The Praetor mentally shrugged. The Force-Leader could have saved herself the permanent scarring and the brutalization. But she was a preman, a subhuman. It meant she could only learn through her own mistakes. That was the problem with possessing limited humanity. A Highborn learned through other people’s mistakes, not just his own. A preman was too stupid to use such elementary logic.
The Praetor tugged the leash, making her stumble after him. The empty base now belonged to the Highborn. Soldiers effected repairs and restocked the missile-ship with inferior Zeno drones.
The Praetor jerked the leash. The small Force-Leader bumped up against his armor. Servos whined as he peered down at her. In order to heighten her fear, the Praetor lifted one of his battleoid arms. He put his gauntleted fingers around the top of her head.
“With the twitch of my fingers,” he boomed through the suit’s speakers, “I can crush your skull.”
She whimpered. She was a broken reed, her entire body fleshed with purple and yellow bruises. There hadn’t been time for refinement as speed was critical.
“Show me the secret locations,” he boomed.
He allowed her to look up. She was such a child compared to him. Ah, this was living. This was why he’d been born—born into the world, not hatched from a test-tube as the hateful Social Unity propagandists claimed.
He shook her head. “Show me.”
“I’ve shown you everything,” she whispered.
“I’ve studied the outpost’s specs,” he told her.
She frowned.
He laughed. “My mental acuity is ten times yours. What takes you days to read, I can scan in an hour. Either you erased sections of your outpost’s logs before you left, or your overlords possessed a smattering of cunning and failed to add them to the specs. Now show me the secret locations or I shall squeeze your skull until blood runs out your nostrils.”
She stared up at him. Her eyes—
The Praetor stiffened at what he read in her, and he nodded. So… she attempted deceit.
“I will show you,” she whispered, with a quaver in her voice. “If you will follow me….”
He gave her play with the leash. She shuffled ahead of him, past the nosecone of a giant Voltaire Missile. With his chin, he lowered the helmet’s receivers. He didn’t want to burst his eardrums with what he was about to do.
His helmet and chest lamps washed over various control mechanisms. Yes, he understood now. It made him grin ferociously.
The woman said something. He couldn’t hear the precise words, because his gain was way down. He recognized her pointing into the darkness, however. Then she lurched toward a hatch.
“Is that the secret way?” he boomed.
The Force-Leader hunched her battered shoulders before nodding.
“Show me,” the Praetor said.
She shuffled toward the hatch. With a shaking finger, she reached for a control board. He let her hand get to within an inch of it. Then, with savage strength, he yanked the leash. She lifted off her feet, yelping in animal surprise and pain, and then possibly screaming with terror. He didn’t give her time to attempt anything else. Gripping her head, he twisted with exoskeleton strength.
He twisted her head, ripping the flesh and breaking the neck-bones, tearing the head from the torso. Blood jetted everywhere, spraying in gouts. Disgusted, the Praetor pitched her torso aside. It hadn’t been fear that made him use his battleoid-suit at full power, but a desire to protect the Voltaire Missiles from even the slightest harm.
The former Force-Leader had just tried to explode a hidden bomb. Perhaps this control-board contained the base destruction switch. He had seen the subtle change in her. He had been so certain, too, that she’d been broken.
“Praetor!” Canus said over the suit’s radio-link.
“I am here.”
“We have established a laser-link with Earth. Do you wish to speak with the Grand Admiral?”
“Soon,” the Praetor said. They had lost radio contact with Highborn High Command many long months ago. Had the Grand Admiral believed him dead? Was news of the missile-ship’s survival a rude shock to that cunning old soldier? The Praetor concentrated on the here and now, and told Canus, “Before I speak to Cassius, we must first make contact with the Confederation ruler.”
“The chief representative of the Confederation has been asking to talk with you for some time.”
The Praetor studied the headless Force-Leader. Blood oozed from the torn neck and pooled on the floor. Could he have underestimated these premen? No. That seemed unlikely. A wild impulse must have reignited the woman’s training. Perhaps he should have—
“No,” he said.
“Praetor?” asked Canus.
“I’m coming back up,” he said. “Then I shall speak with their leader. What was his name again?”
“Not a man, lord, but a woman.”
The Praetor grunted with contempt. “That seems fitting, a woman to rule them. What was her name again? It’s hard remembering these subhuman names.”
“Chief Strategist Tan, lord.”
“A grandiose title for a preman, don’t you think?”
“They love to give themselves gaudy titles,” Canus said.
“It is a flaw in their makeup,” the Praetor said. Then he began giving Canus instructions regarding the dead Force-Leader and the deadliness of this underground chamber.
The Praetor sat in his command chair on the Thutmosis III. It had been a long time since he’d worn his dress uniform. It was black, with a stiff white collar and a blue Nova Sunburst on the right pectoral. He wore his black beret with a red skull pinned to the front, indicating that he belonged to the Death’s Head Battalion. The unit had originated in the Youth Barracks. It had contained the toughest among them, only joined by those who had either killed on the practice mats or so badly injured another that the instructors had ordered medics to drag the wounded to the infirmary.
Even as a boy, he had been dangerous, a lion among his fellows. In turn among subhumans, he was a T-Rex, a legendry creature that all must fear.
The Praetor smiled and his pink eyes shined. “Open the channel,” he said.
“Opening… now,” Canus said.
Before him appeared a holographic image of Chief Strategist Tan. There was more than twenty million kilometers separating them. It meant there was a seven-second time delay between each transmission.
The holographic image showed him a soft woman, a small preman with a peculiar cant to her head and a bizarre… manner. He wondered if she were a cretin, if this was an arrogant, preman joke, played on him by someone who loved using proxies. She almost smiled like an idiot without a thought.
The Praetor’s eyes narrowed. Canus offered a comment then. Perhaps the soldier had been watching him, maybe a little too closely.
“I’ve just a found a file on her,” Canus said. “She follows the Dictates, which is a heightened, philosophical code.”
The Praetor grunted with annoyance.
“According to their philosophical beliefs,” Canus said, “each attempts to practice serenity.”
“What?”
Canus pointed at a holographic image.
The Praetor saw the image of a bald, bearded man who wore a toga.
“This is their base image,” Canus said. “It is their model, the one they attempt to pattern themselves after. He is their Socrates.”
“Ah,” the Praetor said. The Socrates shown here had the same buffoonish smile as the woman portrayed. It was an affected idiocy, a philosopher’s trick. She attempted to mock him in an effort to anger him into revealing something critical.
The Praetor settled back into his command chair. Instead of a predator’s smile, he would show her solid indifference, playing the part of a soldier’s soldier. If it were possible, he would attempt to appear simple. He would have to throttle back on the speed of his analytic abilities, lest he give away his surpassing superiority. He recalled reading or hearing somewhere that philosophers were the blindest of people, observing reality through the prism of their foolish creed.