They had hustled General Hawthorne out of the command center. They had marched him past the general’s own security men and past the armor units who had secretly pledged personal loyalty to James Hawthorne. Lord Director Enkov had given strict orders concerning the general, and no one had the firepower or the will to take on the bionic guards and thereby thwart the leader of Social Unity.
General Hawthorne contemplated his future. How odd was fate, how twisted and bizarre. He glanced at the bionic captain, and said, “The Lord Director’s instincts are impeccable. He had to have fled Beijing only hours before its destruction. His survival skills are unrivaled, wouldn’t you say?”
The bionic captain remained impassive. A massively built man, with artificial muscles and stimulant-powered reflexes, he sat ramrod stiff, eyes forward. His five trusted soldiers sat likewise, with the added feature of short, bullpup carbines held in their grimly powerful grips. Armor vests added to their invincibility.
“Enkov does not intend me to survive the meeting with him,” Hawthorne mused. He seemed remarkably composed in spite of his statement. “I’m sure he’ll ask you to report on my comportment during the operation.”
The bionic captain minutely changed position, so he stared impassively at the general.
“I tried to do my duty as I saw fit,” said Hawthorne. “I of course will tell him that you were simply trying to do yours.”
“I obeyed my orders.”
“Of course,” said Hawthorne. “And like the Lord Director I too believe that obedience is the highest military virtue. Of course, not all virtue belongs to the soldier. Some must belong to the commander. Chief among the virtues he should possess is loyalty—Loyalty to one’s subordinates and to one’s own orders. Otherwise a commander is merely whimsical and therefore not worthy of obedience.”
The bionic captain allowed himself the tiniest of frowns, and a faint downward twitch of the smallest portion of the left side of his mouth. “Lord Director Enkov does not plan your death to be a pleasant one.”
“Such is my own belief.”
“Yet you are calm.”
General Hawthorne shrugged. Then he sat still, a tall gaunt general with wispy blond hair, bony features composed and a row of medals on his chest. The bionic captain had allowed him time to don his dress uniform, a considerate gesture.
Soon the GEV stopped, settling onto the ground. The door opened and the bionic captain and his five soldiers escorted the general step into an underground bunker. The ultra-clean garage of the bunker held many tanks and GEVs and a company of black uniformed allegiance monitors aiming pistols at him. They wore black helmets with dark shaded visors. All of them were tense, ready for anything. .
The bionic captain marched his five men and General Hawthorne past the allegiance monitors and into a sterile white corridor. More bionic men stood at attention along the corridors. No one said a word as General James Hawthorne’s heels drummed upon the tiles. Impassively, they watched. How carefully and zealously Enkov had built up this special Corps of new men, Hawthorne thought. Surely now the Lord Director had to rule with a greater severity than before. A purge would be in order, a cleaning out of the traitors in the military who had allowed such an unprecedented disaster. At least Hawthorne was certain this was how Enkov would be thinking. Today, Hawthorne himself would be the first scapegoat.
They finally reached a steel door—the end of the corridor, end of the line. The door slid open, and the captain and his five most trusted men marched the general into a small room, interrogation sized. Lord Director Enkov sat behind a rather small desk. Flanking him stood his original bionic bodyguard.
A plain wooden chair sat before the desk.
“Sit,” wheezed the old, wrinkled man who held supreme power.
General Hawthorne sat.
With a trembling, palsied hand, Enkov stuck a stimstick between his withered lips. His eyes seemed to glitter with promised death for everyone who had failed him. As the stimstick glowed into life, the Lord Director pointed an accusatory finger at the general.
“You failed.”
“May I speak?” asked Hawthorne.
The bionic captain shifted uncomfortably.
Enkov noticed. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He leaned back in his chair and eyed the captain of his guards at the military command center of all Earth. It had been a post of high rank, surely one of the Lord Director’s most trusted positions. The evidence of the captain’s five-man security team, still armed in his presence, showed the truth of this.
Enkov asked, “Do you have something to report, Captain?”
“He did his duty,” General Hawthorne said.
The Lord Director lifted his bushy white eyebrows. Red smoke drifted out of his nostrils. “I don’t recall asking you a question, General.”
“No,” agreed Hawthorne. “But it’s time we told the truth, you and I. And heard the truth, too,” he said to the bionic captain.
Enkov glanced from the bionic captain to the general. A mixture of caution, suspicion and—was that fear?—mingled in the old man’s features. He noticed the port arms of the five trusted bionic soldiers. The Lord Director leaned toward his intercom.
The bionic captain, the one who had stopped General Hawthorne from using nuclear weapons to stop the million-ton meteorites, gave his men a subtle finger-signal. They raised their carbines and riddled the Lord Director’s bodyguard with bullets.
The Lord Director jerked back in his chair, surprised and bewildered at this sudden turn of events.
“You are relieved of duty, sir,” General Hawthorne told Enkov.
The stimstick dropped out of Enkov’s mouth. Then he snapped forward as his old, palsied hand reached for the intercom button. The hand never made it. The carbines spoke again. And the ancient, Lord Director fell to the clean floor, dead.
***
A half-hour later, the bionic guards ushered the General into Director Blanche-Aster’s office. She sat in a wheelchair, a red plaid blanket over her useless legs and a bulky medical unit hooked into her and keeping her alive. Her face was drawn and old and she wore a turban because it was rumored that all her hair had fallen out. Her eyes yet shone with dangerous life.
“General Hawthorne,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice.
“Director.”
“By killing the Lord Director, you have committed a horrible deed.”
“I stand by it,” he said, determined to die with dignity.
“Do you? Do you indeed?”
“The Lord Director’s arrogance cost Earth too dearly,” General Hawthorne said. “He had a debt to pay and I merely helped him pay it.”
“That’s claptrap, General. Your neck was on the block and you did what you had to in order to save it. Or do you think me so dull that I’d actually believe that you’re committed to saving Earth?”
General Hawthorne clicked his heels together. “Director, I think of nothing else.”
She studied him with those dangerously bright eyes, with those deeply knowledgeable eyes. “A single word from me, a nod even, and you’ll be dragged out and shot like a murderous junkie.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Don’t interrupt me, General.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgement.
“I could first have you tortured, lingeringly tortured, the scene saved on video for the world to watch.”
His stomach knotted, but he kept the bitter emotions off his face.
“Yet I need someone to run the war, General. I need someone who can hurt the Highborn. You’ve hurt them. Tell me, if you fought this war under my direction, could you win it?”
He peered straight into her eyes. “I could.”
“Director,” she admonished.
“Director,” he said.
“I’m reinstating you as the Supreme Commander of Social Unity. And I insist that you defeat the Highborn.”