Guardsmen of Tomorrow (18 page)

And here I am, three hundred miles away
, came Pol’s thought, tinged with disgust.

Cass also picked up the thought that this had been the first time Pol had considered defying an order from Egan. Egan had two reasons for stationing Pol on a rock where be could observe the Martian fleet leaving the belt: one, to make sure it actually left, and, two, because Egan was not sure Pol could physically handle the stress of a constant one-G, since he had not kept up his conditioning over the years as had Cass. Pol had argued that he wouldn’t have to stay at the equator; he could remain farther out from center, where the pull was weaker, and gradually work his way into stronger gravity. Besides, be had already tracked the three Martian ships past his observation post with its instruments, en route back to Mars. But Egan had been adamant, responding by radio-even though he and the boys knew he could have accomplished the same thing simply by using Cass as a human transmitter-that acclimation to gravity would require more preliminary work for Pol, and that the Mars ships were still close enough to change course and loop around for a return trip.

“Why should they do that?” Cass asked. “They’ve got what they want-assurance of a supply of minerals. And they’ve done their part of the bargain.”

Egan, moving beside Cass in a motorized something he called a wheelchair, couldn’t answer that one. It was sim-ply that he didn’t trust Roderick. Neither did Cass, for that matter. He still remembered being told what happened to the
Gemini
, and he’d seen firsthand what happened to Bardo.

Pol had some vivid thoughts about having to stay on his isolated rock, but Cass prudently decided not to relay those to Egan. Instead, he made some comment, more to Pol than to Egan, about preferring an absence of gravity to being pinned down by it.

“You’ll probably end up enjoying it like everybody else,” Egan said. “After all, your bodies were shaped for Earth, not the belt…”

A mild reverberation shook the walkway beneath them. Others noticed it, too, and the surrounding hum of conversation died out. A distant, hollow boom sounded from somewhere in the “sky,” actually the hub of the worldlet.

Cass frowned. “Don’t tell me Roderick is simulating thunderstorms for us, too?”

“If you’d ever heard real thunder, you’d know better,” Egan said. “I don’t like this.

The hub controls access to and from this place. That’s where all the suits and jetpacks are.”

A second, closer explosion sent them sprawling. The silence around them turned to screams. Cass found himself on the ground, and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He glimpsed flames on the nearby horizon. He had seen fire once before, when a heating system in a shelter built into an asteroid had overheated. He and the other occupants of the shelter simply suited up, and opened all the air locks to hard vacuum which quickly extinguished it. But New Eden produced a continuous air supply, feeding the flames.

“Cass, get up!” said Egan, who lay beside his overturned chair. “You’ve got to salvage one of the suits and jetpacks. It’s your only chance.”

Cass was still half-stunned. “They may be burned up already…”

“You’ve got to try! Lead the way for the others. Don’t you see? All of us, in one place, for the first time in the history of the belt-
that
was Roderick’s plan!”

“But you can’t…”

“Never mind me. Go!” He shoved Cass away with one of his powerful hands. Cass found himself staggering, still unused to functioning in constant gravity. A third blast seemed to erupt under his feet, and he felt himself flung into the air.

The ringing was still in his ears an instant later, but all else around him was silent. The bright flames had given way to the darkness of a carved-out shelter within an asteroid. He and Pol regarded each other in amazement. And Cass realized, for the first time, that their link was able to convey more than mere thoughts between them.

Of course, the three Mars ships did come back. And so did others. Cass and Pol tracked each one as it took up its position in a different part of the belt.

The command ship made a slow pass through the area where New Eden had been constructed, its instruments making sure there was nothing left but debris. Its creators had only had to construct it to last for a single day; within an Earth-week, it would have become unstable and shaken itself to pieces, but any occupants would have had time to evacuate it before that happened. So it was made to self-destruct all at once, and take all its inhabitants with it.

All but one. Somehow, one of the belters had managed to get into a pressure suit and, through some freakish piece of luck, must have been blasted clear. The newcomers quickly zeroed in on the distress signal from his suit. Judging by its movement, its occupant was still alive. Colonel Noctis, Roderick’s handpicked commander of the occupation force, considered leaving the belter where be was until his air ran out. On reflection, he decided the man might be able to provide his officers with information about the belters’ operations, so he had the survivor brought aboard.

The Marsmen from the original three ships had pinpointed the equipment, supply caches, and working areas of the belters as best they could. Now they directed the occupation forces to pick up where the belters had left off, with Earth none the wiser-at least until the next supply ship showed up. But that was almost an Earth-year away.

Meanwhile, Noctis had two guards bring the surviving belter to his stateroom. The two Marsmen secured the man to an interrogation chair, complete with a polygraph attachment on one arm. The man floated about an inch above the seat, lacking the adhesive boots of his captors. He was secured only by the straps on his arms and around his middle.

Noctis stood over the lone belter, fixing him with the intimidating stare he’d practiced frequently in front of a mirror and used any number of times with other prisoners during Roderick’s unification war back on Mars. “If you’d prefer a quick death like that of your fellows, you will answer all my questions completely and without hesitation.”

The prisoner stared back for a moment, looked at the two guards on either side of his seat, the colonel’s aide who had just handed the officer what looked like a tube of some liquid that could be water or wine, and the polygraph operator who looked only at the styluses drawing their fine lines along a piece of paper. Then he returned his gaze to Noctis and nodded.

“Wise,” said Noctis, sucking delicately at the refreshment in the tube. “Were any of you able to transmit any information to Earth about what happened?”

The prisoner took a deep breath, then answered with a barely audible “No.” Noctis glanced at the polygraph man, who nodded.

“Good. That means they will know nothing so long as we keep transporting the rocks on schedule-until we’re ready to strike. Then the rocks will no longer be guided to Earth’s orbital factories, but against targets on Earth itself.”

“Yes, sir. Either they will become part of Roderick’s unification movement, or go the way of the dinosaurs,” the aide said.

Noctis nodded, then turned back to the prisoner. “Are there caches of oxygen, food, suits, and devices for moving the asteroids in places our Marsmen would not have seen, during their time out here?”

“The belt’s full of them,” murmured the man in the chair. Again, the operator nodded.

“You may have just bought yourself a reprieve, if you know where they are,” said Noctis. He turned to the aide. “We can use those things, particularly the explosive materials and those fusion rockets for moving the asteroids. Although, once we occupy the key enclaves of Earth, there won’t really be anyone left to fight us.”

“Or to provide ships for us to prey on, sir,” said the aide.

The prisoner turned toward the aide. “It’s your people manning the pirate ships?” he asked.

“Who did you think it was?” the aide replied. “Did you really believe that tale we’ve been floating about pirates operating from some artificial habitat?”

“I’ll ask the questions, belter,” Noctis said. “Did you belters transmit communications regularly between yourselves and Earth?” The prisoner nodded.

Noctis pursed his lips. “This may be another way you can prolong your life. We’ll need someone who can keep those communications flow-ing seamlessly, so Earth doesn’t suspect what’s coming. Not that anyone is likely to suspect anything, as closely guarded as this operation has been.”

“Only one security breach, in fact,” said the aide. “But at least Roderick’s daughter can’t tell anyone, being under house arrest, as it were.”

The prisoner looked up. “Valda wasn’t part of what you did?” he asked.

The colonel swung the back of his hand against the prisoner’s face, with a sharp crack. “I said I would ask the questions. You, on the other hand, will not demean the name of Roderick’s daughter by mentioning it. She’ll come to realize the brilliance of her father’s program, in time- the unification of the solar system, humankind under a single directive, developing the resources of our own planets and then reaching for the stars. Another question: are you aware of any other survivors besides yourself?”

And to the surprise of everyone else in the ship’s cabin, the prisoner smiled. “Yes.”

“How many?” Noctis demanded, after glancing at the polygraph operator for confirmation.

“Just one. He and I have already fitted a small asteroid with life support and fusion rockets to head it toward Mars in a higher-speed trajectory than you could conceive.

Asteroids can be moved at great speeds when the amount of available propellant is no object.”

“You will give us the location of that asteroid,” Noctis said.

“Sorry. No can do. It’s already well on its way.”

“Sir, we’ll have to transmit a warning…” the aide began.

“We’re not going to use it to impact your world,” the prisoner interrupted. “It’s merely transportation. From my studies of Mars, I understand you maintain a small installation to warn of approaching ships on your larger moon. We plan to replace your men on that moon, just as you’ve replaced ours out here. Its communications equipment should be more than sufficient to let Earth know what’s happened, and give the home world time to send a military force out here to reoccupy the belt. Then we’ll see what becomes of Roderick and the rest of you pirates, once the rest of the system knows about you and your crimes.”

“You may yet talk yourself into an early death,” Noctis warned.

“My brother once told Roderick of the mischief we could wreak on an occupation force here in the belt,” the prisoner continued. “But that’s nothing to what he and I can do on your home planet, once they send up replacements for us. You have no idea of the things we can get into and out of.”

Noctis leaned forward, his face inches from the captive’s. “Explain,” he ordered in a low voice.

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll demonstrate. After all, that was the reason I came back to the vicinity of New Eden, so I’d get picked up by you people and learn what I’ve learned.”

Noctis was beginning to look uneasy. “What’s your name, belter?”

“Gemini.” The word was followed immediately by a popping sound, like that of air rushing into a sudden void. The figure on the chair, his clothing, the straps that had been attached to him, vanished in an instant. A small, metallic object remained behind, on the seat above which the prisoner had floated.

The aide was the first to recover his voice, after the prisoner winked out of existence before all their eyes. “Say, that looks like one of the belter explosive devices we were talking about…”

No one in the occupation force was ever able to figure out what caused the destruction of their flagship and the loss of their commanding officer.

The moving light over Phobos took on the form of a human, in a pressure suit, out here where no human could possibly be…

THE END

by Nathan Archer

Nathan Archer took to writing professionally when his “steady” government job ceased to exist in post-Cold War budget cuts, and has now authored half a dozen licensed novels based on
Star Trek, Predator, Spider-Man
, and
Mars Attacks
, as well as scripting a
Star Trek
comic book for Wildstorm/DC. Although the money to be made from spin-offs is nice, he is trying to get away from playing with other people’s toys and is working on a novel about his own creation, Amelia Hand.

Anelia Hand didn’t notice the first obvious sign that something was wrong at the Busted Fin. The fact that the huge service doors were standing open somehow didn’t register; she was too concerned with getting inside, out of the blinding white Daedalus sunlight, and getting herself some decent beer and a look at the local talent.

Seven weeks alone aboard her ship with nothing to drink but water and condensed fruit juice had left her desperate.

Once she set foot inside, though, she immediately knew there was a problem.

“What’s that smell?” she demanded, before her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior. The usual odors of spilled beer and hot oil were overwhelmed by a stench she didn’t recognize.

Then she saw the vnorpt and stopped dead in her tracks, her hand dangling near the butt of the blaster on her thigh.

It was standing at the bar-or rather, towering over the bar, its crest stooped slightly to avoid scraping the ceiling- talking to Al, the bartender. Hand had never seen a vnorpt in the flesh before, but there was no mistaking it; no other sentient stood five meters tall and three meters wide.

And no other sentient smelled quite so awful either.

“He was a
pet
!” Al was shouting. “A companion!”

“Oops,” the vnorpt said, in a bone-shaking rumble. It belched. “Sorry.”

Hand looked around the room. Half a dozen humans cowered in the booths along one wall. The stools at the bar, and the other tables, were all deserted. A waitress stood cringing in one corner, staring at the vnorpt. She and Al were the only employees in sight, and the six in the booths, the vnorpt, and Hand herself the only customers.

There were at least six assorted freighters in port, a Patrol cruiser, and the starliner
Dreamship III
, as well as Hand’s own
Tristan Jones;
the Busted Fin should have been jammed with people, some of them as eager for human companionship as Hand was.