Doom Star: Book 02 - Bio-Weapon (25 page)

The General grimaced. “I take your point.”

“Do you?”

“I can’t do without Captain Mune now.”

“No, dear, you’re missing the point. They’re loyal to you, to you personally. They know they’re hated. And they know you’re the one who saved them from the tribunal. They’re no longer Social Unitarians in thought, if they ever were to begin with.”

The General considered that.

After the late Lord Director’s death, and when Madam Blanche-Aster took over, there had been a tribunal. Someone had to take the official blame for the billion deaths. The bionic guards at the Command Center that day had seemed like the perfect choice. Hawthorne had lobbied hard otherwise, and for good reason.

Before Lord Director Enkov had died, Captain Mune had taken the General to the Director’s HQ. There the captain had shot and killed the Lord Director, because during the trip Hawthorne had convinced him that the Lord Director would sacrifice him, the captain, in order to shift the blame of the stupid no-nuke launch order. Hawthorne had had been certain that he too would be scapegoated, which was why he’d talked so persuasively that day.

When the members of the tribunal had wished to question the bionic security teams, Hawthorne had taken them under his protection. Right after May 10, when he’d quelled the planet-wide riots, his authority had been vast. He’d simply vetoed the tribunal request. He didn’t want to lose his special forces to a witch-hunt, and of course, he’d wanted his role in the…
removal
of the late Lord Director kept quiet. Later he’d come to incorporate the bionic warriors into his own security arrangements.

“I don’t intend to sacrifice them, dear,” said the General. “I didn’t do so then and I won’t now.”

“I’m not suggesting you sacrifice them.”

“But you called them un-SU.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Don’t you realize that’s tantamount to signing their death warrants?”

“James, I’m telling you that here is the answer. You need loyal troops, isn’t that right? Everyone else thinks like good, card-carrying Social Unitarians. Even your elite troops do. They’re all terrified of PHC.”

General Hawthorne saw her point, and then he saw deeper. A chill swept through him. Did he really have the nerve? For several seconds he stood frozen, trying to consider the angles. He couldn’t. This had to be a gut thing. A tight grin forced its way to his lips.
Do it
, a deep part in him whispered.
Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.

He strode to the desk. His wife moved aside so he could sit down. He picked up the cybertank report, reading it thoroughly. Finally, he slapped the report onto the desk and pressed his intercom button. “Get me Colonel Manteuffel. And tell him to bring the cybertank codes. All of them! What? No. Don’t argue. Just do what I order.”

“What are thinking, dear?”

“Um,” he said, picking up another report, one that gave the positions of the army units nearest the capital.

“James,” she said, touching his shoulder.

He glanced up.

“Are you…” Fear had drained the color from her cheeks.

“They struck first, Martha.”

“Maybe that’s what Yezhov is planning for. An overreaction on your part.”

The General smiled coldly. “Maybe. But I doubt he expects a
coup d’etat
from me.” A harsh laugh slipped out. He rose, and turned as the door swished open. Captain Mune, with his new hand bandaged, entered and saluted.

“Excellent timing, Captain. Come with me.”

The tube-train whisked toward New Baghdad at 400 kilometers an hour. It rode a cushion of polarized magnetism, a mechanical worm hidden from the HB space-laser stations. Seven cars were linked together, holding less than a battalion.

Sitting together, General James Hawthorne conferred with Colonel Manteuffel, the younger brother of slain Commodore Tivoli. The Colonel was an inch over five feet, a terrier of a man with a keen, alert bearing and a shiny bald head. He wore the black uniform of a tanker, and was the General’s expert on cybertanks. On his lap lay a thin computerized briefcase full of CT codes.

The cybertanks were the latest in the dehumanization of war. Human brain tissue from criminals who had been liquidated for the good of the state or purchased from Callistoian brain thieves had been carefully teased from the main brain mass. All former personality was carefully scrubbed from the tissue, embedded in special cryo-sheets, and surrounded by programming gel. Several kilos of this processed brain tissue could replace tons of specialized control and volitional systems. As important, military virtues encoded into these biocomps gave them a human-like cunning and bloodthirstiness. Naturally, emergency override codes had been built into such a deadly war-machine. The entirety of Social Unity cybertank codes lay in the briefcase propped on Colonel Manteuffel’s knees.

Ten other normals surrounded the General, the only volunteers from Commodore Tivoli’s MI (Military Intelligence) section. Each had lost a friend or relative to PHC in the last few months of undercover war. They worked out schedules of arrival and wrote out movement orders for the General’s troops nearest New Baghdad. The troop commanders were given no explanations for the movement orders. To them it would appear all very innocent.

As Hawthorne had said, “The most important thing is that they move. It will send the PHC assessors into their think tanks to figure out what it all means.”

“And what does it mean?” asked a MI operative.

“Misdirection and time,” said Hawthorne, and then on that subject he would say no more.

The rest of the seven train-cars contained bionic men, big, bulky warriors with bionic body-parts and commando-style weapons and training.

Less than a thousand men to take over the rule of forty billion, mused Hawthorne. But hopefully it was the right thousand, at the right place and at the right time. Otherwise… Maybe they’d stuff a mini-bomb into his cortex as they’d done to Ulrich, or maybe they’d just line him up against a wall to be shot.

“One hour to New Baghdad,” said a MI operative.

Hawthorne rose, with his military cap set at a rakish angle. He grinned, exuding confidence. To add to the pose he clutched his belt with both hands. “Boldness,” he said, using a parade ground voice. “Absolute assurance of victory, that’s what I expect from each of you.” And he continued to bolster them as the tube-train zoomed toward his destiny or destruction.

The very audacity of the raid aided General Hawthorne. And he had also predicated it upon the fact that none of the megalopolises, the super-cities, could remain self-contained for any appreciable amount of time. New Baghdad wasn’t any different. The city’s population of over 200 million needed billions of different items, the majority of which arrived via tube-train. Clothing, food and water made up the bulk of the needs, and manufactured goods. Tube-trains thus arrived around the clock and from many varying directions. PHC had taken control by manning critical rail posts and switchyards with armored shock squads. General Hawthorne’s answer had become routine by the time they reached the last checkpoint.

The tube-trained stopped because cannons trained on the line would, at PHC orders, have destroyed it. The front train doors slid open and a five-man squad in red plastic body-armor stormed aboard. They bore carbines or lasers. Usually a sneering, arrogant PHC major followed, a man or woman used to obedience and seeing others cringe in fear. Waiting bionic men plucked the weapons from the surprised shock squad members and then threw them to the floor. The bionic strength always won against human muscles. Another bionic man slapped the major’s communicator from his hand and put a vibroblade under his chin. At a nod from the MI operative who did the talking, the bionic soldier flicked the blade. Its awful hum and vibrating power so very near the major’s throat had a debilitating effect on the previous arrogance.

A door swished on the last tube-car and out fanned a ten-man bionic commando team. As on so many of these posts along the way, General Hawthorne received the all-clear signal minutes later.

Five bionic men stayed behind at the post or switchyard, with the subdued PHC major to answer any calls from higher headquarters. Whenever the PHC major spoke by comlink or holo-transmission, an ugly hand cannon was aimed between his eyes. So far, the ploy had proven effective. Thus for the last two hundred kilometers, ten of these squads, fifty bionic warriors in all, kept the link to New Baghdad open for Hawthorne to his nearest Army Command Post.

“Let’s hope the next part is as easy,” Colonel Manteuffel said.

“You know it won’t be,” Hawthorne said.

“She won’t budge,” Director Gannel said. He hunched over a communicator in his inner sanctum. Outside his door waited his Venusian security team, people who had been with him since his thorium mine days.

“Tell her the Highborn plan another asteroid attack,” answered Yezhov, Chief of PHC. “That they’re targeting New Baghdad.”

“I did,” said Gannel. “She doesn’t believe it. She asks why I don’t flee then.”

“Maybe you should.”

Gannel laughed. “Oh, no, Yezhov. We’re partners, but no more than that. I’m not putting myself in your custody.”

“A little more faith on your part would greatly oil our plans, Director.”

“So would divine power. But I don’t see any.”

“Then we’ll have to squeeze her,” said Yezhov.

“Dangerous.”

“Yes, at least until the new conditioning is implemented.”

“True, true,” said Gannel. “But…”

“What troubles you, Director?”

“Do you trust the cybertanks?”

“Of course I don’t
trust
them.”

“You know what I mean,” said Gannel. “It’s a dangerous expedient using them.”

“Oh, but the mobs fear them so. Frankenstein monsters, they say. Once you’re in charge you must order the Military to turn over all the cybertanks to PHC.”

“Certainly,” said Gannel, who had no intention of doing so. He already feared Yezhov more than any man. Only his lust for the chairmanship kept him working with such a devious schemer.

“Yes, it’s time to squeeze Blanche-Aster,” said Yezhov. “We have to finish this before the mobs become used to running amok. Call her in… an hour.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we may be wishing that the Highborn really do drop an asteroid.”

After inexplicably failing to gain control of a selected cybertank, Colonel Manteuffel tucked the compucase under his arm and sprinted down the street as if the devil himself chased him. The small officer dove behind an overturned car. Behind him, rounding the heavy building’s corner where he’d just been, clanked the 100-ton cybertank he’d failed to control. Bricks and twisted girders exploded out of the building’s corner. The edge of the metal monster simply shouldered through, heavy treads crunching over the debris. The 100-ton cybertank then wheeled in its uniquely ponderous way toward Manteuffel

Manteuffel crawled madly, tearing and scuffing his black tanker’s uniform.

Two bionic men lunged from behind another building. They grabbed the Colonel by the arms and pulled him behind their corner. At the same instant, one of the cybertank’s six warfare pods aimed its cannon. A deafening roar issued. The overturned car exploded. Explosive pellets ricocheted off the street, as two antipersonnel pods chugged a thousand rounds.

The bionic men didn’t hesitate. They ran. One of them threw the small Manteuffel unceremoniously over his shoulder. Gears and bionic parts whined as they pumped their legs like pistons. Manteuffel clenched his teeth. The jar of the bionic man’s shoulder thrust against his gut threatened to tear Manteuffel’s stomach muscles loose. Thankfully, however, the heavy, clanking sound of the cybertank receded.  They fled several blocks, zigzagging through the city, until they reached where General Hawthorne waited with the bulk of the commandos.

Dumped onto his feet, Colonel Manteuffel leaned against a nearby wall. His pale face winced horribly. When he straightened, it felt as if a knife slashed through his gut. A MI operative thrust something in his face. Oh. Manteuffel nodded, and with a trembling hand, he accepted a bottle of medication.

“Well?” asked Hawthorne. “What happened?”

They stood in a brick-laid plaza, open-air shops surrounding them. Overhead the level’s sunlamps shone at ‘daytime’ brightness.

Manteuffel sipped the soothing liquid.

“If you could spare us a moment, Colonel.”

“It’s like we thought,” Manteuffel said between gasps. “The cybertanks have been tampered with.”

“Yes,” said Hawthorne, “I can see that. But tampered how? You told me before that if anyone tried to breach their brain-case that it would detonate.”

Manteuffel grimaced. “Just like the Air Marshal.”

“Now isn’t the time to get sentimental, Colonel.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Hawthorne waved it aside. He paced as his bionic commandos waited in their teams. They were on the ninth level, very near the Directorate Building and Madam Blanche-Aster’s residence. Unfortunately, cybertanks kept anyone from approaching too closely.