Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

Cato’s portion of the split-screen flickered off.

“He is the weakest among you,” Hawthorne said. “But no matter,” he added. Sulla and Scipio stared at him as if he were a mad dog. “Let us finish the strategy session. Your Doom Stars are superior. In most wars, the best strategy is to weaken an enemy by whittling away his inferior foes before attempting to take on the senior partner. If your goal is to strengthen the cyborgs in relation to us, then by all means you should let them destroy the SU vessels first. Instead, I recommend that you let the Doom Stars absorb the first mass of cyborg strikes, thereby allowing us to survive. That gains you our firepower later when it is deployable.”

“You will not outmaneuver us into taking the majority of the casualties,” Sulla said.

“I am not attempting to,” Hawthorne said. “I merely wish to survive long enough to attack our common foe.”

Scipio nodded slowly. “I am beginning to see why the Grand Admiral wanted you dead.”

“What?” Sulla asked, turning away to a different screen. “You believe the human’s story about a prosthetic finger?”

“I beginning to,” Scipio said.

Sulla scowled, and he grew thoughtful. “I recall the Grand Admiral’s method of dealing with premen,” he told Scipio. “You and I were on the bridge during the Planet-wrecker Assault. Cassius allowed premen to speak arrogantly to him. Do you believe Cassius finally wearied of their behavior and thus desired Hawthorne’s death?”

“No,” Scipio said. “The Grand Admiral was shrewd, and he could read a situation better than any of us could. I believe he saw what I’m finally seeing. Supreme Commander Hawthorne has the mind of a Highborn.”

“Blasphemy,” Sulla whispered, as he turned back to study Hawthorne.

“And he has the spirit of one too,” Scipio added. “It means he is dangerous. Likely, that is why Cassius wished him destroyed. Without Hawthorne, Social Unity would not have survived as long as it has.”

Sulla’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said at last.

“You agree to the human’s plan?” Scipio asked.

“It is the triad’s plan,” Sulla said. “I merely accept the human’s modification to it. During the initial assault, his warships will remain behind ours.”

“We will have to begin deceleration first, then,” Hawthorne said.

Sulla shook his head. “You will give away our plan and allow the cyborgs more time to adjust than otherwise.”

“True,” Hawthorne said. “The trouble is that we cannot tolerate the same number as Gs as you. Therefore, we need a longer time to decelerate.”

“We are the Highborn,” Sulla said. “Despite your manners today, we are superior. Do not ever forget that, human .”

I don’t plan to . Outwardly, however, Hawthorne stared at Sulla as if offended.

It brought a grim smile to the Highborn’s face. The strategic meeting ended, and Hawthorne began to plot harder than ever.

The Prime Web-Mind of Neptune sent a command pulse through the web: The enemy approaches .

For the first time in years, unease crept through the Prime’s multiform brain. It awakened old emotive centers in it. The emotions gave its brain tissues deeper contemplative possibilities. But the emotions had begun to upset its smooth functioning. This was not the time for such interruptions.

Data flowed from observatories on Neso, one of the farthest-flung moons. The distance was so great that it took thirty-two seconds for the communications-laser to reach Triton.

In the Solar System, Neptune was the farthest planet from the Sun. Pluto was a dwarf planet, the second most massive of them, after Eris. It had thirteen moons, was the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass. Traces of methane in the outermost regions gave Neptune its blue appearance. The ice giant possessed the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, clocked at over 2100 km/h. The outer atmosphere was also one of the coldest places, with the cloud tops dropping as low as minus 218 Centigrade. Like the other gas giants, it had a ring, a faint and fragmented system.

The Prime observed three giant spheroids hurtling through the Great Dark. They were black vessels emitting high levels of energy, doing relatively little to cloak the emissions. The Highborn advanced with their customary arrogance. This time, there was reason for it. Three Doom Stars represented a dangerous concentration of military power.

The Prime seethed as it studied the Neso data. For the thousandth time, it reassessed known factors. Massive fusion engines powered the million-kilometer-ranged laser. The enemy could strike from a great distance, well outside the range of cyborg weaponry. It gave the Highborn a clear tactical advantage.

The Prime feared that advantage. The fear grew until “cooling” pheromones misted over its emotive centers. It saw again with reptilian logic. Mercy had long ago been expunged from its core.

Thoughts fired through a billion of its neurons as it accessed all its memories on Doom Star-data. Cyborg agents on Earth routinely beamed new specifics as they uncovered them. These were carefully collected through altered Homo sapiens embedded in both FEC and SU bureaucracies. For reasons it could not accept, the Prime had so far been unable to alter a Highborn.

That will change. I will capture thousands after obliterating their warships .

A low-level alarm started a rationality program and it ran through a logic loop. If all the warships were destroyed, the Highborn in the warships would die. If all the Highborn died, there would be none for the cyborgs to capture and convert. After several hundred loops of logic, the rationality program “showed” the data to MONITOR brain centers. The conclusion was obvious and quickly gathered thinking mass.

Before the brain centers reached critical mass, however, the Prime added a new factor. Some Highborn will wear powered armor and likely survive a Doom Star’s destruction. Other Highborn might use assault craft to capture moons and key habitats. These I can capture .

The new information shattered the MONITOR brain centers into blocs of thought. The rationality program lost the needed mass and waited for the next Prime-thought that needed assessing.

Shed of its need to argue for its thoughts, the Prime returned to its original worry: the Doom Stars. The three warships possessed improved collapsium plating. Altered Earth agents had failed to uncover the full specifics on the plating. Therefore, the Prime accessed old data. Collapsium was hard and dense, similar in nature to the core of a white star. The electrons of an atom were collapsed on the nuclei so the atoms were compressed. The compression was so great they actually touched. A molecular model demonstrated that lead was like a sponge in comparison to collapsium. The first collapsium coating had been micro-microns thick.

Will the new coating be three times as thick?

The Prime ran though several hundred scenarios given that assumption. The conclusion…it was inescapable, the Doom Stars represented a danger to its existence. The knowledge sent a shiver of unease through the core so that everywhere on Triton cyborgs linked to the web froze for an entire three seconds.

I am superior, and my strategy has already rolled over eighty-seven percent of the obstacles. That is a higher percentage of success than the other power-blocs have achieved. Given my superiority, worry is senseless.

The Prime soothed itself with its flawless logic and stark rationality. Yes. Long ago, it had settled on an offensive strategy. That strategy had provided immense dividends—to use a Neptunian capitalist’s term. One critical component was distance. Neptune was farther out that any other inhabited planet, meaning that no other useful planetoid of appreciable size was near the Neptune System. Objects worth colonizing in the Kuiper Belt were even farther away, while those in the Oort Cloud might as well have been near another star.