THE ARGUS PROJECT
When it exploded, this "star" shone many times brighter... and became an expanding bubble of orange-red gas, resembling a glowing ring from a distance.
Thousands of colonists beheld the horrible spectacle. One of them was Caver Pi, in the underground node 2-3-3, the location of the planetary defense council below Ganymede's north pole.
A member of the defense council looked to him, with weary eyes that seemed to all but plead out loud: We must surrender. There is no hope.
But without a moment's hesitation, Caver Pi cried out to the council: "They do this! This, and Io! How can surrender now? Kansler kill us all anyway! Is not conquest, but annihilation! I say annihilate him!"
Cries of support, angry and desperate, rose from the council members and those of their relatives who were present. But Caver Pi's wife stood nearby, with their infant in her lap, and she stared at her husband with reproachful eyes.
Her lips moved, and formed the word "No!" Caver Pi put a stubby hand across his face; the sight of their child, against the ominous backdrop of a whole asteroid exploding on the screens around them, pushed his mind perilously close to breakdown. His brain felt about to explode too...
Caver Pi left the council and gathered a dozen of his clan members for debate. They went into loud disagreement; most of the women argued for negotiations with the Terrans; the men were evenly split between stronger counter-attacks and surrender.
There were no self-described heroes and patriots among them; they merely wanted to survive. The Ganymedean lifestyle offered little space for glory and posturing.
After a time, Caver Pi said to them all: "I listen. To all. Our lives at stake, yes. Yes! But what choices? What peace? What slavery? Kansler can do anything to us. Inner Planets don't care. He must be our target! Or we not safe, ever!"
"You hate Kansler personally," an elderly clan member said to him. "Cave. Your brother Boulder, the traitor. Blurs your judgment. Still I say we can get peace. Trade is key. Blockade, not war."
"So starve," Caver said contemptuously. "Starve children for peace. I give them two months."
His wife and child began to cry; one quietly, the other loudly. Impulsively, Caver put his arms around them both, and practically shoved them out of the council chamber with him.
Strata and Caver Pi looked at each other, very close. Their mutual understanding sometimes resembled telepathy, a bond that transcended language. Their child stopped crying, and studied the father's serious face with wide, curious eyes. Caver kissed the infant's forehead.
"Strata, I will share secret. Agents on Jupiter tell of Argus-A. A monster who bombs bases. He visits the gas-mines soon. If he dies, we can win war. Get peace, but on our terms. If Argus lives... no safe peace. I go?"
"Yes. Go to Jupiter. If you die... what I tell child?"
"That I love you more than my life. Both. Of you."
They embraced each other, and he walked off into an adjacent tunnel. When Strata returned to the council chamber shortly thereafter, the other relatives could see that she had recently been crying.
They asked where Caver Pi had gone without telling them... and she merely shook her head, and hugged her infant child tighter against her body.
***
Cheers broke out among the Fleet crew, soared, then died down, when Argus came into the recreational section.
To him, it was a slow-motion performance - much too slow to excite him. He looked up at the large screens, where three-dimensional films showed what resembled his personal ship, flying around Elara.
"ARGUS SMASHES THE ENEMY OUTPOST ELARA!" declared the all-too-loud, near-hysterical host in the official news show, shouting as if the audience of the Inner Planets couldn't understand normal speaking volume. "The Fleet's heroic fighter-bomber pilot, Argus-A, today struck another decisive blow for Mother Earth in the Fleet's campaign against Jovian interplanetary terrorism. The Earth Council has awarded Argus-A the..."
Almost without effort, Argus could spot where the combat footage had been doctored. The Marketing department of the Fleet had made the asteroid appear bigger, better armed, the crew more aggressive... all this a mere nine hours after the actual attack.
And the intercepted communications between Jovians, sounding in the background among fabricated laser-"zaps" and explosions, were also fake: a simplistic caricature of Jovian speech, compared to what Argus snapped up from real radio traffic during flight.
"Terrans revenge our sabotage on Luna! Stop Argus! Shoot Terran cyborg!"
"Target too fast! He'll hit the reactor! Evacuate!"
"Die Terrans!"
"Too late! Aaaargh!"
Argus tried to block out the broadcast sounds mentally, as they made him feel ill.
Maybe it was the delayed stress and shock from the mission he had just completed - maybe it was just the pent-up rage at being betrayed and manipulated - but suddenly he doubled over and his midsection went into spasms. He stuck out his plastic tongue and tried to retch.
"Aak - aaak -"
The crewmembers looked at him and flinched, as if he was a bomb about to explode. And for a moment Argus thought he would - that the convulsions in what used to be his stomach could crush his inner workings and short-circuit him.
But it was just a fantasy: Boulder Pi had designed the cyborg too well to allow him to "abdomenize" himself to death.
The nausea receded; Argus didn't feel cold and sweaty like Gus Thorsen had used to do when throwing up after a tough match. Or maybe a little, in his imagination.
He regarded the silent crew with smoldering, hateful eyes, opened his mouth to speak - then he seemed to change his mind, turned about and stormed out of the recreation section.
***
Islington, watching the surveillance feed, expressed his growing concern.
"This isn't good for morale, Kansler... neither here, nor to the home opinion. When the crew comes home, they'll talk. And Argus... how can we be certain of his..." He swallowed.
"Stability? Stamina? Loyalty?" the Kansler filled in. "I have complete faith in his patriotism and devotion to Mother Earth. This little show is just... uh... post-combat stress."
The deputy's face went blank, then perplexed, before he grasped what was going on.
"Oh... I completely forgot, Kansler." He made a little laugh. "It was just such a long time ago since I saw this kind of thing..."
"Right," the Kansler, laughing out loud, "the drugs don't work on cyborgs! Argus is our only soldier who can feel post-combat stress!"
The deputy turned serious: "I'd better inform Boulder Pi before he arrives here, Kansler. He ought to be able to remedy these stress symptoms."
"Leave Boulder to me," the Kansler snapped in a harder tone. "From now on only I speak to him. Now leave me, I need to think."
And while Islington moved toward the exit, skillfully making himself invisible, the Kansler felt cold sweat emerge all over his skin.
What if his perfect weapon broke down mentally, before his campaign was complete?
He was so used to the Fleet drugging its personnel into complacency, he had virtually forgotten to keep check on the mental health of Argus-A. Some kind of appeasement had to be made.
On his own, the Kansler changed his previous plans, and decided to actually approve the visit to Jupiter's gas miners that Argus had requested. He felt fairly confident that the miners would not risk one of their own thirty expensive mining stations to assassinate Argus... and if they did and succeeded, at this stage the Kansler's plan could yet proceed with only minor difficulty, in fact just as well.
Argus had done well in the war, well enough to become disposable to the Kansler - and to become a martyr hero, just what his plans needed.
He went to bed.
But allowing the visit invited danger, one added worry to keep him sleepless through the ship's ensuing night-period... alone with the personal terrors that his grand scheme only seemed to make worse.
For he could never confess to anyone in the world, not even his deputy, why he was working so hard to win the war, why he feared its failure so much... and why, when he tried to sleep without the drugs, that fear kept him awake.
Somewhere, in the complex clockwork of events he had spent thirty years putting into place, was a cog that might fail when he looked the other way. The Kansler was not yet arrogant enough to think himself infallible or invulnerable to random events.
He thrashed and turned in his bed, racked his mind, but could not figure out what he had overlooked...
And he was correct: the blind spot in his intellect made him unaware of one entire half of humanity - and what it was capable of.
In the Kansler's mental universe, all women were cattle.
22: On The Home Front
THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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