With frantic haste, Marten grabbed the rifle. The Highborn was turning at bay. He couldn’t let the super-soldier kill any more of his marines. Marten’s torso bounced off the bulkhead, tossing him up sideways even as his boots remained magnetized to the wall. He sighted and fired. Two shells ignited in flight, zooming toward the core-hatch.
The beam quit as a gyroc shell flew through the hatch. The second exploded against a side of the hatch, gouging metal.
Marten shoved off the wall as he turned off his boots. He flew across the chamber, knowing he had to keep moving. Titus reappeared, his beam burning where Marten had been. Then the beam was tracking him, and it struck Marten’s stomach-plate. If the pulse-laser had started on him for these few seconds, it would have burned through the armor. Fortunately, Titus ducked behind the hatch again.
On his HUD, Marten saw the reason. Omi and Osadar set up the plasma cannon. A second later, a gout of orange, roiling plasma boiled in a mass toward the core-hatch. The plasma reached the hatch. Some of it vaporized against the sides, chewing through and melting it. Within the core chamber came an explosion.
Marten didn’t hesitate. This was the moment. He propelled himself toward the orange-glowing hatch. He moved through it with his rifle ready, careful to keep from touching the glowing hot metal.
In the chamber, Centurion Titus stood to the side of the hatch. The nine-foot Highborn raised his pulse-laser and might have tried to fire. The barrel had melted enough so it was inoperative. Marten and Titus must have realized this at the same instant. The Highborn released the laser and aimed his hand cannon, the one attached to his left arm. Marten snapped off a gyroc round—he was still sailing through the room.
The hand cannon fired a heavy slug, and it destroyed the gyroc rifle, shattering it into pieces. The gyroc shell—
The room and its occupant—the condition of both—finally penetrated Marten’s thoughts. Titus’s armor glowed hot from its nearness to the plasma blast. Through the faceplate, Titus appeared to be in agony. Beads of sweat rolled down a red and blistered face, and the eyes were wide and staring, showing Titus’s pain. The gyroc shell penetrated the heated armor, and the Highborn winced. His left shoulder—air expelled from the hole.
Automatically, it seemed, Titus slapped a patch to his armor, to the wrecked shoulder. Incredibly, the patch held. On the other arm, the hand cannon had jammed, likely also affected by the intense plasma-blast heat.
The slug that had destroyed Marten’s rifle had also slammed against him, pushing him off-course. He would have sailed into a glowing bulkhead or he might have sailed through it to the inner chamber. Because of the slug, Marten hit a different bulkhead.
At that moment, Titus jumped. His one arm was useless. He didn’t appear to have any effective weapons left. His body-armor must have been too hot, maybe even cooking him. But the Highborn was still very much alive.
Marten understood then. Centurion Titus didn’t leap at him. The Highborn sailed for the ruptured bulkhead. If Titus could reach the inner chamber, he could explode the core and kill everyone aboard the Mao Zedong.
Shifting, Marten gathered his legs under him and jumped at the Highborn. As he sailed through the chamber, Marten drew his vibroblade and clicked it on. The special alloy blade vibrated thousands of times per second, giving it greater cutting power.
Titus rotated, bringing his one good arm into play. Marten smashed against the giant, clicking on magnets. The armored, orange-glowing arm smashed against Marten’s helmet, and he heard something crack. In retaliation, the former shock trooper thrust the vibroblade. It vibrated harder, and it cut through the weakened Highborn armor, the blade shoving into Titus’s torso.
For a second, Marten and Titus stared faceplate-to-faceplate, eye-to-eye. Shock and pain roiled in Titus’s orbs. The giant moved his arm, maybe to make another blow. Marten twisted the vibroblade and he jiggled it.
Titus’s eyes bulged outward from the sockets. Blood seeped from his compressed lips. Then Centurion Titus whispered something as his lips moved. What he said was lost forever as the Highborn died, magnetically connected to Marten Kluge, his killer.
The next several hours proved horrifying. They found the SU crew. Some floated dead, still wearing vacc-suits. They had been shoved into closets, floating corpses. There were others in the shuttles: naked, shackled and many tortured and bruised. The Highborn had been getting ready to leave, about ninety of them. With the number of dead in the missile-ship, it appeared as if twenty-five Highborn per shuttle had originally flown to the warship.
“At least we put the missile-ship’s crew out of their misery,” Omi said later, speaking about the nuclear blast that had killed everyone in the shuttles.
Before they went outside to check the shuttles, however, they found something else. It was in the medical station—and it was devilish.
A naked Highborn lay strapped to an articulated frame. He wore a bulky helmet with many leads and lines sprouting from it, connected to a computer bank. Several dozen electrodes were taped to his discolored skin. As they watched, the electrodes zapped him, and he arched in agony as his muscles strained. When the electric flow stopped, stalks appeared from a medical unit. With a sharp, surgical implement on the end, the stalks flayed an area of skin. Another stalk with tiny claps peeled away the flesh. Disinfectants sprayed the wound. Then a mist of acid sprayed, and the groans from within the helmet were pitiful.
With an oath, Marten shot the machine until it died and then he began ripping electrodes from the Highborn. Omi unbuckled the helmet, tore it off and hurled it away. A wild-eyed Highborn strained to free himself. He gnashed his teeth as foam flecked at the corners of his mouth.
Shocked, Marten stared at the Highborn. He had a wide face, square chin and chiseled features, with the normal stark-white coloring. His hair had been shaved away, and he had two scars, one moving from his forehead into his hairline and the other along the left side of his face.
“Cassius?” Marten whispered.
The Highborn glared at him and spit in hatred, struggling more fiercely.
“No,” Marten said, recovering from his shock. “You’re not Cassius. You’re too young. You’re Felix, the Grand Admiral’s clone.”
The Highborn grew still as he glared at Marten. Slowly, some of the madness drained away from him.
“Do I know you?” the Highborn asked in a raw voice.
“I’m Marten Kluge. You once ordered me off a planet-wrecker.”
Felix winced as if struck. Then he grinded his teeth and snarled like a beast.
“They’ve driven him insane,” Omi whispered.
“Wrong,” Felix said. “They wanted information.”
“What kind of information?” Marten asked.
Felix laughed wildly.
“What are we going to do with him?” Omi asked.
The laughter turned sinister, maybe demented. “Does Titus think I’m that easily tricked?” Felix roared.
“Centurion Titus is dead,” Marten said.
“Prove it!”
“Get his body,” Marten told Xenophon.
The Jovian left in a hurry.
As they waited, Marten tore off the rest of the electrodes.
“Tell Titus it’s a mistake giving me this rest,” Felix said.
“I was tortured once by my own people,” Marten said. “I fought against them after that in the Free Earth Corps. I can understand your rage.”
Felix roared as he tried to wrestle himself free, making the frame creak at the strain. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill all of you once I’m out of here!”
“He is insane,” Omi whispered, floating away from the Highborn.