Vaughn Heppner - Bio-Weapon

“We’re hunting dogs, Omi, nothing more.”

The Korean ex-gang member shook his bullet-shaped head, clearly not liking that kind of talk.

Marten Kluge rolled back his sleeve to show the meaty part of his forearm and a bluish-purple barcode tattoo.

“Branded like cattle,” Marten said.

“In case you die,” Omi said. “So they know your blood-type when they resurrect you.”

“You believe that?” Marten was a lean, ropy-muscled man with bristly blond hair. He wore a brown jumpsuit, the shock-trooper training uniform. It had patch of a skull on his right shoulder and another on his left pectoral pocket.

Omi wore a similar shock-trooper jumpsuit. Both uniforms showed sweat stains and both men had circles under their eyes. Their grueling training surpassed anything they’d ever known, and they’d known plenty of bad.

“They also use the barcode to track you,” Omi said. “We’re little blips in the station computer.”

Marten’s expression didn’t change as they strode down an empty corridor, a utilitarian steel hall with emergency float rails on the sides. This was sleep-time, but Marten had convinced Omi to slip from the barracks so he could show him something.

“Watch,” Marten said. He unlatched a secret wall panel and withdrew a recorder.

Omi frowned before leaning near. The recorder was small, square and compact, voice activated. It was something HB officers used when watching their drills.

“Is it stolen?”

A wild light flashed in Marten’s eyes. Then it was gone, giving him the sleepy obedient look most of them wore around the Highborn. “Admitting a theft gets you five in the pain booth.”

Omi glanced about the deserted corridor.

“It’s clean,” Marten said. “No listening devices.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I searched until I found them.”

Omi lifted a single eyebrow.

“I borrowed a bug and set it in a different corridor, one the HBs use. Then I piped it here.” Marten tapped the recorder.

“Dangerous.”

A hard smile was Marten’s only reply.

“You might as well play it,” Omi said.

Marten set the recorder on the steel floor. Then he sat cross-legged and looked up. Omi raised an eyebrow, a trademark gesture he’d perfected in the slums. Finally, he shrugged and sat on the other side of the recorder.

Marten reached out. Click .

There wasn’t anything at first. Omi leaned closer, so did Marten.

“I thought—”

“Shhh,” Marten said. He glanced at the recorder as the sounds started.

There were footfalls in a corridor, someone wearing boots.

“It’s hard to hear at first,” Marten said, an edge to his voice.

Omi closed his eyes. The sounds of boots striking metal grew louder. He imagined huge Highborn. They always radiated a weird vitality and had eyes like pit bulls about to pounce. Their skin was pearl-white, their lips razor thin, almost nonexistent. Any Highborn could take out a five-man maniple. An HB, he was…Omi didn’t hate their superiority the way Marten did, but he couldn’t say he liked it either.

A hard voice, authoritative, full of vigor, spoke. But the garbled words were still too far from the hidden mike.

“I can’t hear him,” Omi said.

“Shhh,” Marten said, scowling.

Then out of the recorder: “…can’t agree, Praetor.”

“The Praetor?” Omi asked, fear twisting his belly.

“Listen!” Marten said. “It’s him and Training Master Lycon.”

LYCON: Yes, gelding has its virtues. It would make them docile, tractable and more prone to obedience. But what about their fighting spirit?

PRAETOR: Of premen?

LYCON: Not just premen, but trained shock troopers.

PRAETOR: There’s no difference. Their sex drive compels them to wild, unpredictable behavior. In space, we must know exactly how they will react. This thing called fighting spirit… I’ve never really seen premen with it. Let us rely on fierce hate conditioning, combat drugs and hypnotic commands.

LYCON: They are premen and they are inferior to us. But they are still capable of fighting spirit. The shock troops have been trained to a fine pitch. Why ruin it with gelding?

The voices in the recorder had grown stronger. Now they reached apogee and grew fainter again, their footfalls ringing in the background.

PRAETOR: Perhaps as you say, well-trained, some of them even simulate an apparent viciousness.

LYCON: All heel to my command, I assure you.

PRAETOR: Yes, you are to be commended on your work, Training Master. It’s just that…”

Both Marten and Omi leaned over the recorder listening, the tops of their heads almost touching. The words and even the footfalls faded into nothing.

The two shock troopers straightened, Marten taking the recorder and snapping it off.

“Gelding?” asked Omi.

Marten nodded sharply, and said, “Cutting off our balls.”

“They…They can’t be serious.”

Marten snorted. Then he walked to the secret wall panel and sealed the recorder in it.

“The Praetor was talking to Lycon, our Training Master?” Omi asked.

“Yes,” Marten said.

Omi blinked several times. “You’re talking castrated. Would they use a pair of scissors?” Omi shook his head. “The Highborn have done a lot dirty tricks to use, but cutting off our jewels like a neutered dog, that’s too much.”

“What if I said we could leave here?” Marten asked.

“We’re stranded in the Sun Works Factory. We’re orbiting Mercury.”

Marten gestured farther down the corridor.

“Forbidden territory,” Omi said. “Yeah. Show me.”

Both Marten and Omi found themselves aboard the Mercury Sun Works Factory through a complicated set of circumstances.

On 10 May 2350, the Genghis Khan and the Julius Caesar had entered the edge of Earth’s stratosphere. The two Doom Stars had annihilated the vast Social Unity sea and air armadas that had gone into action to help the beleaguered Japanese. Social Unity had sent up half of Earth’s space interceptors and launched swarms of merculite missiles against the Doom Stars. Then they’d fired the newly developed proton beams, a factor more deadly than the old military lasers. It had taken five HB asteroids plunging earthward to take out the five SU beam installations.

Unfortunately, powering the energy-hungry proton beams had taken the full output of five major cities’ deep-core mines. Such mines tapped the thermal power of the planet’s core.

To house Earth’s 40 billion citizens took cities that burrowed kilometers downward. Like bees, humanity survived in vast, underground hives. The asteroids had destroyed Greater Hong Kong, Manila, Beijing, Taipei and Vladivostok, and had thus slain a billion unfortunates.

Even so, Social Unity’s Military Arm came within a hair’s breath of destroying the Genghis Khan . As the Doom Stars were the bedrock of Highborn power, the Genghis Khan needed repairing. In the Solar System, only one place had the capacity to do so, the naval yards where they had been built: the Mercury Sun Works Factory.

The losses of Genghis Khan Personnel had sharply brought home to the Highborn their greatest weakness. They were only a couple million versus billons of Homo sapiens. So Highborn Command had pondered the idea of putting a complement of shock troopers aboard each ship. To the Highborn, the shock troopers were premen—Homo sapiens. The initial shock trooper test-run took place at the Sun Works Factory. The Highborn had combed the FEC divisions used in the Japan Campaign. FEC meant Free Earth Corps, and it was filled with humans the Highborn had convinced to fight for them instead of fighting for Social Unity. Marten and Omi had been in Japan because the Highborn had captured them in Sydney, Australian Sector and each had “volunteered” for military duty. Both had won decorations for bravery, the reason the Highborn had chosen them as shock troopers.