“So their as ready as possible to fight, eh Chambers?” Jeff said.


    “Yes and by the Chairman’s order they all have been taught English-Asian as a command language to obey you and to communicate between units also.  Very well then if your troops are aboard, I send you with the Spartan wish (come back with your shield or on it).  Your army has adopted the Spartan wish as its motto.  Since they’ll all be in stasis during transport, use the time to give them your battle plan.”  At his last remark Chambers fished out a small black dice with a grill on one side, “It’s a Hypno-microphone and transmitter, you talk into it, they hear your words in their subconscious.”


    “Works even in stasis?” Jeff asked.


    “Yes, the subconscious is always working commander.” Chambers added.


    “Were the animals the suggestion ADAM made before we left Walter?” Russell asked.


    “Why yes, Russ, don’t you approve?  They have several advantages you know.  First the heavy types rhino, elephant, and buffalo can split up the Deneb slaves frontline and scatter them so the net squads can get at them.  If your beams work as well as before, the rest will enter the Sphere and tear into anything they meet.  This should cause enough havoc for ADAM and his special unit to enter and kill the ships brain, without that the Panuits and their masters are stranded and immobile.  The Shapers have never lost a war before against fellow hominids, but the insect race on Fomalhaut stopped them, so it is possible.  ADAM stressed that the problem of humanoids fighting altered humanoids was mercy, trying to be merciful to the Shapers genetic zoo has always proved very deadly.”  ADAM floated toward Russell’s Avenger, followed by twenty very tall, broad shouldered men in long cloaks with hoods drawn over their faces.  Russell half expected what ADAM’s troops looked like but said nothing of it.  He and Jeff shook hands with Walt Chambers and returned to their ships.  Each now wore one of the hypno-mics on the right lapel of his uniform.


    ADAM and his giant escorts entered the Avenger and marched down the corridor to the last storage bay and entered quickly.  As the door closed behind them ships lights changed from white to green.  “Within minutes,” ADAM said to them, “you will be in stasis, rest well and dream of your victory.”  As ADAM exited the room the cowled figures all chanted together (for victory, for Odin).  The black disc attached near ADAM’s speaking diaphragm was shiny and black with a grill one side.  ADAM floated down the corridor toward the command room almost half a mile away, looking at Russell Carlin’s design Adam was even more sure he had found the right allies to defeat the Shapers.  This ship was proof they could think and plan under pressure well, remarkably well.  Russell’s Avenger was basically a zeppelin shape without tail fins or gondola.  Nothing projected from the hull anywhere.  In its camouflage mode a hologram of the stars on the opposite side of Avenger was projected onto the facing hull.  Only at the two ends of the one and a half mile long craft could a star seem the disappear and then reappear.  Three quarters of a mile in diameter at its thickest point, with a smooth rounded nose and a tapered, conical tail.  Avenger looked like a long green teardrop peppered with stars.  The two ships approached Mars from one hundred eighty degrees opposite the plain of Elysium and began a slow advance around the planet one north bound and one south.  They stopped and landed just twenty miles short of the Sphere’s crater and off loaded their troops and supplies.  ADAM and his ‘mystery men’ remained on Russell’s ship.  Jeff Calan stationed Defender ten miles above the Sphere in geo-synchronous orbit.  Avenger skirted the crater and laid seismic sensors in a circle all around the craters outer edges.  If the Sphere started moving anything the humans were going to know in time to do something about it.  On the morning of the twenty ninth day of its landing on Mars the Sphere opened six portals and the horrors of Kla Na Suleg emerged, the once proud and peaceful Denebians were indeed shaped by their masters, surgery and growth vats.  The things that were exiting the Sphere looked like human dolls built to imitate animals and loving the part.  There were man-snakes, man-wolves, man-cats, man-bears, man-lions and among them Jeff saw a sight he wished to forget but knew he never would, a head and thorax rested on eight burly human arms with eight eyes on its head looking forward, upwards, and sideways, a man-spider.  Slowly from one port a large round ball of flesh emerged rolling on its stomach and two stubby diminutive arms.  This golem had one eye and a mouth with no nose or external ears.  From another portal walked a score of huge Denebians, giants all of eight feet tall.  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.