“The journey is killing us,” Lisa said.
“…yes,” General Fromm said after he’d torn off another length of dried herring with his teeth. He chewed thoroughly and swallowed. “…but eighty-five percent of us should survive. You’re healthy and young, so you should recover quickly from any debilitating effects.”
“Killing ourselves is foolish,” Lisa said.
General Fromm checked his chronometer. “Five minutes to continued deceleration. You’d better strap yourself in.” He slid the remaining herring into a container, sealing it. Then he lay back on the couching, strapping himself in and settling down for another six hours of pain and torment.
Lisa continued to float near the ceiling and waved her hand before her nose as the general occupied himself with his straps.
“We’re not killing ourselves to set speed records,” Fromm said, finally looking up. “We’re trying to outwit the Highborn. Our window of opportunity to defeat the Mars Rebels and reorganize the orbital defenses in time to face and destroy Doom Stars is narrow indeed. Our supplies are critical to the refitting of our united fleet.” He checked his chronometer again. “You really should strap-in.”
Lisa grinned tightly. General Fromm meant well. He was a brooder and a deep-thinker. He never took risks if he could help it, but carefully thought out the best way to do everything. She hated lying on the couch and she was unbelievably bored. Timing her landing on the couch and strapping-in to the exact second of the re-igniting thrusters had become one of her sole games. Having a brooder to scold her only made the game more enjoyable.
“Ms. Aster,” the general said, “your risk of debilitating injury far outweighs any juvenile pleasure you might gain in waiting so long. You must strap yourself in now.”
At least the general had learned not to try to order her. She was the Blanche-Aster now, even if she was the only one to acknowledge it. Despite the handicap of being a clone, she would climb the ranks of Social Unity into the rarified heights of leadership.
“Thirty seconds to deceleration,” General Fromm said testily.
Lisa grinned at him, and she shuddered at the idea of another six hours of labored breathing and straining just to scratch her nose. Her face itched abominably during deceleration. What made it even worse was that she would have liked to study the files on the cyborgs and study the Supreme Commander’s attack plan. She had tried quizzing the general, but extended conversations soon become too tiring under the high Gs pressing against their bodies.
“Ten seconds,” General Fromm said.
Lisa yawned as if bored.
“Ms. Aster, this is absurd. I demand you strap-in now.”
“I didn’t hear you say please.”
“Seven seconds,” he said. “Please, hurry.”
“Very well,” she said. Now her pulse pounded. Now it was almost too late. If she pushed off wrong and missed her acceleration couch, she could break bones. If a rib punctured a lung, she would quickly bleed to death.
Lisa smoothly shoved off the ceiling, sailed to her couch and hit so she grunted. She spun around fast and made the fabric squeak. She barely managed to settle into position. Then the mighty thrusters switched on. A horrible, grinding weight slammed against her, shoving her down into the padding of the acceleration couch. It was a straining effort to bring the straps across her body. Buckling them left her wheezing at the exertion.
“Was—that—worth—it?” General Fromm wheezed.
Lisa tried to make herself more comfortable. Someday, she was going to kill cyborgs. Originally, her motives were vengeful, as the cyborgs had engineered her mother’s death. Now it was for this brutal journey. Lisa closed her eyes, already longing for the next half-hour of weightlessness.
As Lisa Aster and the convoy fleet decelerated into far-Mars orbit, the many months journey aboard the Mayflower were ending for Marten Kluge and Omi.
They decelerated, but at a fraction of the convoy fleet’s rate. They had been traveling at a much slower speed.
Omi had given Marten a haircut. Marten’s hair was short and his manner was alert. He felt as he had during his best times as a shock trooper. Marten’s muscles were hard again and his stamina had built back up from endless exercises on the machines.
Omi had gained weight and he was no longer so dreadfully thin. He hadn’t regained his original muscle-mass, but this last week had seen him hit the machines much more vigorously than before. Unfortunately, it had become stale throughout the shuttle. To conserve water, they had long ago stopped taking showers. Before leaving the shuttle, they would each shower thoroughly. Until such time, each endured the other.
The Mayflower was a shuttle, hardly big enough for extended flights between the inner planets. To the distant outer planets, it would have almost been impossible.
The shuttle lacked a warship’s detection equipment and the accompanying squads of trained personnel using such equipment around the clock. Still, the Mayflower possessed limited radar gear and limited teleoptics. Using the teleoptics, Marten easily discovered the hard-decelerating convoy fleet. The constant burn and plethora of fusion engines created a discernable image against the cold backdrop of space. The number and size of the war-vessels impressed Marten.
It was more difficult for Marten to spot the growing Social Unity Battlefleet. Those warships possessed greater ECM, Electronic Counter Measures, than his relatively tiny spaceship. A few were stealth ships with low signature hulls. Most, however, had large particle shields, the largest of those were 600-meter thick slabs of asteroid-rock. The reason Marten failed to detect them was simple. They were hidden behind Mars. The majority of the Battlefleet had already assembled in far-Mars orbit. Marten therefore spotted the few remaining warships that decelerated to help Mars’ gravitational field catch them.
With the convoy fleet a mere two weeks out of Mars orbit, and with the sightings of major Social Unity war-vessels, Marten knew they were in serious trouble. He had worried about it for some time. The worst part was he lacked fuel to do anything else other than continue the deceleration.
“Social Unity is going to retake Mars,” Omi said after Marten told him about the situation.
“They’re certainly going to try,” Marten said. “Yet we’ve both served under the Highborn. They gave Mars to the Rebels.”
“The Martian Planetary Union?” asked Omi.
“That’s what the Rebels call themselves,” Marten said, nodding. “I doubt the Highborn gave the Rebels Mars if the Highborn thought the Rebels were going to lose it right away. It’s not reasonable to think the Highborn ran from Mars out of fear. So that leads me to the conclusion that the Highborn gave the Rebels enough war supplies to fight off any Social Unity attacks.”
“If we see those warships,” Omi said, “those warships must see us.”
Marten tapped a red light on the lower part of the vidscreen. “Correct. This means radar is bouncing off us.”
“From where?” Omi asked.
Marten fiddled with the controls. “From that approaching fleet there,” he said, pointing out the blaze that signified the convoy fleet. “And from that warship there.”
“Why doesn’t the warship call us?” Omi asked.
Marten shrugged.
“Why don’t they launch a missile and blow us up?” Omi asked.
“They might already have launched a missile.”
“The radar doesn’t show that,” Omi said.
“Sometimes warships release a drone, leaving it behind like a mine. If we see a sudden bloom of engine-burn, we’ll know we’re in trouble. But the more likely explanation is that we’re a shuttle, so we’re nothing to them. Besides, maybe they believe that our radio is out. If they’re worried enough, they’ll try to capture us later once we’re in near orbit.”
“Let’s head out to Jupiter,” Omi suggested.