“We have them,” the Praetor said, using, he thought, the perfect pitch in which to say it. He spoke toward a video-recorder, knowing that his words were something that future Highborn would likely replay on files for generations to come.
-6-
The new cyborg LA31, once known as Lisa Aster, climbed into a stealth capsule. She was different from the tall cyborgs with the skeletal limbs. She still had a fleshy human face, although with a steel dome in place of her former bone-skull. Bionic parts had replaced her arms and legs, and her spine had been reinforced with graphite rods. A Neptune-made cyborg could likely defeat any four emergency-made cyborgs from Toll Seven’s command pod. Still, these models fulfilled a needed function, at this, the most critical hour of the Inner Planets assault.
LA31 had undergone speed programming. She had less hardware governing her emotions or actions than Neptune-made cyborgs. Thus, as she settled into the stealth-capsule, a prearranged command forced her to jack a plug into the slot for her brain. Immediately, a lightguide laser linked her to the controlling Web-Mind. Toll Seven and the Web-Mind had decided that it—the Web-Mind—should remain in the command pod instead of coming down in sections and being rebuilt in Olympus Mons. That would happen later as Mars received its Web-Mind Master.
LA31 jacked the plug into the slot for her brain. She frowned for a moment. She’d had a mother once, someone very important. She shrugged. She couldn’t remember who that had been, although she did recall that she’d been a clone.
LA31 went rigid as a training reprimand surged through her. The plug into Web-Mind caused chemical reactions in her bio-form brain. Her face contorted and tears leaked from her eyes. Unknown to her, she had received a harsh emergency brain overlay. It sought to expunge old memories and lay down new ones, false ones generated by Web-Mind.
LA31 groaned and her throat became unbearably dry. Pain made her head throb, and it almost caused her to open her eyes. Another impulse-surge went through the prong in her jack. It caused soothing chemical reactions in her brain, along the nerve endings.
LA31 twitched once. Then she relaxed. She would sleep now as an SU stealth-ship carefully maneuvered her capsule into position. Her capsule contained a modified vacc-suit, hand weapons and an abundance of ammo. The capsule’s outer skin was asteroid rock. Soon, the capsule would float alone near Mars, as if the Red Planet had long-ago captured a piece of space flotsam. There were more like her, and they would be sprinkled at strategically and psychologically reasonable locals. They were the secret cyborg weapon, the one that was supposed to defeat the Highborn.
LA31 knew nothing about that. She sighed, remembering a happier time as a cyborg dropping on Triton, a moon of Neptune. It was a false memory. Most of her old ones had been chemically raped away. Like a mental vulture, Web-Mind watched for any resurgence of them, ready to expunge the last of the personality of the clone Lisa Aster.
-7-
The next week rapidly passed as Marten Kluge trained the commandos on the sands of Mars. Osadar Di practiced with them. She demoralized the men with her amazing bounding leaps like a Highborn battleoid, her uncanny reaction time and precision, long-range shooting.
Near the end of the week, Marten spoke to her in an EVA tent. It was larger than the survival tents they’d used for the raid into Valles Marineris. He preferred the tents to remaining in New Tijuana. Marten hated the black-visored police there, the similar city strictures as practiced on Earth and the possibility that Chavez could change his mind at any moment and imprison them.
Marten sat on a folding chair, with a folding table between them. On the table was a rollout computer-sheet. It showed Olympus Mons, its various entrance points and the orbital hangers.
Osadar Di stood, with her head near the tent’s ceiling. It was still hard for Marten to look at her. It was like looking at a living mannequin or at a statue that had supernaturally come to life. Her face was so immobile. Her arms and legs were more like metal rods, with bigger, motorized joints that moved them. It was unholy, a cruel joke against the living and a mockery of humanity. Marten had to tell himself constantly that inside this mostly mechanical machine was a living being, a person just like himself with hopes and dreams.
“Osadar,” he said, lifting his gaze from the map, forcing himself to stare into her strange eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”
There was no change of expression on her face. He had no idea what she was thinking.
“Go on,” she said in her metallic voice.
Marten kept himself from flinching and kept his eyes from darting away. “Mars is doomed,” he said.
“We’re all doomed,” Osadar said. Her voice was like a heavy bell, a gong of certain defeat.
“I don’t believe that,” Marten said.
“What you believe makes no difference.”
“…if you think we can’t win,” Marten said, stung, “why do you help us?”
“Shooting gyroc rounds out here is better than those fools asking me a thousand questions in the labs. Do you know they kept me in a sealed vault, only speaking to me via a screen?”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Marten said.
“Do you think I belong in a vault?” she asked.
“I know you terrify my men.”
“Do I terrify you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Marten admitted, “but I’m trying to learn to control that.”
She nodded, and she tapped a metal finger on the map. “What you propose with this attack, it’s a suicide mission.”
“Do you want to escape Mars?” Marten asked.
Her longish head moved fast, faster than a human could twitch, and she nodded yes.
Marten broke eye contact, and he felt relief doing it. On the computer-map, he indicated an orbital hanger high up on Olympus Mons. “The commando raid’s secondary objective is to reach here. Here we will take an orbital and you, hopefully, will fly us into space.”
“The SU Battlefleet will target and eliminate any stray orbitals,” Osadar said.
“I’m hoping they will be too busy right then,” Marten said.
“How can one orbital affect the battle for—” A grim smile moved her plastic lips. “You wish me to ram the orbital into Toll Seven’s command pod?”
Marten shivered. Osadar Di usually seemed emotionless like a computer. For the first time, Marten felt her hatred, her intense desire to hurt Toll Seven and likely Web-Mind. That expressed hatred coming from an emotionless machine was unnerving.
“There is a better way to hurt the cyborgs,” he said.
“How?”
The single word had sounded metallic and emotionless. But Marten wasn’t fooled. A lifetime of pain, of hope, of bitterness seemed rolled into that one question.
Marten began to tell Osadar his plan and his hope. He also had a new idea. It had sprouted a week ago as he’d accepted the diplomatic credentials Chavez had handed him. Marten had shoved the credentials into a special pouch in his suit. He now told Osadar about his new idea.
When he’d finished talking, she said, “Your plan is impossible.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said.
“No. It is impossible.”
Marten slammed a fist against the computer-map and almost broke the fold-up table. He glared at her, glared into her strange eyes. For those seconds he forgot that she was a cyborg. He forgot to be squeamish or afraid of her bizarreness.
“What does impossible have to do with anything?” he shouted. “We fight until we’re dead! Nothing is impossible until you shrivel up and quit. Then it is impossible. If you want out, tell me. I’ll pilot the damn orbital myself, or I’ll die trying.”
“If Toll Seven or any other cyborg captures you—”