Hawthorne turned from the shouting staff officer and stared into the bionic man’s eyes. It was difficult to think with that bone-crushing grip on his arm. The bionic man didn’t seem to be straining at all. Briefly, Hawthorne wondered why they didn’t create an army of these bionic men. Then he had to use all his concentration in order to form his words. He said, “Your loyalty and obedience is impeccable, but surely you can see that we must save the Lord Director’s life, not to mention our capital.”
A sour smile creased the bionic captain’s lips. “Disobedience is not allowed. Termination is the result, both yours and mine. I refuse to be terminated.”
“Look at the screen.”
“Yes, unfortunate.”
“Are you willing that the Lord Director should perish?”
“Obedience is mandatory.”
“Look,” said Hawthorne, trying to turn and look at the screen.
“Negative,” said the bionic man, using his infinitely greater strength to keep Hawthorne from turning.
“Ten seconds!”
“I have to order a nuclear strike,” General Hawthorne shouted.
“Eight seconds, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… impact.”
From the various screens, bright glares filled the room. The seconds ticked by. Then a rumble, a quake, caused the underground bunker to quiver. Soon the shockwave passed.
“Beijing is gone,” whispered a man.
The bionic man released General Hawthorne.
Hawthorne staggered away from the bionic captain. The general gingerly massaged his biceps and wondered if his arm was permanently damaged.
“Manila, gone. Taipei, gone. Vladivostok—”
“Now what, sir?”
General Hawthorne tried to collect himself. It was difficult. The scale of death was… millions, no, maybe a billion dead. He couldn’t visualize it. His chest threatened to lock up as his heart hammered.
“The Julius Caesar is entering low-Earth orbit, sir, the stratosphere. And the Genghis Khan seems to have turned around. It’s coming back.”
General Hawthorne looked up. The Doom Stars filled the screen, part of the Genghis Khan a mass of smoking wreckage.
“We badly hurt one of them,” whispered Ulrich.
General Hawthorne squinted. The main brunt of the amphibious assault had yet to be touched by the Highborn. Was it possible to snatch victory from this… this… could one call a billion deaths a mere blow?
“Lord Director Enkov on line seven, sir.”
“He’s alive?” General Hawthorne asked in amazement.
Before he could say more the bionic captain hustled him to line seven. There he saw the haggard, angry face of Lord Director Enkov. No doubt, the Lord Director was already looking for a scapegoat. General Hawthorne had few illusions about who that would be.
20.
Murderous gun-battles raged in the merculite missile station. The last of the Kamikazes, Samurais, rocket engineers, hastily trained civilians and ex-police officers refused to surrender. They fought with whatever tools were at hand. They were more stubborn at the end than they had been at any other time in the Siege of Tokyo.
Showing no mercy, the FEC soldiers kept coming. After silencing the heavy machinegun ports and blowing the underground locks, the last of the 93rd Slumlords had stormed into the station. Behind the super-thick station walls and below the four-thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete, the merculite station was a vast fortress filled with rows upon rows of heavy merculite rockets.
Perhaps sixty of the huge, armored missiles waited on a conveyer. They looked like bullets on a machinegun belt, and were fed to four blast pans: the launch sites. Between the blast pans raged the gun battles. Bullets and shrapnel bounced off the vast missiles.
Heavy body armor turned the battle in favor of the Slumlords. Remorselessly, they advanced toward the control room. Men in tattered rags crawled along the girders, dropping grenades. They popped out of supply tunnels, guns blazing. Each time, lasers and gyrocs cut them down. Then a last remaining squad of Samurais leapfrogged to the attack. They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and blown to bits. Their blood stained three of the rockets that were closest to the blast pans.
Marten led his assault group, their weapons smoking from constant use. Alone or grouped in twos or threes they sprinted, bounded or crawled to new positions. Lasers beamed, machine pistols chattered and gyrocs barked. All around the FEC soldiers, the colossal missiles towered over them. To Marten, they seemed like idols, things that should be worshiped and most of all feared. The merculite missile station was a cathedral to war, to man’s madness and killer instinct. It was only right then that men murder men in this place.
“Why don’t they surrender?” shouted Stick, slapping a new clip of grenades into his electromag launcher.
“They can’t,” said Omi, lifting his laser and burning a hole in an engineer that raced at them with a wrench.
“Why not?” said Stick, laying down a pattern of grenade fire that slew another four unfortunates.
“Because they’re insane,” Omi said, “beyond reason.”
Marten marveled at these last Japanese even as he killed them. A squad of political police officers screamed a war cry as they ran at them. They fired stunners, utterly ineffectual against combat-armored soldiers. Some of Marten’s men actually stood up, taking the brunt of the stunner fire as they blew apart the pathetic, would-be warriors.
When the last police officer fell, Marten rose. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned his men forward. Sigmir’s assault group rose and followed.
Marten paused at the corpse of one of the stunner men. The man must have known his weapon couldn’t hurt armored soldiers. So why had…. Marten’s chest tightened. He reached down and took a tangler that was attached to the corpse’s belt. He hadn’t seen one of these since…. His stomach fluttered as he thought about the Sun-Works Factory circling Mercury. For years there with his parents, all he’d ever used was a tangler, one just like this. It was a policeman’s weapon, useless on the battlefield.
A feeling suddenly came over him, an insight into himself. These Japanese were like his parents. They’d never given in, but had died for freedom. Yet what good was dying? He stuffed the tangler in his pack and hurried after his assault group. They knelt behind some missiles, trading fire with….
Marten threw himself onto the concrete floor, an enemy grenade flying over him.
“Look out!” he yelled. He rolled left, behind the nearest missile.
A flash and a scream told of another FEC death. How many had to die before the Siege for Tokyo was over? Then he saw motion, the bomb-thrower sprinting to get nearer them. In a single, liquid move, Marten rose and fired. Riddled with bullets, the bomb-thrower staggered backward, a look of shock on his face.
Marten hated Social Unity, but he felt pity for these poor sods. Then he squinted thoughtfully. He didn’t love the Highborn either. He laughed—at last understanding who he was.
“What is it?” shouted Stick, who stood nearby, slapping yet another grenade clip into his launcher.
Marten shook his head. But it had come to him, finally. He belonged to neither side. He was his own side, as his parents had been their own side. And what side was that? the cynical part of him asked. Freedom’s side, he decided.
In that instant, he conceived something new within himself, the germ of a new country, or perhaps one that was very, very old and would be reborn again. In his land—the one he now bore in himself, as a pregnant woman bears a new life—a murderer would pay for stealing another man’s life.
“I see it!” shouted Petor.
Marten snapped out of his musing and peered around his missile. He saw it too. It was a door marked CONTROL ROOM.
Sigmir howled, and he dashed toward the entrance. Amazed at the berserk rush, the FEC soldiers of the 93rd Slumlord Battalion watched the huge Lot Six Highborn hurl himself at the door. It burst apart on impact. Sigmir rolled in amidst gunfire. He roared a battle cry as he leaped up and let his gyroc bark.