. Likely, it’s a suicide mission for all of us. But this is it. Can you do still do it, Colonel Steele?”

  Steele stared at Moore. He stared at the wonder of the stars. He thought about the madness of their mission. They used huge vessels, but with very little space for the men. Endless months of boredom, of waiting, of knowing they were so desperately far from Earth… It had taken its toll on many of them in terms of their sanity and resolve. The Sun Tzu was gone. The Georgy Zhukov was a shell.

  Steele shook his head. “Okay. There can be no more direct communication like this. I think the men might kill me if they smell your scent on me. I’ll have to go straight to the bicycle chamber and pedal until I stink like normal. You officers have done a splendid job. I commend your courage. I commend your resourcefulness. Bring us to Neptune.”

  “We’re already into the 150-day glide,” Moore said. “After it’s done, we’ll have seventy-seven hard days of deceleration. I know it’s going to be brutal, but we’ve made it this far.”