Doom Star: Book 05 - Planet Wrecker (32 page)

The hours passed as the cyborg torpedoes built up velocity. The Zenos continued their advance to combat. Finally, the two sets of projectiles neared proximity. One after another, the Zenos detonated. After the sixth big missile blew its thermonuclear warhead, only two enemy torpedoes survived. One accelerated at half its former speed. The last one homed in on the Meteor-ship
Spartacus
.

“Warm the main laser,” Marten said.

The fusion core increased power. On the ship’s surface, a large focusing mirror began to move. The calibration took five minutes of careful preparation.

“Fire!” said Marten.

Fusion power surged through the coils. Coherent light flashed through the focusing mirror. A thick beam of laser-light stabbed through the darkness of space. It struck the torpedo. The torpedo jinked out of the path of destructive light. It took another three minutes of calibration and retargeting. Then the laser stabbed again. Again, the torpedo jinked. At the third attempt—

“It detonated!” shouted Nadia.

Marten cursed softly under his breath. But the distance was too great for more than minor x-ray damage. Those x-rays burnt out a point-defense cannon and two space marines who had disobeyed orders and remained on the surface.

“What were they doing out there?” Marten shouted.

“Boredom,” said Omi.

“That’s two casualties we shouldn’t have taken.”

“It will be a lesson to the others,” Omi said.

“I want that other torpedo,” Marten said. Two dead space marines. He had a feeling they were going to miss those two soldiers before this was through.

“The laser is ready,” Osadar said.

“Kill it,” Marten said.

The laser fired, and the enemy torpedo didn’t jink out of the path of killing light. Maybe the blasts from the Zenos earlier had damaged a critical component. Whatever the case, they slagged the last torpedo of the first cyborg salvo.

Cassius read the shock trooper’s report in his wardroom while lying on an acceleration couch. The writing style was simplistic, but certain insights impressed Cassius. For the next hour, he recorded his musings. Then he listened to the musings three times. Afterward, he began to implement a supplement to the invasion tactics of the initial landings.

Marten Kluge…if the impossible happened and the preman survived the asteroid-landings, he was going to have a grueling interview with the Homo sapien. There would be some life-lessons learned, maybe the last things this Marten Kluge would ever experience.

Deciding it was time to close that file and subject in his mind, Cassius concentrated on the approach to the asteroids. On more than one occasion, he’d likened his mind to a computer. He could close a file and open one at will, completely concentrating on the problem or subject at hand. When he closed all the mental files, he went to sleep.

After studying the probable attack sequence, Cassius went to sleep. He awoke six and-a-quarter-hours later to a klaxon. First showering, eating and donning his uniform, he hurried to the bridge. He seethed with impatience and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. This was the battle of his life. This would determine many things.

It was survival of the fittest in a war of extinction. Cassius barked a harsh laugh. Then he strode onto the bridge and entered his shell. He activated his holoimages and began to study the situation. At last, it was the time for truth.

“It’s like a blizzard,” Marten said in awe.

It was quiet in the command center as the people watched their screens. The
Spartacus
raced almost directly behind the asteroids, still catching up fast—although not as quickly as before. As seen from the meteor-ship, the first wave of Luna-launched missiles zoomed in at an oblique angle from the left.

Each missile was three times the size of a Zeno. Behind them came another wave, the giant Orion-ships and more missiles. Behind that were the majestic Doom Stars, two of them. The third Doom Star approached from a different angle.

“Look,” said Nadia.

An equally thick blizzard of objects detached from the rear asteroids.

“They’ve gone hot,” she said.

On the many screens, the cyborg-torpedoes turned from blue to red.

Time then passed in agonizing slowness, one hour, two. Before the third passed, a quarter of the Luna-launched missiles detonated.

They were x-ray missiles, one of the deadliest in space combat. Each missile’s onboard AI targeted a single enemy craft. Then a thermonuclear warhead exploded. The mass of x-rays and gamma rays traveled up special targeting rods. Those rods concentrated the rays into a coherent beam that shot at the various targets. As the rods concentrated the x and gamma rays, the nuclear explosion obliterated its own missile and its various components. The shape-charged warhead ensured that the blast all went ahead, instead of in a ball of force in all directions. This protected the rearward missiles from friendly-fire damage.

“Eighty-three percent devastation,” declared Osadar several minutes later.

Marten watched as torpedo after cyborg torpedo went from red, to blue and then often winked away. The x-rays destroyed many torpedoes, but not all of them. Those torpedoes—the surviving cyborg devices—now detonated. They were cruder than the x-ray missiles, and depended upon electromagnetic pulse and heat damage. The Highborn-launched objects were hardened against such attacks, but twenty-seven percent of them succumbed to the cyborg explosions.

Then lasers began to beam from the rearmost asteroids.

“No,” Nadia whispered. “They’ll destroy the remaining missiles.”

“Don’t count on it,” Marten said.

“How can the Highborn stop it?” Nadia asked.

Her answer came two minutes later. The one-million kilometer-range ultra lasers of the
Julius Caesar
and the
Genghis Khan
stabbed at the asteroids turrets.

“That’s unbelievable,” Nadia said.

Another ultra-heavy beam stabbed against the asteroids. It came from the
Gustavus Adolphus
.

The giant lasers took out enemy turret after enemy turret. But they couldn’t take them out fast enough to keep the cyborg lasers from obliterating another eighteen percent of the x-ray missiles. Then those sleek objects came into range. There was another mass explosion of thermonuclear warheads. The x-rays and gamma rays targeted the many torpedo launch-sites and laser turrets on the rearmost asteroids.

For a few seconds, masses of lines stabbed on the various screens of the
Spartacus
command center. When the lines disappeared, the vast majority of the rearward-facing cyborg turrets were dead.

The expenditure of hardware and firepower left a pall of silence aboard the meteor-ship. There had never been anything like this in the Jupiter System, not in such quantity.

“What happens next?” asked Nadia.

Marten swallowed, and said quietly. “Now it’s up to the Orion-ships.”

In Attack-craft Seventeen that rode the Orion-ship Delta with countless other vessels, the klaxon wailed its alarm. There wasn’t any need for the warning, as Captain Mune and his bionic soldiers were already strapped into their crash seats.

“This is going to be fun,” the unseen pilot said, speaking through their headphones. She piloted Attack-craft Seventeen. If the big Orion-ship made it close enough to the asteroids, the attack-ship would detach with the others to attempt a landing.

Mune double-checked his straps. Then he went over his vacc-suit’s seals and lastly he rechecked his pod of weaponry. The space inside the attack-craft was cramped, the air close and the heavy-Gs constant.

“I’ve giving you visual,” the attack-craft pilot said.

A monitor above the prone couches snapped into life. It meant little to Captain Mune, just masses of stars. He missed Earth. He missed the normal gravity, the heat of the Sun on his skin and he missed the constant vigilance of guarding the most important man in the Solar System. But he was meant to serve in whatever capacity was most needed. Long ago, that had meant painful surgery and retraining with enhanced strength and speed. He’d taken a battery of tests once. It had satisfied highly suspicious people on his loyalty and willingness to serve.

“Here we go,” the pilot said.

The Gs switched directions. To Mune, it felt as if a car sat on his chest, making breathing difficult.

The unseen, overly-cheery pilot of the attack-craft was an unmodified human. Only the cargo was bionic.

Now the sudden thuds began again that meant nuclear bombs exploding as fuel. Their Orion mother-ship decelerated. If they didn’t decelerate, they’d hit the asteroids too hard and crush the attack-craft.

“How long is this going to last?” asked one of the men.

Mune shrugged. He had no idea.

“Who decided the order of the advance?” asked another soldier.

“We live to serve,” Mune said. It had become his creed, and he’d found comfort in it. Hawthorne was the only man he knew who could defeat the Highborn and now these genocidal cyborgs. To help Hawthorne and to save Earth, he’d volunteered for the mission.

“In case you’re wondering,” the pilot said into their headphones, “that little dot there is our destination.”

A blue circle appeared around a dot fractionally brighter than the stars around it.

“If the Orion-ship is turned around so it can decelerate, how can we see the dot?” asked a soldier

“Rearward facing cameras,” the pilot said. “Are there any other bright questions?”

A massive explosion occurred to the left in the screen. It filled the monitor with intense white light. Some of the soldiers near Mune shouted in alarm. He flinched, and to his surprise, he found himself trembling.

“What was that?” a soldier shouted.

“Scratch one of our Orion-ships, good buddies,” the pilot said, her voice sounding strained for the first time.

“Lasers?” asked Mune.

“Not a chance,” said the pilot, “not against an Orion blast-shield. That was a whale of a torpedo.”

Another huge explosion and fiery white light filled the monitor.

The pilot cursed loudly in their headphones, letting them know it was another lost Orion-ship.

“We should have stayed on Earth,” a soldier said.

“We serve here,” said Mune. He wasn’t aware of it, but his face was contorted into a horrible grimace.

“Give us just a few more minutes, you freaking machines,” the pilot hissed.

The next few minutes saw blooms of orange explosions in the distance. There were stabbing red rays and a thick column of sparkling light. The small dot had expanded now into the greatest thing in the void, about something fist-sized as seen on the monitor.

“We’re going to detach,” the pilot said.

A sudden jolt caused Mune to shift heavily to his left.

“We did it!” the pilot whooped. “Now we have a chance. Are you boys ready?”

“Ready,” Mune said hoarsely.

“Then hang on,” the pilot said. “We’re going in.”

“Grim,” said Omi.

Marten was bent forward in his seat. He had been watching the battle, with an elbow on a knee and his fist clenched. The cyborgs had destroyed two Orion-ships before the attack-craft could detach. Then attack-craft from four big Orion-ships spayed outward like shotgun pellets.

Omi’s comment came from the fate of the four surviving Orion-ships. After launching their attack-craft, the big nuclear-bomb-powered vessels accelerated once again. They accelerated faster than at any time in the journey. A torpedo took out another one. But the three surviving ships crashed into asteroids.

“People piloted those,” Marten whispered.

“Better than being captured by cyborgs and turned into one,” said Omi.

Now the Orion-launched attack-craft decelerated, attempting to land and unload their soldiers. On too many asteroids, however, point-defense cannons opened up, and counter-missiles rose up to destroy the landing craft.

“It’s all suicide,” said Omi.

Even though he knew he should try to remain calm, Marten couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen. The ultra-lasers from the Doom Stars still smashed into the asteroids. And now another mass wave of HB missiles came up.

Marten squinted. With an effort of will, he uncurled his fingers and moved toggles. He wanted to know what kind of missiles those were. The information startled him, although he knew it shouldn’t. “Those hold Highborn commandoes,” he whispered.

“Huh?” asked Omi.

“The next wave,” said Marten, “the new missiles. They’re filled with Highborn shock-troopers.”

“Great. After that mass expenditure of cyborg-hardware, at least a few of them should get through to the asteroids.”

Marten glanced sharply at Omi.

“Trouble?” asked the Korean.

Marten glared at the main screen. “The self-centered hypocrite, he planned for this.”

“Who did?” asked Omi. “What are you talking about?”

“The order of attack,” Marten said. “This is Grand Admiral Cassius’s plan. Do you remember he berated me for slowing down?”