All the Spaniards waited in the buildings, gripping their swords and priming their clumsy arquebuses. Each gun weighed ten to fifteen pounds, the gunner needing to rest the barrel on a hooked stick in order to fire. Finally, a Spanish priest walked alone to face the Inca. With an outstretched Bible in hand, the priest demanded the Inca surrender to them. When the Emperor was given the Bible, he threw it down in disgust. The priest backed away horrified, and with a shout, he gave the signal.
The Spanish erupted from their buildings. On horse and using lances, the cavalry waded into the masses of Inca nobles. The swordsmen hurried after them. The two cannons boomed and the savage mastiffs tore into Indian flesh.
The astounded Incas died as they tried to defend their emperor. The Spanish went berserk, filled with terror at the numbers of their enemies and filled with greed because of promised treasure.
The only Spanish blood spilled that day occurred when Pizarro grabbed a Spanish sword that slashed at the Emperor. It cut Pizarro’s palm, but it saved Atahualpa’s life. With the emperor’s capture and hustling into captivity, Pizarro paralyzed the massive host waiting outside the walled village. As in the Aztec Empire, the Inca or Emperor was considered semi-divine and his person sacrosanct.
The shrewd Spaniards understood this to a nicety. And that spelled the end for the Inca Empire, which had effectively fallen to the gold-crazed, God-besotted and glory-mad conquistadors of Spain.
Francisco Pizarro had conquered an empire of over ten million with sixty-two horsemen, one hundred and two infantry, two cannons, a pack of savage mastiffs and inspired daring.
What a mere preman could do among his fellow subhumans, a Highborn could outdo. The Praetor was absolutely certain of this. First, however, he must survive. Second, he had to end the terrible velocity that had nearly sent him to an inglorious oblivion in the void. The Praetor returned to reality then and realized that he had been standing still in his battleoid-suit for several long seconds.
“One minute and thirty-one seconds,” a Highborn said in his ears.
The Praetor hissed a litany of curses as he struck the hatch before him. The battleoid armor supplied him with exoskeleton power. The open palm caused steel to crumple and the hatch to tear from its moorings. It clanged in the conversion chamber as a fierce red glow bathed the Praetor’s ten-foot battleoid suit.
Covered in sweat, trembling from exhaustion but driven by a greater will than Francisco Pizarro had ever possessed, the Praetor entered the deadly chamber. Radiation bathed him. He heard the clicks in his suit and knew what it meant, too many rads, far too many. He would have to endure a chemical bath later and ingest many anti-radiation pills. He still might die. But unless someone came in here and fixed the malfunction, they were all doomed.
“I am the Praetor,” he whispered.
He shuffled ten more meters and then he un-shouldered the welding unit. Groaning, he sagged to his knees. It was hard to see, and his skin prickled horribly. The warning clicks nearly drove him to despair.
As the missile-ship decelerated, the Praetor began to work on the malfunction, his welder’s blue arc the only hope against the glowing red that meant death.
“Twenty-seven seconds until overload,” the voice said.
“Sixty-two horsemen,” the Praetor whispered, “one hundred and two infantry, two cannons—”
“Lord, are you well?” the voice asked.
“One missile-ship,” the Praetor said, “that’s all I need to win the Jovian System.”
“He’s raving,” Canus said.
Perhaps Canus was right. The blue arc continued to burn as the seconds reached zero and beyond. Still, the blue arc glowed, and the red glow lessened by agonizing degrees.
Finally, Canus said, “He did it.”
The Praetor snapped off his welder and lurched to his feet. He wanted to claw and scratch at his skin. His guts felt awful, but he’d be damned if any of the crew would drag him to sickbay. He would walk there, and he would swallow the pills and take the chemical baths. He had a planetary system to win and enemies to trick. He was the Praetor, and he would endure until the Sun no longer shined on the worlds of men.
-9-
As the Highborn ship circled the mighty gas giant at terrific velocity, and as Jovian and cyborg warships converged toward their various destinations, Strategist Tan found herself involved at the highest level of strategic planning. It was a three-way conference via lightguide laser.
Tan had scoured her pod for listening devices. Stick-tights, insect-crawlers, passive probing, she had studied all of these during her stint as arbiter while aboard the Kant, the premier dreadnaught of the Guardian Fleet. The Kant was presently at Ganymede, the flagship of the flotilla ready to bombard the wayward Secessionists. After scouring the pod and finding nothing, Tan had concluded that either Yakov was cleverer than she was or her pod was clean.
Yakov could never have achieved his goals without Marten Kluge and his cyborg. They had tricked her regarding Arbiter Octagon.
For hours, Tan had sat in the pod, in a lotus position, practicing her meditations. She’d defeated her grosser emotions of anger and disgust at her naiveté. She was a Strategist. She might even be the Chief Strategist of the Confederation. Therefore, she purged herself of unworthy feelings and filled her mind with syllogisms, logic formulas and pertinent axioms from the Dictates. These soothed her mind. She was honest enough with herself to admit to a stubborn core of… hard feelings against Force-Leader Yakov. Marten Kluge was a barbarian and therefore unworthy of her anger. Yakov on the other hand—
Her musings ended then as she opened a secure channel with her cousin, Chief Controller Su-Shan. It proved the strength of their bloodline that both of them should stand high in military planning. It also proved their educational integrity and fierce drive to excel.
Through the lightguide laser-link, Su-Shan outlined the situation to her. Two days had passed since the supply vessels had launched from Athena Station. Some seemingly insignificant data kept troubling certain quarters on Callisto. Now the Solon of Callisto, the highest wisdom of the Dictates, wished to confer on high strategy with Chief Controller Su-Shan and with Chief Strategist Tan. Finally and decisively, they would decide on the nature of the struggle and act accordingly.
“But I’m only a Strategist,” said Tan, “a Strategist of the third class. Surely, there are others higher ranked than me to decide these things.”
“I believe that is false,” Su-Shan said. “Events have likely propelled you into the highest slot of the War Council. You’ve also been rigorously trained in strategic matters, you have the required rank and you’ve witness an actual cyborg.”
“Meaning what?” asked Tan.
“That the Solon trusts you. Now clear your mind of clutter. Then fill it with the truths and axioms of the Dictates. We must possibly decide the Jupiter System’s fate.”
Tan blinked at the vidscreen showing her cousin. She was still far away from her dreadnaught. This—Tan pressed her palms together and sought the inner peace of the Dictates.
“Yes,” she said, “I await the three-way.”
2351 March 4, the three-way Strategy Conference of Guardian Fleet. The participants: The Solon of Callisto (identifying name submerged in his office), Chief Controller Su-Shan of Callisto Orbital Defense and Strategist Tan of the War Council. Reference symbols: Solon, Su-Shan and Tan. Conference committed via laser lightguide system.
SOLON: We three have a solemn duty to perform concerning the future of the Dictates and our perfected system of life.
Men, and in this I reference all humans, are born in a chaotic world of seething emotions. It causes endless grief and boundless misery. This we have alleviated by our intellect and rationally reasoned codes. I would like to say we have ended unproductive thought and hence, false actions. By false I mean to say mindless, useless actions, which are ultimately harmful to life. But such thoughts occur even in our idyllic system. This saddens me, a sadness I allow to color my hope but never my overarching reason.