Much like how many of his men were now behaving and thinking.
Victory disease… Becoming sloppy…
The Grand Admiral read about the staggering Japanese defeat off the Midway Islands. Prime carriers destroyed one, two, three. It was most amazing. The mighty Admiral Yamamoto forced to flee from the very foes he had come to annihilate.
Grand Admiral Cassius sat up and tore off his VR-goggles.
The premen weren’t stupid. They were inferior, yes, but still with the ability to bite. Hadn’t he almost lost the Genghis Khan to them on May 10?
This X-ship, the Bangladesh, it could very well be dangerous. And it approached the one location the Highborn could not afford destroyed.
The Grand Admiral pulled on his boots and strode out the door.
26.
The Grand Admiral’s laser-beamed orders took immediate effect, even as the massive booster ships built up speed orbiting Mercury. Each booster ship appeared to be little more than an asteroid with a flock of missiles perched on its forward surface. X-ray Pulse Bombs, EMP Blasters, ECM drones and the SA Missiles were all ready to launch. Meanwhile, massive engines fed on hydrogen and left a white exhaust behind the booster ship. It looked like a comet’s tail. Faster and faster went the booster ships, automated vessels, increasing velocity in as short a time as possible.
The Grand Admiral’s orders brought a burst of activity to the Sun Works Factory. The horde of repair pods zoomed from the Doom Star Genghis Khan. The giant warship’s engines were warmed. Soon the mighty spacecraft pulled out of the cradle that had been so carefully built around it. The Grand Admiral had ordered the Genghis Khan behind Mercury, in relation to the approaching Bangladesh. There it would stay until they discovered what the X in the X-ship actually meant.
The majority of the repair pods flew into storage and shut down, while the millions of tons of warheads, laser juice and other combustibles and military explosives went into their special emergency compartments on the Sun Works. The Grand Admiral didn’t want the SU military catching the Sun Works Factory the way the American pilots at the Battle of Midway had caught the four Japanese Carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu. He didn’t know how the Bangladesh could possibly do any damage to the Sun Works, but—why were they flying by at 30 million kilometers, why not much farther out or much nearer in? There was a reason for the 30 million-kilometer range, and he didn’t know what it was. He felt certain about what the SU could and could not do—but he would not allow himself to become arrogant. Pride went before the fall. It was an ancient proverb, well proven by history. And in yet another area, he would show the Highborn superior to the premen. He would actually learn from history.
As the Sun Works Factory went into emergency war-drill, the five booster ships reached boost velocity.
The first asteroid-ship changed the direction of its thrust and shot from Mercury’s orbit. The white hydrogen tail billowed behind it. It sped toward the first cone of probability. Then the first missiles launched off the boost ship. The Law of Motion was immutable. For every action, there is a reaction. So the launching of these missiles slowed the forward motion of the boost ship by the amount of their mass, which was the reason why these boost ships had been built so massively. Then the next set of missiles lifted off the asteroid, the hunk of rock turned into a ship.
As those missiles launched, the second boost ship altered orbit. It sped toward a different cone of probability.
“Do you feel that?” Vip asked, sounding worried.
“We’re launching,” Marten said. His VR-goggles were set on the missile’s viewer.
Then his suit’s gages wobbled. It felt as if he was being flattened. He found it hard to breathe.
“This is horrible,” Lance said in a choking voice.
“The tachyon drive has kicked in,” Marten said. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing. Would his internal organs rupture?
“Are we accelerating at twenty-five Gs?”
Marten didn’t know who said that. “Yeah,” he said. He wondered if he could ever get used to this feeling.
“How long is this trip gonna last?” Vip asked, with a tremor in his voice.
“Watch a video,” Marten suggested.
“I don’t know how.”
Marten had to concentrate before he explained it one more time. He wondered if he was going to die like this, squeezed in a suit and buried in goop, or would they reach the Bangladesh and start the automated drain procedure?
Maybe it was time for him to watch a video. Anything to get his mind off this grinding pressure and off Nadia and the ultra-stealth pod waiting in the Sun Works Factory for somebody to use.
Bionics
1.
Earth—Joho Mountains, China Sector
General James Hawthorne paced in his office as he spoke with Commodore Tivoli, who ran Military Intelligence.
Tivoli was a small woman with compact shoulders and hard crinkles in the corners of her hazel eyes. She played a dangerous and constant game with PHC. In the scheme of Social Unity, three prime movers comprised the State: the Military, the Party and Political Harmony Corps, the State’s secret police.
Ever since 10 May 2350—six long months ago—the game had turned nastier than usual. The asteroid impacts had hurled millions of tons of particleized debris into the air. The previous pollution together with the new additives had created a heavy, greasy cloud of reflective dust. Temperatures dropped rapidly, creating hurricane-strength winds that whipped across the planet in ever-increasing power. That, combined with the billion deaths, had created an intolerable strain on Earth’s social fabric. News of the disaster had leaked over the planet.
Six months ago Greater Hong Kong had vanished, and Beijing, Manila, Taipei and Vladivostok. The million-ton meteors dropped on them had left vast smoking craters.
The numbed inhabitants of Earth wondered how it could have happened. Their holosets had daily informed them that the Supremacists were on the run, soon to be defeated. Yes, Antarctica had fallen because of a treacherous sneak attack by the specially bioengineered soldiers. The neighboring islands of Tasmania and New Zealand had also been snatched up by the self-styled Highborn. Perhaps the loss of Australian Sector soon thereafter shook a few alarmists, but a stint in the slime pits had cured those.
But on May 10 enemy Doom Stars had actually entered the stratosphere. That could only mean the Social Unity Space Fleets had been defeated. No person on Earth, no matter how deep in the mantle he lived, was safe from more million-ton meteors raining down from the heavens.
At that realization, forty billion people knew gut-wrenching fear. Most lived in the vast underground cities, human hives that often sank more than fifty-five levels down. Social Unity gave them harmony, guidance and solace, and had turned them into a sheepish, submissive horde. They believed in humanity’s manifest destiny, and worked for the good of the whole. Now the truth dawned. They’d been given propaganda swill.
One billion people dead in an instant, slain by asteroids maneuvered into Earth orbit and then rocketed down. It meant they were all defenseless.