Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod (39 page)

A boom sounded over the com-link. There were the noises of things crashing and then came hissing static. It was a terrible and accusing sound.

“Shut it off,” Blackstone whispered.

Belatedly, the
Vladimir Lenin’s
communications officer snapped forward and broke the link with Deimos. The Mars-facing side of the tiny moon had been under Highborn attack for the past half-hour.

Commodore Blackstone’s hands were greasy with sweat. His dry mouth tasted like bile. As if he went to a funeral, he wore his black uniform with its row of medals. He also wore his officer’s cap at its regulation angle. On the map-module where he rested his hands was the image of the great mass of Mars, the curvature of it. The flock of specks was the SU Battlefleet. For the past three days, the fleet had remained behind Mars in relation to the terrible Doom Stars. Now the Doom Stars had braked again, and they were in near orbit, hunting for the Battlefleet.

The grim silence on the bridge was like a psychic weight.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Commissar Kursk whispered.

Blackstone savagely wiped his eyes. This entire plan had been madness. Now he had let the personnel on Deimos die because otherwise his one chance to hurt the Highborn—

Blackstone’s head snapped up. Listening to those pleas had broken a dam in him. Maybe it had begun long ago when his ex-wife had first filed for divorce. He had bottled up so much pain and so much anguish. That anguish and pain now poured out in a torrent from his heart. He wanted to hurt somebody. He wanted to hurt them badly.

“It’s time to make them pay,” Blackstone said hoarsely.

Stout General Fromm watched him.

Blackstone made a sharp gesture. “The Highborn have come to step on our necks. It’s time to make them understand that we’re men. It’s time to bring them down by destroying the Doom Stars.”

The bridge’s officers had all turned to stare. Commissar Kursk nodded belated agreement.

The communications officer asked, “Do you think we can win, sir?”

“Yes!” Commodore Blackstone said, although he didn’t believe that. His crisp tone, however, caused several officers to straighten. What Blackstone did believe was that he was going to hurt them now. He was done with waiting. With the help of the cyborg stealth-attacks, the Highborn were going to know that they had been in a battle.

The communications officer turned toward her com-board. “What are your orders, sir?”

Commodore Blackstone studied the map-module. Then he began to issue curt commands.

The SU warships subtlety changed their dispositions. In his command pod and linked to the Battlefleet-net, Toll Seven heard Blackstone’s orders. Soon, Toll Seven began to issue his own commands, to mesh the cyborg plan with the reinvigorated bio-forms.

A thousand kilometers away in her stealth-capsule, LA31 opened her eyes. In other stealth-capsules scattered throughout the Mars System, other cyborgs readied themselves for the desperate battle to come.

A wait of three hours then occurred as the Doom Stars and the SU Battlefleet maneuvered for position. The super-ships were between the orbits of ruined Deimos and Phobos, which would soon appear from around Mars and face an obviously brutal strike from the enemy. Deimos orbited 23,500 kilometers away from the center of Mars. Phobos orbited 9,400 kilometers away. The three Doom Stars had reached a 17,000-kilometer distance from Mars.

To kill an enemy fleet that was determined to use a planet as a shield meant that the hunting ships had to come into close orbit. The reason was simple. The angles and distances were all on the side of the fleet closest to the planet. If the Doom Stars had stayed even 100,000 kilometers out, they would have had to travel a much greater distance to get onto the other side of the planet as compared to the fleet just above the planet’s atmosphere. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had understood that as he’d made his plans many months ago. His strategy had counted on it. Toll Seven and Web-Mind had concurred. For each side, this was the most dangerous phase of the battle. At these ranges, beams almost struck immediately and missiles streaked the distances in a matter of minutes.

The commander of Phobos sprayed a prismatic-crystal field before the moon. Then every laser-port, missile battery and point-defense systems went on high alert. Behind the moon as it moved in its orbit followed the bulk of the decoy fleet. Behind the decoy-vessels flew the SU orbitals, over five hundred fighters. They had little chance against massive lasers and point-defense systems. It was a suicide run and most of the pilots knew it. But here at this hour every piece of equipment would enter the cauldron of battle to try to eke out a few more percentage points for its side. The presence of the orbitals provided one other benefit, a hopeful overloading of the Highborn targeting computers.

The cyborg stealth-capsules waited for that time as they floated in the system like space debris.

As Commodore Blackstone gave the orders, relayed by the
Vladimir Lenin’s
communications officers, the SU Battlefleet accelerated behind Phobos for its death-ride.

***

Although Grand Admiral Cassius was a Highborn with a heroic ethos, and although he had personally taken command in the field for the final stroke against Social Unity, he used a medieval Mongol general’s strategy in terms of himself. He remained in the
Julius Caesar
, which was the last Doom Star in the three-ship fleet. He remained at the safest spot in order that his fleet would continue to have the benefit of his presence.

Admiral Brutus in the
Hannibal Barca
led them, with Admiral Gaius in the
Napoleon Bonaparte
behind at an oblique angle, using the formation that the Theban Strategos Epaminondas had used against the Spartans in the Battle of Leuctra July, 371 B.C.

The Grand Admiral sat before the holographic globe as the Doom Stars headed to meet Phobos. Deimos had fired more missiles and lasers than Cassius would have thought possible. Clearly, the premen were readier for him than he would have believed. The premen either had taken Deimos intact or had brought more supplies than he had counted on. Could the Planetary Union have thrown in their lot with Social Unity?

Cassius shook his large head. The Planetary Union bosses hated Social Unity. Premen naturally and foolishly divided at the worst possible moments. It was another mark of their inferiority.

Grand Admiral Cassius allowed himself a smirk. Whatever the case with Deimos, in the end, it hadn’t mattered. He’d heard the final broadcasts. The cowardly premen hadn’t even known how to die well. It was a portent of good fortune.

“The moon has appeared!” a Highborn tracking-officer shouted.

“I can see that well enough,” the Grand Admiral said, allowing just a hint of displeasure to enter his voice. That should calm any undue excitement from his command crew.

“It has a PC-Shield,” the tracking officer said, his voice under control now.

Grand Admiral Cassius pressed a com-button on his chair. It was a direct link to Admiral Brutus and Admiral Gaius. Beside the holographic globe of Mars now appeared two faces. Admiral Brutus had a low forehead for a Highborn, with a large nose and fiercely dark eyes. A stark, red scar like a half-moon had been burned years ago onto his right cheek. Brutus wore his admiral’s hat at a jaunty angle. On it was pinned a Galactic Spiral for extreme courage in battle.

Cassius spoke to the two holographic faces. “As I’m sure you gentlemen are aware, the prismatic-crystal field this time is a trick.”

“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. It left 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, when its last hope is killed.”

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.

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, 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 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, however, 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. That 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. Then only 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 unsuspecting Martians waiting unsuspectingly 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 matter, 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.