The guard never shrugged or bothered with a warning. He simply marched out, slamming the door behind him.
“I could kill you before he entered again,” Felix said.
“You tried that once already when you had the advantage. My recommendation is to wait before you attempt it again. Try to gain an absolute advantage.”
Felix massaged one of his wrists. He sneered at Cassius. “I’ve been training hard.”
“Good. You’re going to need every ounce of your rage and fighting spirit soon.”
“You’re shooting us at the cyborgs, eh?” Felix spat on the floor. “That’s wise, old man. Otherwise, I would have killed you sooner or later.”
Cassius leaned forward. “Your fury lacks rationality. We possess similar chromosomes. We are alike in many ways. I…I wish you to excel.”
“Is that why you shot my favorite sex object?”
“The premen could have used your girls against you, killing you like an animal.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’ve already stated the reason: our chromosomes.”
Felix’s eyes widened, and he laughed harshly. “You see me as your father?”
A pang of something beat in Cassius’s heart.
“Highborn have no fathers, no mothers,” said Felix. “We are alone. It is one of our strengths.”
“We are the Highborn, the most superior form of life in existence,” said Cassius.
“Do want me to call you father?” Felix jeered.
“I want you to excel,” said Cassius.
“Why?” asked Felix, taking a step nearer.
Cassius groped for the right words, and it surprised him that he didn’t have them.
Felix’s leg muscles tensed.
“Don’t do it,” Cassius whispered. “You already have a mark against you for attempting to assassinate me. A second mark will bring about your destruction.”
“Why do you care?”
“You have the best of genes,” Cassius said. “Someday, you may become the Grand Admiral.”
Felix roared as he leaped for the table. Cassius was closer, if a touch slower. Snatching the shock rod, he switched it to its highest setting. Then he cracked it across Felix’s forehead. With a howl, Felix crashed sideways and collapsed onto the floor.
The door opened as the battleoid-armored guard looked in.
“Get out!” Cassius snarled.
The soldier stepped back, slamming the door shut.
Taking two steps, Cassius crouched beside Felix. “You have courage and you’re full of vigor. Those are excellent traits. Now you must learn to use your mind, to think.”
“I’m going to kill you someday,” Felix whispered.
“First you’re going to have to survive the cyborgs.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Cassius said. “To survive the cyborgs, you’re going to have to kill all of them. Do you think you can do that?”
Felix turned his head. There was something more than mere rage there.
Cassius looked away, and he stood up. He suddenly felt very tired and alone. It was a dull ache.
“Running away, old man?”
“You have the very best genes,” Cassius whispered.
“I can’t hear you. Why don’t you bend your ear near here by my teeth?”
“You must suppress your fury,” Cassius said. “For you, indulging your anger will bring eventual madness. You must cultivate your higher reasoning abilities and learn to lean on them.”
With a groan, Felix struggled to rise. Old Gaius could have done it, Cassius realized. But Gaius did it through willpower. Felix’s mind had been damaged in death or during resuscitation. There had to be a way to fix that.
“Good luck against the cyborgs, my boy.”
“I’m not your boy. I’m your death waiting to happen.”
The pang of hurt touched Cassius heart again. With a deep breath, he buried that hurt. He steeled himself to the tasks at hand. Then he headed for the door, never once looking back, not even as Felix groaned, fighting to get up.
-46-
Unlike the Highborn in the Luna Missile Complex, Cassius slept an average of five hours a night. It was impossible to go days on end with stims without experiencing mental fatigue. As Grand Admiral, he needed mental acuity.
He presently rowed in a machine, his nine-foot body lathered in sweat. The rowing machine was in his quarters aboard the Julius Caesar, one of several personal luxuries. Three days had passed since he’d executed Senior Tribune Cato. It was true he’d asked the impossible from the Highborn. And Cato’s objections had been logical. None of that mattered, however.
There had been a particularly effective Marshal of the Soviet Union during World War Two. His name had been Georgi Konstanitinovich Zhukov. He’d been a hard preman and an outstanding general. Partly due to his tireless energy and ruthlessness, the Soviet forces had halted the dreaded German panzers before the gates of Moscow. Even more impressive, Zhukov had carefully husbanded his forces so he could unleash a devastating winter campaign on the exhausted German armies. During the fateful seven months of 1941 and the German blitzkrieg into Russia, Zhukov had been the chief troubleshooter for Dictator Stalin. One of Zhukov’s most successful ploys had been to shoot those generals and colonels who failed on the battlefield. The preman had ruthlessly dominated the situation by constantly demanding the impossible from his immediate underlings. Due to their fear of Zhukov, generals found themselves able to achieve feats surpassing their old performance levels.
As Cassius rowed, panting heavily, he was determined to shape reality by the power of his will. Time ticked away as the asteroids sped for Earth. More than ever, he needed strength and fierce will. Then he needed imagination to outthink the cyborgs.
There was a loud ping in the room. A red light flashed. The intercom crackled with life. “…Grand Admiral?”
Cassius released the handles and climbed out of the rowing machine. “Give me forty seconds,” he said.
“As per your request, the Supreme Commander of the Premen will be online in twenty.”
“I require ninety seconds,” said Cassius. “Make sure he stays connected.”
“Yes sir.”
Still breathing heavily, Cassius tore off his clothes, tossing them onto his cot. Then he entered the shower. A hot needlelike spray jetted against his sweaty skin and against scars and old bruises. There was a particularly nasty one on his left shoulder-blade, shiny tissue there showing where a force-blade had once cut him to the bone. He lathered shampoo in his bristly hair and then let the hot water wash it out. Seconds later, he exited the shower, toweled dry and stood before a blower. Cold air caused his skin to prickle. He gasped, and he felt alive. Soon, he put on a shirt, buttoning it fast, and he put a dress jacket over that. He strode to his desk, sat and ran his big fingers through his hair. Facing a video camera, he waited for the seconds to tick away.
“I’m ready,” he said.
The screen came to life, and Supreme Commander Hawthorne faced him. There was a bookshelf behind the preman. Cassius mentally made a note to check the titles of those books later, possibly giving him greater insight into the Supreme Commander. Then Hawthorne surprised Cassius by speaking first and immediately to the issue.
“We need to adjust the attack,” said Hawthorne.
Cassius practiced calm, staring at the preman. Maybe it would be better to hold these meetings in person. Let the preman feel his presence and the thin specimen would have to deal with physical fear. That might help curb the sub-human’s tongue.
“As we’ve scheduled it,” said Hawthorne, “there are too many possibilities for errors, for mistakes at precisely the wrong moment.”
“I summoned you for an entirely different reason,” Cassius said.
Hawthorne shook his head. “Grand Admiral, we are like two men fighting in a room to the death. Now a pack of wolves has crawled through the windows to kill us both. We have been forced to stand back-to-back and fight together. Otherwise, we shall both die.”