“Osadar did some checking. Montesquieu-class vessels are similar in tonnage to Voltaire Missiles.”
“I am well aware of that.”
“Good ECM could be masking some sensor data.”
“I have radioed Su-Shan again,” Yakov said, “arguing the same thing.”
“What did she say?”
“That she would relate my words to Callisto High Command,” said Yakov.
“I believe the cyborgs are striking openly instead of in secret for a reason,” Marten said. “The reason is fear.”
“Can cyborgs fear?”
“Maybe not as men fear,” Marten admitted. “So call it something else. The point is they’re striking now, probably before they were ready to do so.”
Yakov adjusted the controls, bringing the fourth Galilean moon into sharper focus. Heavy laser satellites ringed Callisto. On its surface were large missile installations and point-defense cannons.
“If the cyborgs can smash Callisto, they will surely attack Ganymede next,” Yakov said. “If they can destroy Callisto… they will have gone more than halfway to achieving victory.”
“Would the cyborgs have launched an open strike if they believed it would fail?” Marten asked.
“Are the cyborgs infallible?”
“Their destruction in the Mars System would say no,” Marten said. “But I’d hate to bet against them in their first open strike here. They will have studied the matter in depth. If they didn’t believe they could smash Callisto, I doubt they would have attacked.”
“Did your Osadar cyborg suggest these things to you?”
Marten nodded as he said, “You have to call Su-Shan again. You have to convince her to target the so-called supply vessels.”
“You and I know it is the most rational course,” Yakov said. “The philosophers will believe otherwise.”
Marten bit his lip, wondering how you woke a blind man to his doom. He recalled an ancient quote his father had used. It was from an ancient philosopher named George Orwell. Orwell had said, ‘It would take a Ph.D. to believe something so stupid.’ The High Command of Callisto seemed to be hard at work proving the adage.
-8-
As the Jovians and cyborgs readied for the next round of battle, the Highborn ship continued its desperate circuit around Jupiter. Unfortunately for them, things were going badly, and it had forced the Praetor to act directly to save the warship.
In his battleoid armor-suit, the Praetor clanked through the hard decelerating vessel. Deck lighting flashed erratically, creating strobe-light conditions. One light shattered, showering sparks onto the gunmetal-colored battleoid. The suit’s servos whined at full power and still the Praetor found it difficult to move through the corridor, as the intense Gs made every step miserable.
The ship’s engines had burned at ninety-seven percent capacity for days. One of the dwindling crew had died because of it. Radiation had caused an embolism in his brain. The Highborn had bled to death before anyone discovered the problem.
In the corridor, the Praetor breathed heavily as he slid another armored foot forward. Sweat bathed him even as the suit’s conditioner blasted his flesh with cold. In such a battleoid-suit, he could have made one hundred-meter leaps on Earth. With such a suit, he could have taken out a company of SU soldiers or a squad of cybertanks. In the gut-wrenching, decelerating ship, with the murderous Gs pummeling him, the suit could barely move.
The Praetor yearned to halt and rest. His lungs labored for air and his side ached horribly.
“You have three minutes and forty-three seconds to overload,” a harsh, Highborn voice said in his ears.
The Praetor snarled, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He wasn’t going to have made it to Uranus and back to die as an unsung hero in the Jovian System. Grand Admiral Cassius had thought to trick him, to sweep him from the board like a pawn. He—the Praetor—had won the Third Battle for Mars, launching the missile strike that had opened the way for the Doom Stars. Now he was going to conquer the Jupiter System with a single warship—and a badly crippled ship at that. It was going to be the greatest military exploit in the annals of war. Only Francisco Pizarro of Old Spain would have done something in league with what he planned.
The Praetor wasn’t a historical expert like the Grand Admiral, but he recalled his lessens from the crèche-school. Even for a Highborn, he had a phenomenal memory. He’d climbed to Fourth Rank for a reason.
The Praetor laughed madly and wheezed, utterly exhausted. His throbbing limbs threatened to rebel. He would soon be reduced to a quivering lump, unable to move. Then he would die as a loser. Grand Admiral Cassius would have defeated him. Cassius would have won.
“Never,” the Praetor whispered, as he forced another foot forward.
The Praetor concentrated until his mind became like a ball of energy. He willed his legs to shuffle forward. He clamped down on the pain, on the exhaustion.
Will… iron will….
“I am the Praetor,” he whispered. “I will conquer the Jupiter System.”
He remembered a lesson from his crèche-school. It had thrilled him with its daring, with its sheer ruthlessness. In his strange state of mind, which was like a feverish dream induced by the constant declaration and his straining effort to cross the ship, the Praetor hallucinated. For a time, he believed he was Francisco Pizarro.
Pizarro had been a Spanish Conquistador, perhaps the greatest of that daring breed. In 1531, Pizarro had set out on the most improbable conquest of history.
Luckily, Pizarro had Hernan Cortez’s fabulous conquest of Aztec Mexico before him as a guide. Pizarro knew that Spanish swords, gunpowder-propelled arquebuses and horses combined with Spanish courage could triumph over the hordes of Indian warriors with their stone-edged swords and hatchets. On first sighting horses and their riders, many Aztec and Incas had believed that the horsemen were some odd creature like centaurs. Thus, the horsemen had fiercely intimidated the natives. That didn’t mean the Indian nations were primitive in a quantitative sense, at least not compared to the conquistadors. The golden city of Mexico had awed Cortez and his men with its beauty, its teeming population and cleanliness, being bigger and more orderly than any Spanish city of that time. The same held true in the case of the Inca cities and for Pizarro’s expedition.
Pizarro had heard wondrous stories about a vast empire in the interior mountains. For years, Pizarro searched for this elusive empire. Then in the fateful year of 1531, he landed at Tumbes, what was now the smoldering ruin of San Miguel. From there, Pizarro marched with a minuscule army into the towering Andes Range. He set off with one hundred and two infantry, sixty-two horsemen, two cannons and a pack of savage mastiffs. He marched toward the Inca Empire, which boasted a standing army of over a hundred thousand veteran warriors.
The Inca Empire was the largest that primitive humanity had ever constructed at such a high elevation. They had gold-laden cities on mountaintop locations, richly cultivated fields on the mountainsides, rope bridges spanning amazing gorges and a powerful veteran host of victorious warriors.
Inca scouts watched the pitifully small Spanish force wind its way through the mountains. The Inca, the Emperor Atahualpa, scoffed at any noble who told him to fear such a weak force of white men. At any time, it was obvious, hardy warriors could ambush the Spaniards and annihilate them.
So Emperor Atahualpa allowed Pizarro to march to Cajamarca, where he waited with an army of over 40,000 warriors. Pizarro and his seemingly frightened men huddled in a walled village, surrounded by the seething mass of highly decorated warriors.
A day passed, and Emperor decided to go see these strange men with white skin and shining armor. He entered the walled compound with five thousand Incas armed only with ceremonial axes. They bore him on a litter into an empty square.