by B. V. Larson
Mule licked his lips. The skimmer kept coming, but the two missiles came faster. They were sleek things, only a little bigger than a Marine in his battlesuit. Like Earth-side cruise missiles, they skimmed just over the surface, minutely changing course as they zeroed in on their target.
“Here it comes!” Mule shouted.
As if he was on the firing range, Sergeant Chen pressed the flamer button. For a second, Mule knew it was hopeless. Landing impact must have jarred something loose in the flamer. The superheated plasma weapon took careful calibrations to work right, and—
An orange globule of plasma discharged from the flamer. The superheated substance actually seemed to wobble as it flew into the dark atmosphere. The plasma expanded as it traveled, and the missile plowed into the superheated orange glow.
“Shove yourself against the ice!” Chen shouted.
Mule had already thrown himself onto the ground. The missile explosion clicked on his sensors. The practically nonexistent atmosphere wasn’t dense enough to carry the sound or the blast waves of the explosion powerfully enough to affect them.
Mule breathed a sigh of relief. The warhead was explosive but not nuclear. He breathed two more times and figured his suit was intact, without breaches.
He lifted his head and realigned the rifle. The skimmer was closer.
“They’re launching another one,” Mule said.
The missile dropped from the undercarriage and streaked ahead of the skimmer. The missile had their names written on it, as it zoomed straight at their position.
Chen swore as the flamer began to recharge. It only had seven charges left, but none of those would build up fast enough to help them.
“Let’s split up,” Chen said.
“But the missile will just follow—”
“Do as I tell you!” Chen roared. He activated the flamer and took a flying leap away to the left, leaving the flamer behind.
Mule scrambled to his feet and bounded with low-gravity leaps to his right. He clutched his rifle, and he expected to see the missile swerve to track him or Chen. Either way, he would miss the Sarge—
The missile slammed against the heat-building flamer where it sat alone on the ice, exploding. Mule saw it through his HUD using his rearward-aimed sensors.
Right, right, the sergeant had activated the flamer, making it hot. The missile must have homed in on it.
More explosions occurred beside vaporous geyser vents. The explosions came from other, striking missiles. How many did the skimmer carry?
Mule raised his rifle, and he snapped off five shots, quick firing at the approaching skimmer. The armor-piercing explosive rounds were smart. They wouldn’t swerve around corners, but like the missiles a moment ago, they could make course corrections.
Were the other Marines firing? He hoped so. Mule took one more shot, jumped away and skidded across the ice on his belly, sliding for a hundred meters and behind another icy protrusion.
“Yeah!” a Marine shouted over the comm. It sounded like Hayes.
Mule swiveled on his torso and climbed up the ice wall. He cranked up the magnification to get a better look. The open-car skimmer had bullet holes and crumpled metal in the main body. Sparks showered in places. The skimmer wobbled from side to side and something red blew up inside it. Mule grinned. Gyrocs had hit all right.
Three cyborgs appeared in the cockpit. Two leaped overboard, one on either side of the craft. The last tried to bail out of the back, but didn’t move fast enough. Before it got out, the skimmer nose-dived and plowed into ice. That crumpled the square-like body and sent showers of icy shards into the air. There wasn’t a last movie explosion devouring the vehicle, but that thing looked wrecked.
The cyborg that went down with the skimmer survived the impact. Those bastards were hard to kill.
The meld stood slowly amidst the wreckage. It must be shaken up. That was something, at least. They didn’t die easily, but it was possible to make one woozy. Before Mule could think about it too much, his gyroc rounds slammed into its body-armor, causing the cyborg to jerk and sway like a puppet. After that, the thing actually brought up a weapon. Mule could see severed power cables glowing orange inside its shattered body and yet still it attempted to fight. Then more of his rounds smashed its head, killing the thing as it slammed down against the wreckage.
“Communications silence isn’t going to help us now,” Chen said over the open comm-channel. “Count off and see how many of us are left.”
They had Hayes, Chen, Ross and Mule, half of the eight who had begun the firefight with the skimmer. The cyborg missiles had borne bitter fruit. Now four Marines had to face off against two cyborgs—except a piece of luck finally touched their side. Because Chen used the open comm, three other Marines answered.
“This is Sub-sergeant Bogdan of Omega Squad. Give me your position.”
Chen told him.
“We’re five kilometers away,” Bogdan said.
“Listen up, Marines,” Chen said. “We’re falling back to buy time until Bogdan gets here. But you’d better hurry, Sub-sergeant, or we won’t be alive.”
“We’re coming as fast as we can,” Bogdan said.
Mule didn’t think pulling back was a good idea because exposing himself to cyborgs sounded foolish. He stayed where he was, and he clicked on a private comm-line to Chen. Before he could say anything, Mule saw two pulse lasers wash Ross’s battlesuit as the Marine tried to jump away.
Ross landed, with his feet slipping out from under him. Was he in pain? He scrambled back onto his feet and leaped again, avoided another pulse and rolled into an ice crevice where vented vapors billowed.
“I’m hit,” Ross said. “I’m leaking air.”
“That’s bad luck,” Mule whispered. Without air—
“I’m sorry to hear that, Space Marine,” Chen said. “You’ve just volunteered to be the decoy. I wish it could be some other way, but now you have to get up and jump again. We’ll fix their positions and avenge you.”
Mule knew Chen was right. If Ross leaked air, he wouldn’t last long. In fact, the oxygen leak would make him easy to spot.
Ross spoke up. “Semper fi, Marines, you apes remember me.” He leaped out of the crevice, sailing high toward the cyborgs. It was a good idea. They would have been expecting a low, gliding leap, not a high parabolic jump.
From up there in the atmosphere, Ross told them. “I see one.” The Marine got off a shot. Then heavy pulses hit him, lighting him up. Something sizzled in the battlesuit. Ross roared in pain, got off a second gyroc shot and then cyborg laser pulses caused the Earther to gurgle as he choked on his own blood.
Mule lay on his torso and zeroed in on an enemy location. He snapped off three rounds. The rocket motors burned brightly as they flew at the enemy. The penetrators hit ice, but no cyborgs. The melds were fast. They fired and scooted each time, never staying still.
“I hate these things,” Hayes snarled.
“Mule, look to your left,” Chen shouted.
Mule swiveled, and rolled. A laser pulse struck the ice beside him, sending up methane vapor. He jumped low so his battlesuit headed toward a depression that would hide him from cyborg view. Another pulse came. The laser bolt skimmed ice and caught the edge of his suit just as he rolled into the crevice.
Heat washed against Mule’s right leg. It felt like needles stabbing into his thigh. The suit’s air-conditioning unit hummed, trying to cool him.
Hayes leaped toward a new position, twisted, fired and yelled “Sarge,” and received two direct hits, two more and a final finishing shot that must have burnt his circuitry and probably his liver and other organs. Methane vapors hid his battlesuit as the heated metal landed and sank into the ice.
Meanwhile, Mule was low-gravity gliding. He was good at this.
“Get down,” Chen said. “You’re in the direct line of fire.”
Mule barely reached an outcropping of protection. Pulses struck at precisely that moment. One missed. The other hit, washing him wi
th heat.
Inside the battlesuit, blisters appeared on Mule’s back. The lasers heated up his armor so there was a fused spot. The pain knocked the breath out of him. For a second, Mule expected the worst, a suit breach. It didn’t happen, but his rear sensors burned out. There would be no looking back now with HUD imaging unless he turned his head toward what he wanted to see.
“I hit one,” Chen said. “It’s still moving, but I slowed it down. They were concentrating on you.”
Mule found himself short of breath and thirsty like he couldn’t believe. He refused to gulp water, though. He didn’t know how long his battlesuit supply was supposed to last. He would sip later once he regained clear thinking and could ration his drinks, his precious water supply.
The hurt cyborg kept popping up, firing at Chen and then at Mule. They used their gyroc rounds against it and even blasted through the ice to try to finish the sneaky thing. Even hurt, the meld was too good for that, too fast and clever for their smart rounds. What the cyborg did, however, was fix their attention on it.
“It’s baiting us,” Mule said.
“What?” Chen asked. “Where’s the undamaged meld?”
“Behind you!” one of Bogdan’s three reinforcing Marines said.
Mule whirled around and a touch of envy and admiration filled him. The cyborg leaped faster and lower than he would ever be able to. The thing fired at him from a distance, and the round would have hit if Mule hadn’t received the second of warning. He dropped into a crevice, a ready-made trench.
“It’s between us,” Chen said. “We’ll cut it to ribbons now.”
The sergeant was wrong. The cyborg was fast and wickedly clever. It took out two of the new Marines before one of Mule’s APEX rounds knocked it off its feet.
“Shoot it!” Chen roared. “Kill it before it gets back up.”
They were almost too slow. Three Marines on their bellies, from three different points on the compass fired in unison and only one round hit the meld. Fortunately, that shot proved vital, knocking the cyborg down again, this time to its stomach.
Mule stood up in his trench and fired three APEX shells. He saw the rocket contrails in the darkness. The super-hardened penetrators pierced the meld’s body armor and killed it finally, for good.
“Where’s the injured cyborg?” Mule asked.
They scanned the dark icescape, but found no sign of it.
“That can’t be good,” Bogdan said.
There were three of them, three Marines out of eleven. For the heavy cost of eight dead, they’d managed to destroy two cyborgs.
“Let’s check the skimmer,” Chen said. “Maybe we can use something on it.”
“Are you kidding?” Mule said. “We have to find the cyborg before we try to salvage anything.”
“Are you frightened, Martian?” Bogdan asked. Bogdan and Mule had never gotten along.
“Yeah, I’m quivering,” Mule said.
“Listen, scrub—”
“Stow it,” Chen said. “We’re Marines. We stick together in the face of the enemy.”
Bogdan remained silent. So did Mule.
The three of them neared until they were fifty meters from each other. Slowly, warily, keeping an eye out for the other cyborg—
“It’s by the skimmer,” Mule said. “Do you see it? The thing is crawling to the vehicle.”
Mule raised his rifle and fired several shells. One slammed into the cyborg, but it managed to reach the skimmer nonetheless. There, the cyborg must have done something, because the remains of the skimmer exploded, sending wreckage and presumably cyborg body parts into the air.
“There’s your dangerous meld,” Bogdan sneered. “It was so frightened it suicided on us.”
“Let’s get link-lined,” Mule said. “We’re not under combat conditions anymore and shouldn’t give ourselves away any more than we have too.”
Chen kept his faceplate aimed at the destroyed skimmer and the suicidal meld. Finally, he faced them, and nodded.
Does Bogdan even realize the cyborg screwed us? Mule decided not to worry about it. As long as the sub-sergeant kept his gun aimed at the cyborgs, that’s all that mattered.
-7-
The three Marines moved through the surreal icescape. It was dark, and geyser vents blew more frequently. A vaporous fog thicker than the negligible atmosphere drifted in places. Elsewhere, explosions and blooms of light appeared. Other Marines fought in the distance, some over one hundred kilometers away. There were snatches of words at times on open comm-channels. Then the voices went offline.
Mule studied some nearby vapors. What made the substance hot enough to spew? He had become more curious about that, not less.
“Do you still read the oxygen signatures?” Chen asked Mule through the link-line.
“Sure do, Sarge.”
“How far away are they?”
“Another eleven kilometers,” Mule said.
“We should speed up,” Bogdan suggested.
“The cyborgs must have motion sensors near anything important,” Mule replied. “Speeding up is a bad idea.”
Bogdan turned toward him. Before the sub-sergeant could comment, a strangely emotionless voice spoke through their headphones.
“Your mission is futile.”
“What?” Chen asked. “Mule, did you say that?”
“No.”
“Well I didn’t say it,” Bogdan replied. “So it must have been the Martian.”
The three of them spoke through the link-lines, staying off any comm-channel.
The emotionless voice spoke again. “I have come to understand that each of you was forced into attacking us. It is pitiful to consider the effort you’ve taken arriving here in the Oort Cloud. It is pitiful because your mission is beyond useless.”
“Who is that?” Chen asked. “Who do you think is speaking to us?”
“I think it’s a cyborg,” Mule said.
“What?”
“I just used my analyzer,” Mule said. “The voice is synthetic.”
“Circle up!” Chen shouted.
They did, Mule lifting his rifle and scanning the geyser-spewing terrain. “I don’t see anything near,” he said. “I’m going to extreme magnification.”
“Good idea,” Chen said. “I’m doing the same thing.”
As they scanned while back-to-back, they slowly swiveled their helmeted heads.
“I don’t see anything unusual,” Bogdan said.
Chen grunted agreement, adding, “Where are they? I don’t see them anywhere.”
“Maybe the cyborg doesn’t see us either,” Mule said. “Maybe this is an open broadcast.”
“So why would cyborgs start talking to their enemies?”
“Maybe it’s trying to get inside our heads,” Mule said. “Or it could be trying to get us to talk.”
“I ain’t afraid of them,” Bogdan said.
“Stay off the comm,” Chen said.
“I got that,” Bogdan said. “I’m just saying I ain’t afraid of it.”
Mule continued searching. He examined the dirty ice. Did it have particles of dust in it, dirt, what? He scanned upward in case the melds used more skimmers or a space object near Tyche.
Obscured slightly by the faint nitrogen atmosphere and the occasional vapors from the geysers, some of the stars twinkled. The sight was so unexpected and shocking that it put an ache of homesickness in Mule’s heart. He’d seen stars twinkle on Mars and later on Earth.
“The vast majority of your fellow Marines died in the futile attack,” the emotionless voice told them. “I have already captured eighteen of your survivors. Three have decided to cooperate with me and talk.”
“The thing’s a filthy liar,” Bogdan hissed.
“It’s trying to work us,” Mule said. “It’s trying to get you angry so you do something stupid.”
Bogdan turned toward him. “Listen to me, scrub.”
“Shut up, Sub-sergeant,” Chen said.
“Me?” Bogdan asked. �
�Look, the Martian’s—”
“You will obey orders,” Chen said, loudly.
Bogdan took his time answering. Finally, he nodded his helmet.
“Sub-sergeant,” Chen said, “do you think the cyborg knows we’re here, our exact location?”
Mule had been wondering about that. “Wait a minute…it said ‘I’ before. That implies individuality. Cyborgs are hive creatures. This is definitely an ‘it’ talking to us. It must be a Web-Mind.”
“It’s a freak,” Bogdan muttered, with loathing.
“If you haven’t already,” the emotionless voice told them, “turn on your video sensors and observe the situation.”
Mule hesitated. Why was a Web-Mind speaking to them? It wasn’t for any good reason. The thing had a plan to screw them. Did it think they were stupid enough to talk with it so the creature could pinpoint their location?
Curiosity overcame Mule’s caution. He thrust his chin against a sense-pad in his helmet, and he observed the video broadcast on his HUD.
He saw a naked, straining, powerfully muscled man strapped to a chair. The sight put a chill in Mule’s heart. Cyborgs stood around the man. Computer panels and bio-equipment showed against a wall.
“That’s Scar,” Bogdan whispered in horror.
Mule recognized the man’s pitted features. This wasn’t just a vain boast then. Cyborgs had already captured Marines. His stomach twisted with revulsion. What were they doing to Scar? Why had they stripped him naked?
Mule switched his scrutiny from Scar to the cyborgs. The melds had human faces, each different to prove the things came from various people. But each cyborg wore its face like a mask in a lifeless, robotic manner. The eyes were so obviously artificial and the teeth silvery titanium that they were like demons with strange metal bodies. Some of the lights on the wall shined against their integral armor, reflecting brightly.
Scar struggled, with his big muscles bulging, but there was no working free for him. Sweat slicked his skin. Scar had his faults. The man also used to have a wife in England Sector. She’d died during the war. Scar had missed her badly.
Perhaps realizing this was the end, Scar looked up and roared at the cyborgs. Mule couldn’t hear any words or sound. He just saw the corporal’s horror, and it made Mule think of his wife and children.