Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

Prone, with teeth clenched and with his arms resting on the rail, Marten fired three deliberate shots.

The machine-gun man clawed out his empty magazine and slammed in another. He staggered back then, a testament to Marten’s marksmanship, but it didn’t stop the man. In front of him by ten feet, Osadar twisted the neck of a different killer. She had her back to the machine-gun man and for the first time she had stopped moving. He lifted his weapon. In desperation, Marten shot the rest of his magazine. One of the bullets struck home. The man threw the machine gun into the air as he staggered backward, falling into the snow, his visor a jagged-red ruin.

Osadar disarmed the last killer. Then she grabbed his wrists, yanking them behind his back. She marched him through the snow to the railcars.

Marten was shivering as he stood up. He looked at his hands. They were red. After holstering the gun, he rubbed his hands and put them under his armpits.

Osadar shoved her captive over the rail-line. The man’s visor was open and he grimaced in pain. He had short hair and blood dripped from his broken nose.

“Who ordered you to do this?” Marten asked.

Despite his pain, the man shook his head.

“Twist his arm a little,” Marten said. Osadar complied.

The man grunted in pain and sweat pooled on his face.

“More,” Marten said.

The man winced and breathed heavily, blowing blood droplets onto the snow.

“In the end you’ll tell me what I want to know,” Marten said.

“I know who you are,” the armored man said in a harsh voice. Two of his front teeth were broken.

“Who ordered this?” Marten asked.

The man licked his lips as his pain-racked eyes turned cunning.

“Wrong choice,” Marten said.

“No, wait!” the man shouted, as Osadar began to twist his arm again. “We’re…we’re PHC.”

Marten glanced at Osadar. With her senso-mask, it was even more impossible to tell what the cyborg was thinking.

“Our commander is helping Director Backus,” the PHC thug said. “The director wants you in his custody.”

“Who do you think I am?”

“Marten Kluge, who else?” the man asked. “I saw you on the Nancy Vance Show, you with your talk about everyone going armed. That’s all this world needs now.”

“What does Backus want with me?” Marten asked.

“If I tell you…you have to promise to let me live.”

“If I think you’re telling me the truth, sure.”

“Promise it,” the man said.

“I give you my word.”

The PHC thug swallowed painfully. “And tell your cyborg to let me go.”

Marten shook his head.

The crafty look entered the man’s eyes again. “Okay. I was lying just a second ago. Director Backus wants you dead.”

“Why?”

“Why?” the man laughed, the pain making his eyes bulge. “People like you brought about this war, brought asteroids raining down on Earth. Look around you, at this weather. There hasn’t ever been anything like this in Lebanon Sector. We have to purge the Earth so something like this never happens again. We have to wipe out trouble-makers like you.”

“The cyborgs launched the asteroids, not me,” Marten said. “I tried to stop them.”

“I’ve got news for you,” the man said. “A cyborg is holding my wrists. You’re in league with the world-killers. It’s obvious.”

“He is irrational,” Osadar said.

“At least I’m not a freak like you,” the man said over his shoulder. “Humans need to stick together. Then we’ll win this war. Director Backus knows what to do. The people know it, and so does PHC.”

“Is that why you’re killing innocent people?” Marten asked.

“You’re a dead man, Kluge. Political Harmony Corps remembers its enemies. You’re never going to reach Athens and you’re never going to see your filthy space-borne Jovian marines again.”

Marten stared at the man. This was all so senseless. Why had Hawthorne agreed to go meet Cassius? If only the Supreme Commander could have seen the bigger picture.

“Knock him out,” Marten said. “Then we have to figure out what we’re going to do.”

The man tried to say more. Osadar spun him around and hit him hard, but not hard enough to crack his skull. He slumped to the snow.

“Tie him up,” Marten said. “I’m going inside to warm up and check on Nadia.”

Back in the Jupiter System, events had radically altered for the Chief Strategist.

Tan met with Sub-Strategist Circe aboard the defensive satellite orbiting Callisto. The large Galilean moon was mostly ruins below, although a new dome was under construction on the surface. The two women sat before a large holoimage in an heavily protected chamber. Behind their chairs were Grecian statues: one of a thinker, another in the act of throwing a discus and the third of a nude goddess. On the ceiling was a stylized drawing of a pyramid with a lidless eye in the center.

Tan was the smaller of the two, had haunted eyes and wore her red gown. She glanced at Circe. The dark-haired Sub-Strategist sat forward in her chair, staring at the holoimage. A small dark stone was embedded in Circe’s forehead. Etched on the stone in nearly microscopic letters were the words: Marten Kluge .

The Sub-Strategist commanded a flotilla of meteor-ships. In her personal quarters aboard the flagship, the walls were plastered with pictures of Marten Kluge. Tan had read the latest profile on Circe. The Sub-Strategist no longer practiced her sexual rites with myrmidons. She had, in fact, declined several months ago to use the Cleopatra Grip on a targeted man. The only union the Sub-Strategist desired was with the quixotic barbarian from Inner Planets, Marten Kluge. Except for that quirk, however, Circe had regained her abilities, the ones lost from a forced injection of powerful sex-drugs. Her flotilla—three meteor-ships—was the most disciplined in the Jovian System. They contained pure crews, people from Callisto, those who had been taught along philosophic lines.

“The situation is stark,” Chief Strategist Tan said. “The answer…I don’t have the answer. I admit myself bewildered today concerning the correct course of action.”

The holoimage showed eight, faint, stellar objects hurtling through the void. Tan had read the reports. They were massive projectiles headed on a collision course for the Jupiter System. Each of the faint objects was five to fifteen kilometers in diameter and bristled with weaponry. Astronomers on Carpo—the outermost prograde moon, seventeen million kilometers from Jupiter—had discovered the objects several hours ago. After learning of them and digesting the reports, Tan had summoned Circe, who had taken a shuttle from her meteor-ship in orbit around Callisto. The Sub-Strategist had docked fifteen minutes ago.

“Who else knows about this?” Circe asked.

Tan made a bleak gesture. “It hardly matters now.”

“I disagree. The information could prove critical. We have planned for this eventuality and have the tools to blunt the enemy’s attack. Panic, however, could hurt our chances of success.”

“Do you not see?” Tan cried. “Can you not count? Our civilization is doomed.”

“Not if we stop this attack.”

“After seeing what the cyborgs send at us, you believe we can stop it?” Tan asked.

“If we act with speed, resourcefulness and cunning,” Circe said with a nod. “We can possibly keep ourselves alive. At all costs, we must refuse to let ourselves despair. We are the mind and heart of Jovian Civilization. I submit that we must toil to the bitter end.”

Tan inhaled deeply, struggling to overcome the despair Circe spoke of. She had been right to call the Sub-Strategist. She needed to hear this and needed to draw strength from Circe’s convictions. The sheer destructiveness of the cyborgs, their machine-like ruthlessness—the scope of the attack numbed her mind.