Cyborg Assault ds-4

by Vaughn Heppner

  “They’ve destroyed half the Voltaire Missiles,” the Praetor said in his deep voice. “I’m not sure the others will make it through to the dreadnaught.”

  Mute, Yakov nodded.

  Maybe because of EMP blasts or enemy ECM, the static increased. It was now impossible to hear the Praetor’s next words.

  Yakov raised his head. “Rhea—”

  Rhea worked feverishly on her board. She stabbed buttons and twisted a dial. “Try it now!” she shouted.

  Yakov clicked a toggle and the static appeared to lessen. He could barely make out the Praetor. He leaned closer to the chair’s speakers.

  “You have to take out the dreadnaught,” the Praetor said. The static became too much again. But it didn’t matter now. Yakov understood. If the dreadnaught survived, they had lost the battle.

  The Force-Leader calmly flipped an emergency cover on his armrest. He pressed the red button there. It gave him override authority over the ship’s functions. Yakov savagely wiped his eyes. They were dry, but they burned with fatigue. He didn’t want to die. Ganymede had finally gained its independence from Callisto. Everything had begun for him long ago at Ganymede U when he’d won the hussade trophy. Now he was here, fighting a losing battle against the impossible cyborgs. How could men defeat such evil creations?

  Yakov shook his head. He didn’t know how. He knew, however, that he had to try. He had to ram this attack down the cyborgs’ throat. He had to give the Praetor and his Highborn a chance for victory. He had to help stubborn Marten Kluge. Yes. The Earthman showed the way. Kluge fought even when the odds were impossible. He went in and tried, hoping a miracle would occur.

  “Force-Leader!” Rhea shouted. “We’ve lost ship functions. We’re headed on an intercept course for the dreadnaught.”

  Yakov ignored her. He controlled the Descartes now.

  “They have sensor lock-on!”

  “All hail Ganymede U,” Yakov whispered.

  Lasers from the dreadnaught struck the meteor-ship, slagging rock. Point-defense shells followed and missiles attempted to race the gauntlet between the fast-closing vessels.

  The shouting in the command room lessened.

  “He’s taking us into the dreadnaught,” Rhea said, as she clutched her choker. “We’re the missile now.”

  That brought silence as officers in their modules stared at Yakov.

  The silver-haired Force-Leader snapped a crisp salute. Then he watched the main screen as the firing dreadnaught began to fill his world.

  -18-

  “Yakov, you fool,” Marten whispered.

  On her screen, Osadar pointed at the crippled Descartes. Then she switched cameras as the patrol boat continued its wild, jinking, twisting ride toward Carme.

  Marten was lurched this way and that. Behind him, space marines shouted as their armor clattered and clanked. Outside through the polarized window, weird colors flashed everywhere. Zipping, and often glowing shapes, burned past like planetary meteors.

  During the hell-ride, Carme constantly became bigger. Now surface features were visible. There were silver domes and tall towers. They were clustered together in what seemed like a mechanized village at the end of a valley.

  Marten leaned toward the window, peering upward, straining. He saw the dreadnaught, its lasers stabbing, burning into the Descartes. Yakov piloted it now. Weeks ago, Yakov had rescued him from the sealed pod and had saved him from Arbiter Octagon.

  “No,” Marten whispered. He’d lost too many friends these past few years. Marten banged a fist against the window. Social Unity, Highborn, cyborgs and now pontificating philosophers—

  Was there no end to it?

  The meteor-ship Descartes, the splintering vessel, smashed head-on against the larger cyborg-controlled dreadnaught. Particle shielding and meteor-shell burst apart, sending rock and pulverized dust in an expanding ball of debris. The massive destruction unleashed tons of kinetic energy. Dreadnaught lasers quit firing, and like an interstellar billiard ball, the dreadnaught caromed leftward, away from Carme.

  “Here we go,” Osadar said.

  The patrol boat sank with sickening speed. Marten lost sight of the dreadnaught. Yakov, the mad fool, the insanely brave Force-Leader of Ganymede, he was dead. The calm guardian was likely a jellied mass. It hurt to know that. It brought—

  It brought sadness, but then Marten had new troubles to occupy his thoughts. Osadar madly maneuvered the patrol boat as the vessel’s computer fired the boat’s cannons. The ripping sounds occasionally timed together with a white blossom to their left, their right and then directly in front of them.

  “Seal your helmets!” Marten roared. He checked his, and he heard radios click online in his receivers.

  The patrol boat violently shuddered. There was howling, and Marten felt a fierce tug on his straps as if he might fly upward. He craned his head. A large, jagged rip in the ceiling let him view the stars. Patrol-boat debris shot out of it. Something had torn off the vessel’s sheeting, releasing the precious atmosphere.

  A Jovian screamed in Marten’s headphones.

  “The moon!” another Jovian roared. It sounded like Tass.

  Marten felt faint as Carme’s surface rushed toward them. Carme was huge. Craggy-spiked mountains loomed. A crater skimmed below them.

  “Now!” said Osadar.

  Marten was slammed forward as the final retros fired. Gleaming silver towers rapidly drew near. A sensor dish—it vanished as something from the heavens crashed against it. Beams washed over the towers, over the domes. The beams quit almost as soon as they began firing.

  The hardest, most violent jolt of all caused Marten’s armored chin to smash against his chestplate. There was ringing in his ears and it seemed as if he were a thousand light-years from this place. Vaguely he was aware of terrific jolts and repeatedly slamming against his straps. Then it ended, and there was peace.

  “Marten! Marten Kluge!”

  Groggily, Marten moved his eyes. That hurt and caused an explosion of pain in his head.

  “Marten Kluge?”

  “Don’t shake him.” That sounded like Omi.

  Omi…. That meant….

  “Marten?”

  Marten focused and saw Osadar’s worried face before him.

  “We’ve landed,” Osadar said through the radio-link. “We’ve landed on the front part.”

  Marten raised a feeble hand, trying to release a buckle. It was the front part in relation to the hot plasma expelled from the back at the crater-sized exhaust-ports, giving Carme its one-quarter G.

  “Let me do that,” Omi said.

  “What happened?” Marten slurred.

  “Do you wish to avenge your dead friend?” Osadar asked.

  What did that mean? Oh. Yes. Yakov had died to give him, to give the space marines, cover so they could land on Carme. The entire complement of the Descartes’ crew had died, including beautiful Rhea. It was a shame he’d never made friends with her, had never kissed her. He’d seen the crashing meteor-ship. He’d never forget that awful slight.

  With a grunt, Marten heaved himself to his feet. Here, Carme’s acceleration gave the surface pseudo-gravity. It was nothing like the Bangladesh, however. Marten turned his head, glancing back. Jovian space marines waited for him.

  “It’s time to move,” Osadar said.

  Marten nodded. Oh, that hurt his head. With a slap of his hand, he struck a precise spot on his chest. That activated his medkit. He heard a hiss as his suit-hypo shot him with a stim. He chinned his radio to wide-beam.

  “Listen up,” Marten said, “and maybe you can help me do some damage to these mother-loving cyborgs.”

  He didn’t have time to wait for the stims. Time had run out for all of them. He began barking orders, leading the first wave of space marines onto Carme.

  -19-

  “Watch your footing,” Marten said over his crackling radio. The static was insane, a constant in his headphones.

  Carme’s surface was rocky, with sharp prot
rusions and plenty of stardust. Every step left a print. Sometimes dust puffed upward.

  The stars shined above as nearer, flashing objects glowed and disappeared, some smashing into the moon. Otherwise, it was dark and eerie. Jupiter was the brightest ‘star’ by many magnitudes, brighter even than the Sun.

  Marten yearned to reach the towers and domes, to get his men under cover. If an EMP blast went off nearby or a missile exploded, it could kill the lot of them. He also wanted to gather a large number of space marines in one place in order to defeat the enemy in detail, hitting small cyborg parties with as many men as possible. Unfortunately, it was impossible to call down other patrol boats, as the interference was too strong.

  “There!” crackled Omi’s voice.

  Marten swiveled his head to look back, to see what Omi pointed at. Something flashed at the corner of his eye. He turned forward again and saw an impossibly fast humanoid running toward them. The humanoid had a laser carbine, with a bulky pack on his back. He shot from the hip with flashes of light that stabbed at them, hitting his soldiers.

  “Down!” shouted Marten. “Get onto your stomachs!”

  “Pericles is hit!” a space marine shouted.

  “Kallias—I need help! Kallias has lost his helmet!”

  Marten threw himself onto his stomach, hitting rocky ground, making dust puff around him.

  The charging cyborg was killing his space marines fast. It was extremely efficient when compared to mere humans.

  Marten clawed the IML from his back. He targeted the cyborg even as the beam slashed into more of his space marines. In his HUD, Marten saw a green flash, meaning: target acquired. He jerked the IMLs trigger. It shuddered as the Cognitive missile ignited and zoomed at the cyborg.

  The thing was incredible. It threw itself down even as it aimed and fired at the incoming missile. The beam slashed a scant milli-fraction from the warhead because the Cognitive missile swerved then. It poured a final burst of thrust and slammed into the cyborg. There was an explosion and then showering shards of metal and hot plasti-flesh.

  A ragged cheer battled the static in Marten’s ears.

  “We’ll advance by over-watch teams!” Marten shouted. He wanted to stay calm. Yakov had known how to stay calm in a fight, but the silver-haired Force-Leader was dead. He hated this war. He hated cyborgs.

  Marten reloaded the IML. The Cognitive missile tactic had worked. He’d killed a cyborg.

  “Six men are dead,” Omi said on the command channel.

  The headache that had begun with the crash-landing blossomed with renewed pain. Then something flashed overhead at the edge of Marten’s visor.

  “Look,” someone said, “a patrol boat.”

  Reinforcements, Marten thought. Good. We need more—

  An explosion of bright light ended the thought. Marten had no idea if depleted uranium shells, canisters, wide-area sand-shots or a tac-laser had killed the patrol boat. In the end, it didn’t matter what had killed it. All those reinforcements were dead.

  “Here come more cyborgs,” Omi said. “I count seven of them.”

  “Spread out!” Marten shouted. Then he remembered an old Highborn maxim: A commander must give concrete, tangible commands. “A-team,” Marten said, “head left. B-team….”

  The cyborgs carried lasers. Marten and his space marines used IMLs and Cognitive missiles, with Osadar firing a Gyroc rifle. In the end, they killed the deadly things with saturation fire, but lost half their number doing it.

  Armored bodies lay everywhere, with neat little holes burnt through ceramic-metal plates.

  “We’ll never win like this,” Tass said over the radio.

  Panting, Marten lifted a loaded IML off a corpse. The space marine’s faceplate was slagged ballistic glass, the head inside a horrible glob of protoplasm.

  “Wait here,” wheezed Marten. His conditioner-unit hummed, washing his sweaty skin with cool air.

  “Sir?” a space marine asked.

  “I’m going to scout ahead,” Marten said. “We need to group our forces, hit the cyborgs as one. Omi, Osadar… Tass, follow me.”

  “What’s up?” Omi asked on the command channel.

  “This looks like a safe spot to leave the others,” Marten said. “We’ll take the risks right now.”

  Omi gave a noncommittal grunt.

  The four of them advanced across rocky terrain, with someone always crouching behind a boulder, with an aimed missile ready to fly. The cluster of domes and towers slowly grew larger.

  “Look,” Osadar said.

  Marten glanced back where she pointed. Cyborgs climbed over rocks, heading toward the others.

  “Damn,” Marten said. “Let’s go.” Then he tried to warn the others, but the static was too heavy.

  The cyborgs moved with twitching, inhuman speed and fired with uncanny laser-accuracy—they were cyclones of death. Marten and others used their Cognitive missiles, hitting the enemy from behind. It killed the last cyborgs, but no space marine left behind survived the firefight.

  Gasping for air, with sweat dripping down his chin, Marten knelt, and he shook his head.

  That’s when the first piece of good luck occurred. Another boatload of space marines joined them. Well, half the patrol boat’s complement joined them, a squad’s worth. They marched from behind a low hill, waving IMLs to identify themselves. Once they were close, they were able to talk over the worsening static.

  Together, they humped over the terrain, soon sliding down a hill as a tower rose before them. A broken dish rotated at the top. The nearest dome was cracked as something visible sheeted out of it.

  “Look,” Osadar said.

  She was the tallest among them and had stolen a bulky laser pack and carbine from a dead cyborg. Osadar pointed with the tip of her carbine.

  Two shuttles glided low over a hill. They could have been twins to the Mayflower. The shuttles floated toward the cluster of towers and domes.

  “Idiots,” Omi said.

  Stubby barrels poked out of two low barracks. Marten wished he could radio the shuttles. The barrels were point-defense cannons. It surprised him the Highborn were so foolish as to try to land directly among the buildings. He could have used the reinforcements.

  Then a huge missile flashed overhead, speeding ahead of Carme. The missile rotated. A beam lanced from the nosecone. The beam hit the first barracks. The point-defense cannons of the second barracks shot depleted uranium shells. Those shredded the lead shuttle. Metal rained onto the surface. Some chunks splattered against the hills like meteors. Then the missile’s beam hit again, and the second barracks was destroyed.

  “The Highborn are using a Voltaire Missile,” Osadar said.

  In his cooling helmet, Marten raised his eyebrows. The giant missile hung out there like some guardian angel, rotating, firing its engine to pull ahead and then rotating back to fire. No doubt, the Praetor or one of his Highborn lieutenants controlled the Voltaire. Marten recalled how he’d once controlled the Mayflower via his handscanner’s keypad.

  From where he stood on a hill’s slope, Marten watched the landing shuttle. He also saw the Voltaire’s beam slag cyborgs spilling out of a low dome.

  That did something to Marten’s chest. It took him a moment to understand what. Then he did understand. He had hope again. Battleoid-armored Highborn had arrived, and they had an altered drone to provide covering fire. Maybe there was a way to win, or at least to disable this blasted planet-wrecker. Yakov’s sacrifice had achieved something.

  Marten nodded, vowing that his friend’s death would count, even if he had to take some Highborn’s orders for the next hour, even the Praetor’s orders, to achieve it.

  “All right,” he said. “We’re going to try to link up with them. But keep a close watch on your sensors. We don’t need any more nasty surprises.”

  -20-

  The Praetor seethed with pent-up rage, fear, adrenalin and a singular Highborn passion: an exalted need to dominate, to win.

  He stood i
n his battleoid-armor, with a heavy plasma cannon similar to the weapon Marten had used on the cyborgs that had invaded the Mayflower many weeks ago. The shuttle had landed, had made the awful journey through Carme’s killing zone. His single remaining Voltaire was dedicated for his use.

  “Kill major weapon systems first and cyborgs second,” the Praetor ordered through his battleoid’s radio.

  A lone Highborn would remain aboard the shuttle. He presently sat at a board, controlling the Voltaire.

  The Praetor grinned as his pink eyes gleamed with dominating passion. If he died, nothing else mattered. He had predicated his strategy and tactics on that. The first shuttle had been a drone, meant to absorb enemy attacks. The second shuttle held sixteen Highborn. The remaining two of the Thutmosis III’s eighteen Highborn had been badly hurt. Therefore, they’d piloted different shuttles, meant to act as decoys. All fourteen healthy Highborn would join him in the ground assault.

  Could fifteen, battleoid-armored Highborn conquer Carme? They had Jovians for fodder and the melded humanoids as enemies. The Praetor laughed. It was a harsh sound. The two greatest conquistadors, Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, had both won through capturing emperors. Both the Aztecs and the Incas had raised theocratic empires, where the emperor was considered a god or the son of the ruling gods.

  These last few days, the Praetor had studied everything learned about the cyborgs and all the known data concerning a technological marvel called Web-Mind. Highborn Intelligence on Earth had uncovered interesting aspects from Social Unity sources, while the Mars Planetary Union had supplied some critical facts they’d learned during the Third Battle for Mars.

  To the Praetor’s thinking, these Web-Minds seemed like Aztec or Inca emperors. Before the Thutmosis III’s destruction, he had picked up telling signals. Those signals had matched others from the Third Battle for Mars. Those signals had indicated a broadcasting Web-Mind on Carme.