“Who—” Marten had to moisten his dry mouth. “Do you have a name?”
The cyborg turned its head toward him. It stared at him with such machine indifference that it chilled Marten’s blood.
“I am Osadar Di,” it said.
“That’s a female name,” Marten said. “You’re a female?”
“I am a woman, yes.”
“A woman?” Marten heard himself asking.
“They changed me,” the cyborg said in its dreadful voice. “I did not ask them to do it. They kidnapped me from Ice Hauler 49.” Maybe the cyborg recognized Marten’s incomprehension. “That was in the Neptune System.”
Neptune? These horrors are from Neptune? “What about that one?” Marten asked, indicating the dead cyborg.
“All were turned into machines against their will,” the cyborg Osadar Di said.
“Kill it,” Major Diaz whispered from the floor.
Marten glanced at the major trussed in tangle webs. He ignored the advice. Soon other cyborgs would undoubtedly descend into the garage. The idea of—who had made these things? Marten had never heard of cyborgs. These were not bionic soldiers, but living machines melded with flesh and human brains. It was inhuman. Were they madmen out in the Neptune System?
“Right,” Marten said. “You’re one of us now. Let’s shake on it.”
Marten dared to hold out his hand. And he kept himself from wincing in horror as he heard servos whine as the cyborg lifted her hand. They shook, and Marten was chilled again. Could the cyborg have torn off his arm if it—if she—had wanted to?
The cyborg continued spraying the tangled officers. Soon, they all raced for the skimmers.
Doom Stars
-1-
Heydrich Hansen seethed with hatred against his fellow neutraloids and against the Highborn. He had a special hatred for Nada Pravda who had grossly tricked him. But deep in his heart, he hated Marten Kluge the most. Oh, yes, he remembered that awful shock trooper. Everything had gone sour at the Sun-Works Factory the day Marten Kluge and Kang had showed up in his bailiwick at the Pleasure Palace.
Heydrich Hansen wore a strange harness around his blue-tattooed skin. He used to be thin, with sparse hair and slyly cruel features. He had stark muscles now, with almost no body-fat. They were sinewy muscles, as hard as iron when he flexed, which was often. His blue-tattooed face had become harsher and thinner, and his eyes often bulged with the fierceness of his emotions.
He craved specialty foods and ate with animal gusto. Sometimes, secretions in his new body gave him abnormal speed and strength. Sometimes, post-hypnotic commands drove him to raging bloodlust. Then he killed normal humans for practice.
Now was one of those times. Hansen prowled through narrow corridors aboard the Julius Caesar, a Doom Star headed for Mars. He gripped a stun gun and bore a shock rod on his hip. Other neutraloids moved through other corridors. A headset like a sweatband was around his forehead. He could speak into a mike and had an implant in his right ear. They were supposed to coordinate their efforts and drive the ordinary humans into the main exercise chamber.
Unlike his old existence, Hansen now moved with silky grace. The Doom Star presently accelerated at one-G. It traveled to Mars, he had overheard. This was a Highborn fleet action. Hansen didn’t care anything about that. Ever since they had gelded him, tattooed his entire body and surgically put wonder-glands into him, his thoughts had metamorphosed. He raged with primitive desires that involved crushing, slashing, kicking, biting and stabbing.
He snarled, baring his teeth at a camera in the corner. The Training Master watched them. The Training Master graded their worth.
Hansen trembled with suppressed rage. He wanted to blow the camera away. He wanted to kill the Training Master, spread out his intestines and urinate over them. Something pounded in his head then—it was the post-hypnotic commands.
“I know,” he hissed in a softy, high-pitched voice. “I know. Kill the damn humans.”
Hansen groaned as punishment shocks zapped him. He yearned to rip off the harness. He had done that once, and he had faced horrible punishments afterward. His free hand flexed with his yearning. Then he endured the zap, zap, zapping that made him twitch with agony.
“You must capture the humans, Neutraloid Hansen,” he heard from the implant in his ear. “Not kill, but capture. There is a subtle difference.”
“Yes, Master,” snarled Hansen, as he hunched his blue-tattooed shoulders. He knew the Training Master mocked him. All Highborn did. Learning to answer the Highborn had taken weeks of grueling punishment and practice. Learning not to tiptoe at night and strangle fellow neutraloids, to awaken in the morning to hideous punishment shocks… that, too, had taken time.
Hansen chuckled evilly as he hunched his head. He hadn’t really learned not to strangle neutraloids. Those he had choked to death were Ervil and the others, the ones who had hated him worse than he had hated them. He had simply endured the Highborn shocks, the whippings, the slaps in the face and the brutally-enhancing until his old friend Ervil and the others were all dead. Only then had Hansen felt safe enough to sleep at night. The newer neutraloids feared him because they had seen and they had learned that Heydrich Hansen always got his revenge.
He’d heard one of the Masters say once that newer neutraloids were better because they could control their emotions to a higher degree. The Masters worked to ‘improve’ their surgically enhanced, hypnotically trained and always castrated berserkers.
Hansen stiffened and sniffed the air. A human was ahead of him. Hansen began to tremble in anticipation of killing the human. His head hurt with a stabbing pain between the eyes. He was supposed to call now and report to the others. Hansen was supposed to coordinate his actions.
“Human,” he whispered softly into his mike.
“What?” another neutraloid asked, the sound coming from the ear-implant.
“Human!” Hansen shouted into his mike. He roared with rage, sprinting down the corridor. Ahead, a thin man leaped up with a yelp from behind a bulkhead. The human had gun. With a shaking arm, the human aimed at Hansen. Hansen hurled his stun gun at the human. Wide-eyed, the human watched the gun. He watched it hit the deck with a clatter and slide. The human blinked stupidly and then he must have remembered Hansen. He looked up, aimed and fired. The bullet grazed Hansen’s ribs with a fiery pain. Shouting in a strangely high-pitched voice, Hansen closed the final distance. He didn’t pull out his shock rod. He simply leaped on the human, knocking him to the floor. Then he grabbed the man’s head.
“No, no!” the human pleaded.
“Die!” Hansen screamed, and he twisted with all his newfound strength, snapping the neck. Then he laughed with joyous mockery as the dying human jerked and thrashed under him.
Immediately, punishment shocks zapped from the straps Hansen wore. They zapped with numbing strength, toppling Hansen and soon rendering him unconscious.
Hansen awoke strapped to a table. The rest of the neutraloids stood there, glowering at him, muttering and shuffling their feet. Hansen turned his head. On the opposite side of the table towered the Lot 6 Highborn, the Training Master.
“You failed to use your stun gun, Neutraloid Hansen,” the Training Master said.
“It was a stinking human,” Hansen replied.
“Wrong answer,” the Highborn said, and he brushed Hansen with a shock rod.
The pain made Hansen’s muscles leap up starkly as he squealed with agony, jerking against the restraints.
“You failed to use your stun gun, Hansen,” the Training Master repeated.
“…I’m sorry, Master. I forgot.”
The shock rod brushed Hansen again. “Lying won’t help you, Neutraloid.”