Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

Hawthorne had seen Cassius’s shuttle, at least he had seen its intense exhaust. Now he heard loud clangs from outside and vibrations against the floor.

I’m finally going to meet Grand Admiral Cassius . This was a historic moment. After all these years, all the enemy’s strategic plans…he was going to meet their author. As a student of military history, he understood the value of a genius. Frederick II of Prussia had once simultaneously fought France, Austria, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, Saxony and Sweden. Collectively that represented a coalition of 70,000,000 people against 4,500,000 Prussians, fought in an era of flintlocks, cavalry and cannons. Napoleon had said of the king: “It is not the Prussian army which for seven years defended Prussia against the three most powerful nations in Europe, but Frederick the Great.” The Highborn were incomparable as soldiers. The Grand Admiral made them even greater.

Hawthorne swallowed in a dry throat, and he flexed his fingers. Had he guessed correctly or was Marten Kluge right? Infighting among humans and Highborn with the cyborgs threatening everyone, it would be suicidal madness. Surely, Cassius couldn’t be that arrogant.

The stars shined so brightly up here. It was beautiful and serene. Hawthorne frowned as he studied the stars. It came to him that he was more than weary of leading Social Unity. The weight of responsibility was crushing. The deaths of so many soldiers that he had ordered into hopeless situations…

It is time I risked my life against the cyborgs instead of just ordering others to their deaths.

The combined Highborn-Human Fleet would soon begin the long journey to Neptune. It would take over eight months to reach the enemy system.

I must go with them . The stooped Supreme Commander nodded, and he took a deep breath. Who would lead Earth in his absence? Who had the fire, the cunning and desire to match wits against the—

Behind him, the door swished open. Hawthorne turned his head. His eyes widened.

A nine-foot-tall super-soldier filled the entrance. The Highborn wore combat-armor, which was against their agreement. With a clang of magnetized boots, the Highborn walked into the chamber. Behind him, the door swished shut.

“Grand Admiral Cassius, I presume.”

The visor rotated open, and a wide face filled the helmet. The eyes with their oily film and the slash for a mouth, combined with the sharp planes of the face…Hawthorne understood Kluge’s objections better now.

“This is a pleasure,” the Highborn said.

Hawthorne tightened his slack muscles in order to suppress a shudder. The voice was inhumanly deep and rich with authority. This was a soldier born to command. He felt inadequate standing in the Highborn’s presence.

“I am Grand Admiral Cassius. You are James Hawthorne?”

Hawthorne nodded as the feeling of inadequacy grew. The sheer vibrancy of the Highborn awed him, the coiled intensity of the soldier…

“I am glad we can finally meet,” Hawthorne managed to say.

“You have come unarmed?”

“I have,” Hawthorne said.

“Excellent. I knew you were an honorable man. You have fought a good fight, preman. You held us at bay from Eurasia longer than I believed possible. It is the reason we are in this fix.”

“You wanted to speak about Admiral Sulla, I believe.”

Cassius checked a chronometer on his armored wrist. “We have little time, which is a pity. Never fear, Sulla’s days are numbered. He would eliminate you premen, a strategic piece of folly that I cannot allow. As a species, you are too needed in order to work the factories, at least until the cyborgs are destroyed.”

The direction of the conversation…it made Hawthorne sick. He had guessed wrong, it seemed. Marten Kluge had been right. He should have listened to the expert on Highborn. With a gentle shove, the Supreme Commander of Social Unity pushed himself off the ballistic glass toward Cassius.

“You understand what must happen,” Cassius said. “I see the knowledge in your eyes. With you gone, Social Unity will split into factions. In their fear of death and dishonor, the weaker factions will turn to us for help. Using that, I shall easily occupy Eurasia and Africa, completing my conquest of Earth.”

Hawthorne shuddered. The Highborn were killers. It was their genetic heritage.

“Even as you attempt to be brave, you show your fear,” Cassius said. “It is the great preman weakness.”

“What about my security team? You can’t hope to fight past them?”

“Thirty premen against three Highborn?” Cassius asked. “Bah. The odds are stacked in our favor. We cannot lose such an encounter.”

“With the cyborgs ready to destroy us,” Hawthorne said, “killing me is a mistake.”

“The cyborgs are the reason I must kill you. To defeat them, I need unity of command.”

“We’re already allied.”

“Loosely,” Cassius said. “I need obedience in order for my genius to flower. You made your greatest strategic error today in coming here. Otherwise, you fought brilliantly.”

“Are you armed?” Hawthorne asked.

“I have my hands,” Cassius said, lifting them. “They will be more than enough to twist your neck. For a preman, you fought better than anyone could have believed. However, I will take pleasure in this. My genetic imperative and greatness relentlessly leads me to the ultimate prize—victory!”

Hawthorne took a deep breath as he drifted near Cassius. The Supreme Commander raised his left arm and pointed his index finger at the Highborn’s face.

“Do not beg, preman, and do not preach to me concerning preman morals. Fight me and go down to death as a soldier should—struggle until the last breath leaves your pathetic frame.”

With his middle finger, Hawthorne pressed the pad embedded within the skin of his palm. He had undergone emergency surgery. The left index finger was a functional prosthesis. The tip of skin blew away as a dum-dum bullet fired from the finger mount.

Cassius might have shown surprise. It happened so quickly, however, that Hawthorne couldn’t tell if the Highborn knew what was happening. The dum-dum slug entered the Grand Admiral’s face under the right eye. As that occurred, the piece of mercury in the hollow part of the slug was flung against the lead. That caused the slug to fragment like a grenade as it entered the Highborn’s face. The slug exploded, instantly killing the soldier.

A hidden transmitter in the palm-pad trigger also alerted the security team outside. They were not ordinary humans, but bionic soldiers. This was another clear violation of the agreement they had made. The bionic soldiers attacked the three Highborn, who proved themselves marvelous fighters. Cassius’s three guards killed fourteen soldiers before they died, but die they did.

Afterward, the surviving members of the security team entered a pod and dropped for Earth. James Hawthorne strapped a propulsion pack to his shoulders, sealed his vacc-suit, entered a lock, waited until the chamber rotated into space and launched for the Vladimir Lenin .

Aboard the Vladimir Lenin , Commodore Blackstone stood at the command module as the chamber was bathed in red light. He watched the pod drop toward the heavy cloud cover. A tiny blip on the screen showed him Hawthorne’s position.

“Propulsion,” Blackstone said, “give me bearing seven mark ten. Put us between the Julius Caesar and the Supreme Commander.”

There was a lurch aboard the battleship as subsystems fractionally moved the multi-million-ton vessel.

How much time will they give us? Blackstone asked himself. The answer came almost right away.