Star Soldier (21 page)

Some men mutinied. They died. One man foolishly attempted to kill Captain Sigmir. He died, too. A few tried trekking across the desert to anywhere but Training Camp Ninety-three-C. Marten led the unit chasing the deserters. Turbo, Stick, Omi and three other slum dwellers cradled laser rifles as they jogged after Marten. He wore the infrared goggles that saw the fleeing footprints as easily as if they’d been painted in red. Perspiration poured. Their brown uniforms were dark with sweat. Marten especially hated how damp his socks had become.

“Why couldn’t they have just cut their own throats,” Stick muttered as he wiped his forehead. “I’m dying out here.”

“Yeah,” Turbo complained, “my feet are blistering.”

Marten’s gut churned. They were remaking him as a killer. In Sydney, it had been different. They tried to bend you. A brave man could resist. Back at the Sun Works, he’d only used a tangler, although his father had killed. Disobey a combat order here and you died.

The Highborn had lied, he decided. Sure, you could say what you wanted, and that
was
different than it was in Social Unity. But now he was becoming like Ngo Drang the red-suit, the personal butcher of Major Orlov. His gut churned and roiled. The Highborn had him trained like a good little boy. It was more blatant and subtler all at once.

Marten licked his lips, and he veered from the tracks.

“No!” came over the voice-link clipped to his ear. “Follow the track and slay the deserters or you will all be marked as AWOL and immediately eliminated.”

Marten glanced back. Omi and the others didn’t have the voice-link. But they would be killed just the same. Sure, they had these lasers. They’d all been shown how useless they were against battle armor.

“Warning number two has now been issued,” came over the voice-link.

Warning number three would be auto-cannon fire in their backs. Cursing under his breath, Marten veered back onto the track.

“What’s wrong with these guys?” asked Stick. “Are they drunk?”

Omi jogged faster until he was even with Marten.

“They earned this,” the ex-gunman said. “They knew the rules and they broke them.”

“Yeah?” asked Marten.

“Do not throw our lives away,” Omi said.

“Don’t worry.”

“Ah, you’re correct,” Omi said, as he spotted the fugitives.

Omi barked a command. The ragged hunters, with sweat pouring off them, their chests heaving, halted. One by one, they lifted their laser rifles.

“Do it,” Omi hissed at Marten.

Reluctantly Marten lifted his. He saw the four running shapes in his scope. His knuckles tightened. A harsh red beam stabbed across the desert. The others fired, and the beams touched the deserters. The four fell onto the sand, dead.

That’s how the days went. But not all of the training was practice. They also taught Marten a little theory. He found out why all the volunteer slum dwellers had been packed into the same camp, why Ball Busters, Kwon’s Gang and Red Blades went into platoons of their own kind. Men fought better with their buddies, with other men who knew and cared if they turned coward or not. No one loved the Highborn, but you might stick around and fight when things really got hot if it was your buddies who were on the line. So he, Stick, Omi and Turbo were left together. Nor were his exploits in the deep-core mine overlooked. It was one of the reasons they pumped him full of combat information. And made him an offer.

It happened on the desert target range, during mortar fire training. Captain Sigmir adjusted his scanscope as he looked into the distance.

Marten and his squad waited by their three mortars, two men to each. Marten stood behind them watching, correcting and calling ranges.

In the distance appeared three puffs of smoke, seconds later the sounds of their dull thuds reached them.

“Excellent!” said the captain. “Direct hit, direct hit, eighty-nine percent nearness. The best score so far.”

“Pack up,” Marten told his squad.

Efficiently, his squad dismantled the mortars, tube to one man, the tripod and base to another. Then they waited for directions. They didn’t wait standing at rigid attention, but slouched here or crouched on the ground over there.

Captain Sigmir looked up from his watch. “Marvelous. Marten, walk with me.”

Marten fell one step behind as the captain strode into the desert. Training Camp Ninety-three-C lay beyond the horizon in the other direction. Overhead the sun beat down, but Marten no longer noticed the heat—it had been five weeks since induction. He wore rumpled brown combat fatigues and well-worn boots, a helmet, a vibroknife and a simulation pistol. Spit and polish and other parade ground fetishes mattered not at all to the Highborn or to the drill instructors. The only questions that mattered were
could you
kill
and
how fast?

“Walk
with
me, Marten.”

Marten jogged beside the massive captain, trying to match his long strides. Perhaps the captain was a beta, much smaller than the superior Highborn, but compared to a normal man Captain Sigmir was still a giant.

“Your squads always perform well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet…. There is a lack in you, Marten.”

He said nothing to that.

“There, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“Sir?”

“You’re a brooder.”

“Yes, sir.”

“More than that, you’re a loner.”

The five weeks of training had taught Marten one thing, to control his temper, the rage that boiled within him, even as his sense of despair increased. He hated Captain Sigmir, but he felt he masked it so no one knew.

“You use your leadership skills for your own benefit, to think as you wish, to do what you want even if the crowd likes or dislikes it. What I mean is that you aren’t using your leadership skills to drive ahead, to make others march to your will.”

“Sir?”

“Marten, leadership is a gift. I believe you’re squandering yours in isolation. Yes, you are a rock. You stand and do whatever you think is right. Those are all good things, I suppose. But in this war you can rise high if you’ll learn to strive to make others obey your will.”

“Yes, sir.”

They exchanged glances.

Marten didn’t allow himself to shiver. Looking into that strange face, so filled with vitality and a strange lust, reminded him that the captain had been dead once. Marten felt it showed.

Captain Sigmir sighed. “I haven’t convinced you. But Marten, I’m still going to recommend you as the lieutenant of Second Platoon.”

“Sir, I…”

Captain Sigmir held up a powerful hand. “Kang will run First Platoon. Now there’s a preman who understands leadership. But you’re a much better tactician than Kang. Yes, you’re a splendid tactician. Oh, we’re quick to note such things. You lack something of Kang’s ferocity, or so the superiors believe. I’m not so certain, though. Your rage—” Captain Sigmir laughed. “Oh, yes, Lieutenant, I know very well that an inner rage seethes within you. I can feel it. At times I even think that it’s directed at me.”

“Sir, I ah—”

“But that’s neither here nor there, Lieutenant. Hate me all you wish just as long as you obey me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you agree to your lieutenancy?”

“Agree, sir?”

“Unless you agree to your new rank you will not receive it. Such is the Highborn dictate regarding rank.”

Marten thought about that. Clever on their part, he decided. They wanted him to take some of the blame, to smear on the guilt. What would happen if he refused? Probably Captain Sigmir would post him to Kang’s platoon. If that happened, he’d have to kill Kang fast or be the slain one. The ex-Red Blades boss was a sadist almost as bad as the once dead, Lot Six
beta
Highborn strutting beside him. He finally decided it was easier to revolt—when the chance came—if he was one of the guards carrying a gun than if he was one of the prisoners the gun was trained on.

Marten nodded. “I agree.”

“Splendid, Lieutenant. I’m overjoyed to hear it.”

“One question, sir.”

“Hmmm?”

“Who are my sergeants?”

“Your Top Sergeant will be Omi, of course, with Stick and Turbo as the regular Sergeants.”

“Very good, sir.”

Captain Sigmir stopped, reaching down to put a hand on Marten’s shoulder. “One more week of training, Lieutenant, then we will be shipped into battle.”

“We, sir?”

“I’m to be the Captain of Tenth Company.”

Marten blanched in spite of his best efforts not to.

“Problem, Lieutenant?”

“Begging the Captain’s pardon, sir, but I suggest you have a well-trained group of bodyguards.”

Captain Sigmir grinned evilly. “Lieutenant, that is well-spoken. Now, back to your squad, my boy, and on the double.”

12.

Unknown to the Highborn or to Marten, the civil war entered a new and vastly more dangerous stage when Secret Police General James Hawthorne ordered code A-927Z beamed into deep space via a special laser lightguide flash. As per his orders, and without Director Enkov’s knowledge, Beijing HQ started the process by regular e-mail.

On a rather ordinary fish farm orbiting Earth, as yet untouched by Highborn suicide commandos, a communication technician read his e-mail with surprise. As ordered, he pulled up a standard production report and typed in the e-mail’s command. To the technician’s surprise, a secret computer file embedded in the report scrolled onto his screen. He read it and raised his eyebrows, but he knew better than to question an apparently senseless order when given under such strict conditions. So he aligned the lightguide flash-emitter to the dictated coordinates and typed the
send
sequence on his keyboard. Then he picked up his container of instacaf and took a sip.

On the outside of the space habitat a special laser lightguide tube popped up, adjusted with canny precision and shot a tight beam of light bearing the coded string: A-927Z. The tube then zipped back into its holder and triggered an unfortunate sequence of events, at least regarding the signal officer.

Vents opened in the communication module’s ceiling and sprayed a fine mist of combustibles. The officer, with his container halfway to his lips for yet another sip, had time enough to say, “Hey,” as his computer files self-deleted. And a pre-timed spark ignited the mist. The explosion shook the entire space hab and demanded the full attention of all fire-fighting personnel and auto-equipment. The signal officer, his computer and various personal effects disappeared in the ball of explosive flame.

Meanwhile, the communication laser flashed through space at the speed of light, three hundred thousand kilometers a second. The lightguide system had a singular benefit over a regular radio message. A tightly beamed communications laser could only be picked up by the receiving station it hit. That, however, demanded precision, and the farther the target, the greater the precision needed. This flash had a long journey in terms of solar system distances, thirty AU or 4,347,400,000 kilometers. Thus, traveling at the speed of light, the message reached the selected target, Neptune habitat, roughly four hours after it had been sent.

The personnel there decoded the flash and read A-927Z. It had an effect similar to a spade overturning an ant colony: boiling activity erupted.

Toll Seven had docked his ultra-stealth pod some time ago, his cargo discharged and stored in deep freeze along with a thousand other carefully stolen people. Workers with hand trolleys entered the locker. Osadar Di, stiff as a log and almost as dead, found herself propped upon one of the first trolleys and rolled to the beginning of a process which would grant her new life but at the cost of her humanity.

Thankfully, for her and her sanity, she had no awareness of the first steps. Set on a conveyer, she traveled to a thawing tank. Immersed in aquamarine liquid, her frozen limbs and torso grew supple. The analyzers attached to her beeped at the right moment and a lifter set her on a new conveyer, where she received a shock of life. Her entire body jerked so hard that she tore several muscles, a minor but not unnoticed matter to the monitoring AI. With an agonizing wheeze, Osadar took her first new breath and her eyelids fluttered. A fine mist rained upon her, killing all bacteria and other biological infestations. In that instant, she awoke to excruciating pain. The torn muscles brought her up sooner than anticipated. Somewhere an alarm rang. At this phase of transformation, her awareness was an unwanted anomaly.

Despite the pain, Osadar felt a great lethargy. Then it came to her that the robotic-looking man who had slain Technician Geller had shoved a needle into her. How long had she been out? She moved her head to the side, and screamed. Staring at her wide-eyed like a deader was the commander of IH-49. Others lay beyond him and they moved on an assembly line. Horror screwed up her face. She bit back a second scream, knowing that her worst fears had all along been right. Life was a rigged crapshoot meant to shaft you in the end no matter what you did.

Osadar tried to move her limbs, but they were so sluggish, and the torn muscles sent mind-rending pain messages to her brain.

Then emergency hypos shot her full of drugs and numbed her nervous system.

“No,” she whispered, struggling to rise before she slumped back into unconsciousness. A few moments later she entered the choppers, as the technicians there called them. In actuality, tiny vibroblades sliced the top-most layer of her skin, which was peeled away and discarded into a burner.

The entire process proved grim in the extreme. Director Enkov’s bodyguard had in many ways been rebuilt. But compared to what they did to Osadar Di he had merely had his toenails trimmed. They tore her down, removing her heart, lungs and kidneys. Finally, her brain was detached from her spinal column and placed into pink programming gel. The combination entered an accelerated life situation computer. Her brain along with others was electronically force-fed millions of pieces of new data. It was mostly tactical military information and how to use what would soon be her new cyborg body. The program then ran her through thousands of simulated situations: