“My dear man: Face the mobs? What a quaint term for the sheep that have lifted their heads and bleated a little louder than usual.”
“Madam, I wish you would reconsider.”
“Let us talk about General Hawthorne.”
Yezhov blinked slowly. For the first time he glanced about the room, noticing the bodyguard. The clone gave him a faint nod. He ignored her and turned to the director.
“There was an attempt upon the General’s life,” Blanche-Aster said.
“A terrible tragedy. Air Marshal Ulrich became unbalanced.”
“Why do you suppose that happened?”
“Madam, the military clique is rife with non-socialist behavior that on examination the rest of us find quite inexplicable.”
“Ah, yes. Your latest witch-hunt is called the Anti-Rightist Movement.”
“The Highborn rebellion proves the thesis, Madam. The Military is a seedbed for rightist tendencies. PHC works hard to root out this madness.”
“To bring unity to society?” asked Blanche-Aster.
Yezhov stiffened, and he now spoke with a nasal quality. “Director Blanche-Aster, PHC will mercilessly destroy any rightist who dares sabotage Social Unity. High or low, we will root them out.”
The one hundred and sixty-two-year-old director leaned forward, pulling the many medical tubes with her. “You dare hint that I’m unorthodox. You dare this here?” The physical effort cost the ancient Blanche-Aster. She fell back into her padded rest.
Yezhov seemed to remember where “here” was. “Madam, I assure you your ideology is not under scrutiny.”
“I’ve long served the people and kept them safe from class-enemy exploiters and profit-imperialists. Before you ever memorized the social crèche credo—”
“We are all tiny cogs in the machine of State service,” Yezhov quoted. He stretched his lips in an imitation of a smile. “The Air Marshal’s strange behavior proves that we are on the correct path. The Rightist Movement must be stamped out. I’m sure you agree that at this time we cannot tolerate any deviancy in the upper echelons of Social Unity. The ripple effect the billion casualties had on the rest of the populace has left us little room to maneuver.”
She stared at the Chief of PHC. “Do you know that the Military found six members of your shock squads in the Joho Park, slain by the General’s bodyguard?”
Yezhov shrugged. “Foul slander, Madam.”
“I’ve seen the pictures.”
Yezhov shook his head. “Crude plants to throw the blame of this assassination attempt onto PHC.”
There was wonder in Blanche-Aster’s tone. “Can you be this certain about your position?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Yezhov.”
“Game, Madam?”
“We suffered brutal losses on May 10. But because of General Hawthorne we inflicted hurt on the Highborn.”
“Excuse me, Madam, but several thousand enemy dead, a couple hundred destroyed orbital fighters and a nearly crippled Doom Star… Those can’t compare to a billion deaths.”
“I didn’t say that. However, those Highborn losses are the best Social Unity has been able to achieve, at least until the Bangladesh struck. Both times the tactics that allowed it were the brainchild of General James Hawthorne.”
“Any general could have supplied similar tactics.”
“Oh, there you are badly mistaken, Yezhov. He is a genius, at least in the venue of military moves.”
Yezhov’s smile turned sardonic. “Madam… perhaps you place too much faith in this general.”
“Oh?”
“He refuses to recombine the Fleet and attack the enemy, to hit him hard, to disrupt the Highborn in their free space movements.”
“The Bangladesh—”
Yezhov interrupted with a snort. “This one attack, which he yearns to break off. Isn’t it obvious? General Hawthorne has no stomach for a stand-up fight. Maybe he pulled a stunt on May 10, but the ferociousness of that battle scarred him. He’s terrified of the Highborn, overcome by their style of warfare.”
“Hard words, Yezhov. They may come to rebound against you.”
“They are words of truth, Madam. Look how the islands of Earth fell one after the other. And what did the General boast as his major achievement? That he slipped a few troops out of the cauldron.”
“Three-quarters of a million trained soldiers,” said Blanche-Aster.
“Bah! Men that are trained in running, in hiding, in fleeing from the enemy.”
“You could do better?” asked Blanche-Aster.
Yezhov squinted. “I have a plan, yes.”
“Go on.”
“I will kill the Highborn and their highest-ranking FEC traitors.”
“How would you do it?”
“Assassination teams.”
Madam Director Blanche-Aster raised her old eyebrows. “How will get past their security?”
“Notice.”
Yezhov moved his fingers into a unique pattern. Before he could take aim, however, a door burst open. Behind it stood General Hawthorne and a team of his bionics. The general had waited for this precise moment. As Yezhov’s hand rose, Hawthorne stepped through, his short-barrel .44 in hand. He fired three times, driving Chief Yezhov against the wall, body chunks exploding at each hit. The bionics beside him held their fire, calculating that more bullets were unnecessary.
It took the ancient Blanche-Aster time to regain her composure. “What… What is the meaning of this?”
“Check him,” said Hawthorne.
The door swished and bionic men rushed in. They began searching the slain Yezhov.
“Check him?” she asked.
“His fingers,” said Captain Mune.
A moment later, a bionic warrior looked up. “Street tech, all right.”
“What?” said Blanche-Aster.
“His finger is a one-shot gun,” the bionic man said.
Blanche-Aster wheeled around to face Hawthorne. “How did you know he was going to try to kill me?”
The General shrugged.
Before she could ask again, the Madam Director’s chrome desk chimed.
“May I answer it?” she asked Hawthorne.
“Certainly.”
She wheeled her chair there and turned on the screen. Her jaw sagged.
“What is it?” said Hawthorne.
“The Chief of PHC wishes to speak with you,” she whispered.
General Hawthorne scowled. “But that’s impossible. Yezhov lies dead on the floor. Wait! Who is it you say?”
“It’s the real Yezhov,” she said. “He wants to make a deal.”
Shock troopers
1.
Admiral Rica Sioux leaned forward in her command chair, with her right hand pressed against the comlink embedded in her ear. Her old lined face was one of concentration.
General Hawthorne’s plan was complex. Three days ago, he had sent a message, ordering them to break off their proton beam attack on the Sun Works Factory. Their destination was now Mars, to try to awe the rebels there and then get re-supplied. But in order to get the Bangladesh to Mars in one piece… The Supreme Commander played an interesting game with the Highborn.
What was that old saying? A picture was worth a thousand words. Admiral Sioux shut her right eye, the better to view the VR-monocle in her left, and then she twitched her left hand, the only one gloved to the computer.
A small model of the inner solar system leaped onto her virtual reality monocle. The Sun blazed at one end, Mercury orbiting around it, then Venus, the Earth and Mars.
All the solar system’s planets orbited in the same direction. If one looked down from the Sun’s North Pole, they moved counter-clockwise. Also, all the planets orbited on nearly the same plane, or ecliptic. The ecliptic was inclined 7 degrees from the plane of the Sun’s equator, although the plane of the Earth’s orbit defined the ecliptic of all the other planets. Even in 2350, humanity kept it Earth-centric outlook of the universe. Far-off Pluto had the greatest inclination, 17 degrees, and it had the most bizarre of all the orbits.