Read Doom Star: Book 05 - Planet Wrecker for Free Online Page B

are familiar not only with Mars, but also with Earth and the Highborn. I cannot conceive of a better spokesman than you.”
    “Eh?” said Marten.
    “There is a derelict meteor-ship floating in orbit around Callisto. I have already sent repair boats full of technicians and mechanics to it. I cannot afford at this time to diminish our defenses. The cyborgs could even now be in the void with another invasion force. Yet you are right in saying that to win, we must attack. And we must attack in conjunction with everyone else. You, Marten Kluge, will head to Inner Planets as the Jovian spokesman. You will go with a major warship and a full complement of space marines.”
    “I’ll be in charge of the space marines?”
    “Are you not listening?” asked Tan. “You will be the Force-Leader of the meteor-ship. Put whoever you desire in charge of the soldiers.”
    Marten blinked at Tan. His own warship, not just a shuttle? Then it hit him. He’d be returning to Social Unity, returning to the Highborn. He sat back and wished he were sitting in a chair, not on this lousy cushion.
    “Naturally,” said Tan, “I shall begin negotiations through laser-communications, and I shall retain full authority over anything concerning Jupiter.”
    That brought Marten up short. “Who will crew the ship?”
    “I shall amalgamate the decimated units who stormed Athena Station,” said Tan. “You will therefore possess veteran soldiers.”
    “Who will crew the warship?”
    “There are some highly decorated veterans—”
    “Their moon of origin?” asked Marten.
    “Why does that matter?”
    “From Ganymede?” asked Marten.
    “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Tan. “Does that concern you?”
    Marten could have told her that he clearly saw what she was doing: getting rid of the non-Callisto space marines and warship crews. At least, she would be getting rid of the most independent-minded ones. In her terms, she would likely think she was getting rid of the worst ones. Yet he’d already told her that he wouldn’t interfere with her political maneuverings.
    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.

-8-

    “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