Marten glanced back at the Planetary Union military officer. She wasn’t taking chances and had a needler trained on him. It was smaller than the Gauss needlers used on Earth. Hers was compact, with a short and very thin barrel, and it was shiny, likely meaning it was newly unpackaged. He hoped she knew how to use it and didn’t accidentally shoot him.
“Okay,” Marten said, “I’ll tell you what happened. But I suspect you won’t believe me.”
“Why bother lying?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“I haven’t said anything yet,” Marten said.
“I’m a university professor by occupation,” the Chief Unionist said. “Because I understand physics, they put me out here. They’re hoping I can perform a miracle and make Deimos useful again. My point, Mr. Kluge, is that my students always tell me I’m not going to believe something when they’re getting ready to lie.”
“Have it your way,” Marten said, and he shut his mouth.
“…well?” the Chief Unionist asked. “Let’s hear it.”
“I hate being called a liar,” Marten said.
The man lofted thin eyebrows. “A bit touchy, are we?”
“I think you’re the liar. I think you’re a sanitation scrubber, not some scholar.”
The man’s lips tightened. “Explain the situation then. How did you come to possess a Highborn shuttle?”
“I earned it,” Marten said. “I paid for it through my sweat and blood. It’s mine.”
“For the moment, you’re here in my office, Mr. Kluge. And my patience is wearing thin.”
“The Highborn used me,” Marten said. “They used my friends. We were shock troopers.”
“I never heard of them.”
“How about Free Earth Corps, you ever heard of them?”
“The Earth traitors who fight with the Highborn?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“You Mars Rebels helped the Highborn,” Marten said, knowing he was becoming too angry. But he couldn’t help it.
The Chief Unionist lightly placed his fingertips on the desk. “We are the Planetary Union, not the Rebels. We did what we had to in order to rid ourselves of Social Unity.”
Marten nodded curtly. “If you’d lived in Australian Sector when the Highborn conquered it, you’d realize that most Free Earth Corps volunteers joined at the point of a gun. I fought in the Japan Campaign. Afterward, the Highborn pinned medals on my friends and me. They called us heroes. Then they said they could use good soldiers like us. So they took us into space and retrained us into shock troopers. Our specialty was storming habitats or spaceships and taking control.”
“That doesn’t explain the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said.
“Our masters packed us into Storm Assault Missiles and fired us at the X-ship Bangladesh. It was a new type of warship, able to fire its beam many millions of kilometers.”
“That’s impossible!” the Chief Unionist declared. “Everyone knows the Doom Stars have the longest-range lasers of any military vessel.”
“That’s why the Highborn wanted the Bangladesh. That’s why they fired us at it. We took it. But SU missile-ships destroyed our hard-won prize. A few of us escaped the destruction. Later, Highborn picked us up in the shuttle.”
“If true, that’s highly interesting. It still doesn’t explain how you came to possess the shuttle.”
“I killed the Highborn and took their shuttle for my own,” Marten said.
In frank disbelief, the Chief Unionist stared at Marten. The officer behind Marten snorted in derision.
“You don’t expect us to believe that?” the officer asked Marten.
Marten shrugged. “That’s the trouble with you soft-timers. You fear the Highborn too much. If you’d been a shock trooper, you’d know that everyone has weak points, even super-soldiers. They made a mistake and thought me a mere preman. Well, this preman spaced them. Now I’m here. Now I want to buy fuel, a spare-warfare pod if you have it and I’ll be on my way.”
“You’re mad!” the Chief Unionist shouted.
“Then you explain to me how I’m in possession of a shuttle.”
The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten with incomprehension. “You killed Highborn?”
“Three of them,” Marten said.
“You pirated the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said. “I understand that.”
“Just as you pirated Deimos,” Marten said.
“He has a point,” the officer said.
The Chief Unionist shot her a dirty look. “The Planetary Union is confiscating the shuttle, Mr. Kluge.”
“I don’t think so,” Marten said.
The Chief Unionist lofted his eyebrows. “You’re here, Mr. Kluge, as you pointed out earlier. Officer Dugan has a needler pointed at your back. You are in no position to stop me.”
“You have a gun pointed at my back. I have a bomb attached to your docking bay.”
“Are you threatening me?” the Chief Unionist demanded.
“With certain death,” Marten said.
“You would die, too.”
Marten shrugged.
“He’s bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Officer Dugan.
“Maybe,” the woman said.
“You’re bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Marten, although a faint sheen of perspiration had appeared on the man’s forehead.
“I rode a Storm Assault Missile at 25-Gs to the Bangladesh,” Marten said. “I spaced three Highborn. If you think I did all that to meekly hand over my shuttle to some piss-whelp of a university professor, then you’re mad.”
Outraged, the Chief Unionist groped for words.
“I’m finished playing by other people’s rules,” Marten declared. “I’m finished being a slave. I’m a free man now. I’m going to remain free or die trying. If that means blowing the Mayflower and taking you and me down, okay. I’m fine with that.”
“He’s not bluffing,” Officer Dugan said.
The Chief Unionist blushed as anger washed over his features. “Just what are you suggesting then?”
“Let me buy fuel,” Marten said.
“Buy how?”
“With my services,” Marten said.
The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten. “That’s out of the question. You will order the remaining people on the shuttle to come—”
“I’d reconsider that,” Officer Dugan told the Chief Unionist.
“You be quiet,” the Chief Unionist said, pointing a long finger at her. The finger quivered and its ring reflected the lights overhead.
“He’s like us,” Officer Dugan said. “He fought free and now he plans to keep free, even dying for it if he has to. We can’t steal his shuttle without fighting to the death for it, just as Social Unity can’t have our planet back without a death struggle. If nothing else, sir, call the Secretary-General and ask his advice.”
“I can’t call about this,” the Chief Unionist said.
“Then give this man fuel.”
“Give it to him?” the Chief Unionist asked.
“You’ve been talking about getting the sick personnel off station and back to Mars,” Officer Dugan said. “Here’s your chance.”
The pinched features to the Chief Unionist’s mouth tightened so his lips began to whiten. He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Go! Take this madman outside. I have a call to make.”
Ten hours later, Marten and Omi left the tiny Martian moon of Deimos. A warfare pod had been welded to the Mayflower’s underbelly. It contained five anti-missile missiles, Wasp 2000s. Aboard ship were twenty injured and ailing personnel. Like the other Martians he’d seen, they were thin and under-muscled. In spite of that, Marten had frisked each and had helped them to various sleep cubicles or into the medical facility. Then he had closed each hatch and secured the hatches with emergency clamps.