Battle Pod (Doom Star Book 3), page 29
“A trick, Grand Admiral?” asked Brutus.
Sometimes Cassius wondered how Brutus had ever made it to Third. It clearly wasn’t for cleverness.
“An elementary trick,” Cassius said. “Behind the field await their ships, ready to attack once we burn through.”
“Have you received another burst of information from the Thutmosis III?” Admiral Brutus asked with a concentrated frown.
“If you’ll remember, the Praetor sent us a lightguide-message saying the premen were wise enough to form an aerosol-gel cloud, blocking his view. No, gentlemen, my knowledge comes from analyzing premen tactics and personalities. Their hope now will rest on tonnage. That indicates a mass attack.”
“We’ll slaughter them,” Admiral Brutus predicted.
“Undoubtedly true,” Grand Admiral Cassius said. “But we must be ready for the true surprise. It must come now or it will never help them.”
“What surprise?” Admiral Brutus asked.
“An astute question,” Cassius said dryly. “Make sure you report any unusual activities. Happy hunting, gentlemen. Grand Admiral Cassius out.”
The two faces wavered for a moment and then folded in on themselves and disappeared, leaving the Mars holographic image hanging by itself.
The Grand Admiral leaned back in his chair, studying the holographic globe. Then he uttered a low-toned command. “Begin emergency engine sequences,” he said.
Several Highborn glanced down at him from their higher levels.
Cassius smiled grimly. “In the next few hours, we’re going to need all the energy we can lay our hands on. We must wipe the Mars System clean of all enemy vessels. This is the hour when Social Unity dies.”
Highborn officers turned back to their boards as the needed commands were relayed.
Grand Admiral Cassius leaned forward with his balled fists resting on the arms of his command chair.
-16-
Three mighty Doom Stars bore down on Phobos as the moon swung around Mars. The Doom Stars were composed of an unbelievable tonnage of steel, titanium and asteroid particle shielding.
Phobos was asteroid-shaped and had three axes, about 27, 21 and 19 kilometers in length. Although a tiny moon in Solar System terms, it dwarfed the three super-ships. On it bristled a mass of point-defense systems, missile launch sites and laser ports. In front of Phobos floated a prismatic-crystal field.
Highborn heavy lasers remorselessly chewed through the field. The prismatic crystals reflected the laser-light and dissipated its strength. The power of the lasers slagged and destroyed the crystals, slowly digging deeper and deeper into the field. Then the lasers burned through and hit Phobos, burning moon-dust, melting some of it into glass. That action opened what many would come to call the third phase of the Third Battle for Mars.
As the prismatic-crystal field disappeared under the hellish fury of the Highborn lasers, the SU Battlefleet engaged its engines. Just behind Phobos was the decoy fleet, and it charged at the Doom Stars. Behind them followed the orbitals, and finally came the heart of the SU Battlefleet, the eight Zhukov-class battlewagons and the seven missile-ships.
“Launch Operation Trojan Hearse,” Grand Admiral Cassius thundered.
In seconds, three huge missiles launched from each of the three Doom Stars. Every weapon aboard the Hannibal Barca, the Napoleon Bonaparte and the Julius Caesar was now dedicated toward destroying whatever tried to hinder the flight of these nine asteroid-busters. The spaceship-sized missiles accelerated hard for Phobos, flashing through a maelstrom of lasers, shells, anti-missiles and the final wisps of the prismatic-crystal field.
Six of the nine giant missiles died before reaching the moon. An orbital fighter rammed one, the pilot thinking it a new Highborn spacecraft. The nuclear explosion sent X-rays and EMP blasts through the vacuum. Most of the SU vessels washed by the X-rays were hardened against that, although twenty orbital fighters perished in a wave of EMP. Then the moon’s point-defense cannons smashed through the seventh missile’s hull and made a clean kill, this time without igniting the gargantuan warhead.
The eighth and ninth mega-missiles slammed into the moon in an interesting manner. Seconds before impact, a heavy plasma cannon in the missile’s nose sent a gout of super-heated plasma ahead of itself. The plasma ate dust and moon-rock, and the missile slammed deeper and bored in an incredible distance. Everyone on Phobos felt the impact like a quake. Only then did the nova-warhead explode. It was like a miniature sun and caused a cataclysmic reaction. Gigantic cracks like the end of the world splintered through the entire moon, tearing buildings apart and destroying merculite-missile launch-sites and point-defense emplacements. Then the second asteroid-buster exploded.
The Gotterdammerung moment came for the Martian moon. The nova-warhead lived up to its name as Phobos blew apart into fourteen large chunks and millions of tiny particles of rock and dust. Several of the larger chunks tumbled toward the Red Planet. In a matter of days, several of those would slam against the planet and create unbelievable misery for hundreds of millions of Martians below.
***
From the safety of the cyborg command-pod, Toll Seven and Web-Mind observed this incredible display of military might. This was more than they had anticipated. The genetic super-soldiers had amassed fierce weaponry in the Doom Stars and its newest ordnance created on the Sun-Works Factory.
Yet, the moon’s destruction played to their secret plan. It filled space with dust, rocks and chunks. The SU Battlefleet, under the terse orders of Commodore Blackstone, roared through the debris like army ants yearning for vengeance. Missiles, lasers, sabot-rounds and orbital cannons blazed at the three super-ships in the distance.
Like ancient gods, the Doom Stars hung in the heavens and beamed with abandon, attempting to kill the last hope of Social Unity.
At the same time, the countless asteroid-appearing capsules scattered throughout the Mars System split open. Out of them like space-insects appeared vacc-suited humanoids. These vacc-suited cyborgs leaped from their capsules and engaged their hydrogen-thruster packs. They jetted for the Doom Stars. Individually, each was an insignificant particle compared to the orbitals, missiles and laser-beaming battleships. Time would tell if, united on the skin of a Doom Star, they would prove a battle-winning tactic or not.
-17-
On Mars, it was early morning as Marten and five skimmers of commandos glided over the red dunes. The others had returned to New Tijuana, although Major Diaz and Rojas had remained with him.
The volcanic base of Olympus Mons was before them. In the high altitudes, near the peak where ice-crystal clouds drifted, several orbitals boomed as they broke the sound barrier and screamed toward space to join the fight. Perhaps even more ominous, a heavy whine emanated from the volcano.
“The proton beam is online,” Omi crackled over the headphones.
“That’s the injured dynamos revving with power,” Marten said. He sat in front beside Osadar. The cyborg was the best pilot among them and the best driver, and thus she drove.
As if she knew Marten was thinking about her, Osadar swiveled her helmet toward him.
“Over there!” Marten pointed. About five kilometers away, the blast doors were shut. He had studied those doors before, and for days, he’d studied the specs of Olympus Mons that Chavez had emailed him from New Tijuana.
Marten’s stomach churned. The skimmers were frail craft, and there were only a few of them. As everyone had been telling him lately, this was a matter of luck. He shook his head. It was more than luck. This was the hour of decision. Logically, eyes were on the main event in space. When your enemy was distracted, that was the time to strike.
“Check your rifles,” he said over the comm-unit. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Marten turned back to Omi.
Instead of saying anything, Omi patted his shoulder a second time. Then his best friend returned to his portable plasma cannon. It was a dirty job and a risky task, but Marten couldn’t trust anyone else to do it right. Omi and he had survived many battles together. Dear God, let his good friend survive this fight, too.
Afterward, Marten watched the doors as the skimmers roared toward destiny. His palms became sweaty, and the churning worsened in his gut. They were going to face cyborgs. He hated them. He—
“We’re almost in range,” Osadar said.
“Omi,” Marten said.
“I’m on it.” The Korean charged the plasma cannon. On the other skimmers, chosen commandos did likewise.
Marten clenched his teeth as Osadar grounded the skimmer. One by one in a line, the others parked on the rock before the huge blast doors.
“Let’s do this,” Marten said. “Crack it open.”
The cannon whined with energy, and then a gout of superheated plasma discharged. Steam hissed from it, and the ball struck the blast doors, eating away at it as if the stuff were acid. Another plasma globule struck and another.
“Get ready,” Marten said.
Air rushed out the breached blast doors in a wave of heat. Marten had time to wonder about that. Then Osadar applied power. They lifted and leapt for the new entrance.
“Do we try to drive through that?” Major Diaz radioed.
“Roger,” Marten said, as his eyes gleamed.
“But—”
“It’s time to pray and then to kill if we have to.” Brave words, Marten thought, as his stomach tightened.
Osadar flipped on the skimmer’s lights. With perfect piloting skill, she took them into the giant underground garage. It was different than before, cleared out, with a new giant machine churning near the elevators.
“What is that?” Diaz radioed.
“A cyborg converter,” Osadar whispered. “Marten, there will be—”
“Look out!” a commando roared. Gyroc fire sent shells screaming into the gloom.
Then Marten saw them: cyborgs. The creatures bounded at them with incredible speed. They were almost impossible to kill. A rocket-shell struck one, and exploded, tearing off plastic and flesh, knocking it to the garage floor. It got up and kept coming.
How many were down here?
Omi fired the recharged plasma cannon. It lit up the garage and caught a cyborg, burning half of it and dropping the smoldering thing to the floor.
Finding his rifle in hand, Marten realized he laid down suppressing fire. He shred the flesh and uniform off one. Then it leapt, and might have landed among them. Osadar jumped up, meeting it over the skimmer’s hood. They crashed, and the two cyborgs fought, one with its fists and Osadar with a blade.
Another cyborg sailed over Marten, smashing against the plasma cannon. Something broke in it. Superheated substance boiled out, burning the cyborg so its head simply melted into slag. Omi roared with pain, snatching his suited hand away.
Finding himself out of the skimmer, Marten aimed with deadly precision, firing three shells into the next skimmer. Each explosion broke something within the armored brainpan of a cyborg. The creature died, but not before it killed everyone in the skimmer.
The fight was short and savage, with six unarmed cyborgs demolishing most of them in less than half a minute. Without Osadar and the plasma cannons, none of them would have survived.
“Count off,” Marten said.
They had a pitiful few: Osadar, Omi, Rojas and himself. The rest were dead, including Major Diaz. The man should have returned to New Tijuana with the other commandos.
“What do we do now?” Osadar asked.
Marten swallowed in a dry throat. If any of the cyborgs had borne arms, none of them would be alive. Was he crazy to have come here?
“I want to see that convertor,” Marten said. “Then we stick with the plan and find a way up to the orbital hanger.”
-18-
In the middle of a deadly space battle, where bright beams lased, huge ships passed like mini-planets and missiles zoomed and exploded with dazzling pyrotechnics, the creature formerly known as Lisa Aster rotated her cyborg body. A Doom Star with its pitted particle-shield was her entire world. She applied thrust from her nearly empty hydrogen-pack, braking. At the last moment, she rotated back and readied her legs. The asteroid-like particle-shield rushed at her. Then she crashed against a Doom Star, smashing her head against rock.
She awoke seconds or minutes later. She was never sure afterward. She clung tenaciously like a mechanical spider to the pitted surface. The surface shook and trembled constantly as beams, missiles and cannon-rounds struck. It was badly chewed up and had craters and deep laser holes, although it was still intact. Dust, rocks and boulder-sized chunks floated before the immensely thick shield.
LA31 cocked her dented helmet with its short antenna. The radio-pulse was low-key and garbled. Radiation, EMP blasts, jamming waves; the vacuum here was thick with invisibly harmful elements. LA31 felt sick and wanted to vomit. Worse, she felt weak. Programming kept her going, and enhancement drugs surged through her system like blood. She began to crawl like an insect across the pitted surface.
If there had been an independent observer between the two fleets, between the flashing lasers and streaking missiles, they might have seen hundreds of shifting motes on the particle-shields of the Hannibal Barca. Like a broken nest of spider bantlings, the mechanical-seeming motes crawled fast and headed for the seams between the giant blocks of particle-shielding. Lasers indifferently burned many of them into blackened crisps. Missiles blew off even more, along with asteroid-chunks and dust from the abused particle-shield. Yet, for every three killed, one made it between the seams and crawled quickly for the hull below.
It was a cyborg infestation. LA31 was one of the lucky ones. She no longer felt lucky, as she had already vomited a black bile. She felt sicker than ever. Drugs, Web-Mind-programming and cyborg enhancements barely kept her functioning. She wanted to curl up and die. Instead, with fifty-three other cyborgs, she used magnetic clamps and clanged along the hull and to a main heavy laser-port.
There, with breach bombs, the cyborgs gained entrance to the Doom Star. Like cockroaches, they scurried into the hull, behind the walls and corridors that made up the vast spacecraft. They had the super-ship’s specs imprinted in their memories. They had one goal, one destination—the giant fusion engines in the center of the unbeatable vessel.
***
“Sir…” a Highborn officer said aboard the Hannibal Barca.
“What?” Admiral Brutus shouted. On the holographic display before him, his number three particle-shield had almost crumbled into nothing. A suicidal SU missile-ship was too close, launching an unbelievable number of missiles from its tubes. Admiral Brutus had killed SU ship after SU ship, yet still these rabid premen attacked. He would kill every mother-birthing one of them.
“Sir!” another officer shouted. “We’ve been boarded.”
“What?” Admiral Brutus roared, his features turning crimson with rage.
“Take a look, sir,” the Highborn tech said.
Before Admiral Brutus appeared a holographic image of strange bionic soldiers scurrying through emergency hatches and repair corridors. Their vacc-suit emblems were nothing issued by the Highborn.
Admiral Brutus snarled orders to his security teams. They would take care of these intruders. Then he concentrated on the SU missile-ship that still dared to rush a Doom Star.
***
Blue-tattooed Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen paced endlessly in his confinement chamber. He gnashed his teeth in hatred and felt every tremor that washed through the Doom Star. He wanted out of confinement. He wanted to kill. He wanted to rend. He wanted to destroy and feel hot blood gushing over his hands.
Then a terrific blow shook the vessel and threw Hansen to the metal floor. Lights flickered and then went out so darkness filled his world.
With a roar of almost feline excitement, Hansen leapt to his feet and tore at the door. In the blackness, he opened it, snarling with joy. At the same moment, emergency lighting came on and the electronic locks snapped back into place. It didn’t matter for Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen. He was out of confinement. He was free. Now he needed weapons, and he needed reinforcements. That meant freeing more neutraloids. He cackled with berserk laughter and floated toward the next door.
***
“Begin ship-shielding maneuver,” Grand Admiral Cassius ordered. He sank into his chair as the Julius Caesar’s engines engaged hard.
With grim concentration, Cassius studied the battlefield on his holographic display. Radiation, EMP blasts, X-rays, enemy jamming and debris meant his holographic image was fuzzy in places. He lacked full intelligence. But that had always been the nature of the battlefield. Making the right decision with only partial information had been a commander’s lot for untold millennia. They had destroyed countless enemy vessels. Finally, Cassius had come to realize that many of those kills had been shells, decoys. The heart of the enemy fleet remained: the Zhukov-class battleships. Even a Doom Star needed time to take out the most modern of them.
Those SU battleships concentrated on the Hannibal Barca. Admiral Brutus’s Doom Star had taken damage. Now it was time to relieve the Hannibal Barca, to shield it with the relatively intact Julius Caesar.
“A few more minutes, old friend,” Grand Admiral Cassius muttered. “More speed!” he ordered, keeping any worry out of his voice. In another twenty seconds, Cassius was pushed even deeper into his chair as the warship sped for war and glory.
“You’re fighting hard, premen,” Cassius muttered. “But it’s not going to be enough to give you victory over me.”
***
Aboard the Vladimir Lenin, Blackstone continued to shout orders. The fight had come down to two giants grappling for a death-hold, to break the other giant’s back.
His orbital fighters were nearly all destroyed. They had never had a chance against the Doom Stars. It had been a grim order to give and still sickened him. The bulk of the decoy fleet was space wreckage. Now he faced off against the battered Hannibal Barca. He had maneuvered the battlewagons so the first Doom Star shielded his battleships from the other Doom Stars. It might have been a clever tactic, but Blackstone felt too sick at Social Unity’s losses to feel elated.
