Vaughn Heppner - Planet Wrecker

Shaking his head, Marten wondered if that would be mankind’s failing, the inability to unite totally, that someone would always try to achieve his own selfish aim. He made a face. Maybe that made man, man. Cyborgs united perfectly, but they were no longer completely human.

“I’ll do it,” Marten said.

“Excellent,” said Tan, lifting her chalice.

Marten lifted his and they clinked cups, sipping wine afterward.

“You have given me a vision of the future,” Tan said. “You have given me hope. If we can unite humanity….”

“It’s going to be a big ‘if’,” said Marten.

“Things worth doing are seldom easy.”

“Yeah,” Marten said, sipping his wine again, wishing it was beer. He was going to be a warship captain. And he was returning to the Inner Planets. Life was strange, and he wondered what the future held for him, and what it held for the Solar System.

“I don’t recommend this, sir,” Captain Mune said for the fifth time this hour.

Supreme Commander Hawthorne understood Captain Mune’s concerns. And he silently agreed with the captain’s reasoning. Coming here was…penitence maybe. Or maybe he was a glutton for pain, or maybe he needed to feel the fear in his belly.

He’d always hated the generals in what the ancients had called World War One. Those generals and field marshals had lived and dined in French chateaus as their soldiers had died in the mud and on the wire by the tens of thousands. Soft hands had moved pins on a map or pushed little blocks of wood representing a battalion of terrified soldiers, wet from the constant rain. If the generals and field marshals had slogged through the trenches with their men, they might not have continued the senseless butchery for years on end. Those generals might have striven for a way to win without fields of corpses.

Hawthorne sighed, and he tied the laces of his hood. He wore a green tunic with a hood covering his head. He was taller than the security people around him, but he was no longer thinner. His eyes felt gritty and he knew there were discolored bags under them. There had been too many sleepless nights lately.

“Be careful who you’re touching,” said Captain Mune. He jostled a security woman’s arm, shaking a chemsniffer out of her grip. She’d been using it on Hawthorne. The chemsniffer clattered on the pavement as the woman gasped with pain.

Other brown-clad security people turned, facing Mune.

The captain was a bionic soldier, and today he was Hawthorne’s sole bodyguard. The captain’s arm made soft whining sounds as he produced a card, handing it to the chief of lift security. The whining noise came from Mune’s mechanized joints.

The chief of lift security, who wore dark glasses and badly needed a shave, glanced at the plastic card and then at Mune.

Like the Supreme Commander, the captain wore a tunic, and like Hawthorne, Mune was incognito today. He was nearly as tall as Hawthorne, but thicker and more than five times as strong. That thickness now made Mune noticeable, made him stand out among the thin security people in their baggy uniforms.

Hawthorne knew that Mune had a heavy-duty gyroc pistol hidden on him. The gyroc fired rocket-propelled, fin-stabilized shells, an unlikely weapon down here in the lower levels of New Baghdad, the capital of Social Unity on Earth.

“What is this about?” asked the chief. His unshaven chin had plenty of white hairs among the black ones.

“Sure you really want to know?” asked Mune.

Hawthorne glanced at the captain. Mune spoke in a menacing tone.

“It’s your life,” said the chief, who had grown pale. “Just to let you know—”

“Don’t,” said Mune.

The chief nodded, backing away. It seemed he worked to keep his face neutral. He motioned to the other security people, who gripped well-used shock rods.

Mune stepped beside Hawthorne and said in a low tone, “I recommend you go back to your office and watch videos of the latest bread riots, sir. This is too risky.”

“Do videos carry the stench of despair?” Hawthorne asked. He moved past the security cordon, his shoes echoing on the pavement. They were on Level Fifty-Three, a low-card district. Some of the lamps on the ceiling were broken. Across the wide veranda were five-story offices, human welfare buildings. Some had smashed windows on the lower stories. There was burn damage as well.

“It’s quiet,” said Mune.

Hawthorne listened to his shoes click as he set out in a fast stride. Several blocks later, he crunched over broken glass. The cleanup crews hadn’t made it very far, and he wondered why not. There were green apartment barracks on the next street. All the shrubs and synthi-trees there had long ago been torn out. People boiled bark, leaves and roots. According to reports, some had ground up the wood and eaten that too. He spied a group of children listlessly sitting on steps. The best off were rail-thin. Several lacked shirts and had the bloated, distended bellies of the truly starving.

“Has it really gotten that bad in the capital?” whispered Hawthorne.

Mune had glanced at the children before passing on to study the surroundings. “We’re being watched, sir.”

“Hmm,” said Hawthorne.

It had been nearly three years since he’d sent the reinforcement fleet to Mars. To ensure the fleet’s passage past the Doom Stars, he’d attacked from several farm habitats orbiting Earth. Those habitats had helped feed the planet’s billions—no longer. Because of the attack, the Highborn had retaliated, destroying some habitats and conquering the others. It had been a bitter decision, but Hawthorne had ordered Space Command to begin targeting enemy-controlled habitats. Merculite missiles and proton beams—

Few habitats in Earth orbit existed as farms now. Most were drifting hulks. A few of them had degraded orbits, and might have fallen like meteors onto the planet. Proton beams had sliced them into manageable chunks. The atmosphere had burned ninety-eight percent of the chunks. The last two percent had hit the surface, most of those plunking into the oceans. A tiny percentage had struck land, doing damage, but nothing to affect the outcome of the war.

“There, sir,” said Mune.

Hawthorne stopped, and looked where the captain pointed. Three scarecrow-thin men walked toward them. They wore threadbare shirts and worn shoes.

“I don’t see any others,” said Mune. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Is this level fully populated?” asked Hawthorne.

“The block-leader reports said yes.”

“Could those reports have been fabricated?”

Captain Mune glanced at him.

Hawthorne gripped his belt with both hands and watched the approaching men. The loss of the habitats had hit food production hard, as had lost landmasses. There was growing starvation throughout the Earth. That it occurred here in the lower levels of New Baghdad, the very capital—what must it be like in other cities?

“Sir,” Mune said.

Hawthorne saw them, another group of men. This group was ten strong. Like the first three men, the second group headed toward them.

“I’ve read reports of cannibalism,” said Mune.

“No,” Hawthorne said, feeling ill. “It couldn’t have gotten that bad.” How could he have remained so ignorant of the situation? Were his people shielding him?

“The riots several days ago, sir—” Mune ripped the gyroc from under his tunic. Then he jumped at Hawthorne, grabbing the Supreme Commander’s shoulder. He jerked hard, almost dislocating the bone from the socket.

Hawthorne grunted as pain blossomed in his shoulder. He went down, and he heard the crack of a fired rifle. Then he heard the whine as a slug passed near and a ricochet as the bullet spanged off pavement.