It was then that Corporal Bess O’Connor of the former Phobos moon-station had logged a blip of a lightguide message. With it, the SU commander of the former moon-station had launched hunter-killer missiles after the Thutmosis III. Phobos no longer existed. Highborn asteroid busters had destroyed the Martian moon during the battle. As a final quirk of fate, one of the deceased moon’s hunter-killers had struck the Thutmosis III long after Phobos’ destruction. The strike had killed eighty percent of the Thutmosis III’s crew and crippled the missile-ship.
For many harrowing months afterward, the Praetor and the last survivors had labored intensely to effect repairs. Their problems had nearly been unsolvable, as the Thutmosis III had sped from Mars under terrific velocity. The hunter-killer had struck the ship before it had begun deceleration.
With the horribly damaged engines, the Thutmosis III had been unable to decelerate. For everyone aboard ship, it had looked hopeless. Unable to brake, the ship would leave the Solar System like a bullet fired from an inter-solar rifle. The crew would die hundreds maybe even a thousand AUs out of the Solar System of old age, starvation or asphyxiation.
The Praetor had taken their one chance, repairing the damaged engines enough to dare nudge the ship in a path toward distant Uranus. During the journey there, they had labored around the clock, taking stims to keep alert. Using the distant gas giant’s gravity-well as a pivoting post and engaging the engines for a greater length of time, the Praetor had redirected the ship at an angle toward Jupiter. He had also managed to decelerate the vessel slightly.
The vast orbital paths of the Outer Planets gas giants and the extreme distances between them meant that a shallow curve could achieve this last hope.
Now the ship sped toward the largest planet in the Solar System. Unlike the Mayflower that had headed from the Inner Planets outward, the Thutmosis III headed from the Outer Planets inward. It was the reason why the much slower Mayflower had reached Jupiter before the much faster moving Thutmosis III.
The Praetor sat in his command chair on the bridge. It was one of the least damaged sections of the ship. The Praetor had become gaunt this last year. He had washed-out pink eyes, a wide face and a strange demeanor, which had been made stranger by a long and steady diet of stims. There was the tiniest tic now under his left eye.
The modules around him were empty and the bridge lights were dim. A constant whine sounded in the background. It came from deep inside the ship, from its tortured fusion engines. At times, the whine climbed an octave. Whenever that occurred, the tic under his left eye became more pronounced.
The Praetor pushed his big head against the rest of his command chair. Jupiter neared. Soon now, he would retire to the acceleration couches. He would strap in. They would engage the engines and hope the repairs held. If they didn’t—
The Praetor shuddered and closed his eyes. That made the tic under his left eye more visible as it jerked the loose skin there. The Praetor had lost weight as concern had stolen his appetite. He would face anyone or anything man-to-man or chest-to-chest. Nothing in the universe frightened him physically. Give him a foe to battle—
His eyes snapped open. Anger filled his face. Grand Admiral Cassius had given him this command post.
The Praetor’s nostrils flared. “I won the Third Battle for Mars,” he whispered. “It was my missiles that opened up the enemy to the Doom Star lasers.”
His upper lip curled, and he gazed into some unseen distance. “You shall not steal my victory from me, Cassius. I’m coming back. You can count on that.”
A strange laugh bubbled from his throat. He shivered, and he was unaware that he did so. When the Thutmosis III had hurdled out of the Solar System—
The Praetor closed his eyes again. He had never understood loneliness until then. The idea of his ship rocketing outside of the Solar System and into the emptiness of space—the void was a thing, a beast that had spread in his soul. It had smothered courage, smothered daring and intellect alike. Shooting outside the Solar System, alone, with no hope of seeing Earth again, with—
“Enough,” the Praetor whispered.
He moistened his mouth and forced himself to study the faint holoimage before him. His great enemy was velocity, speed. He had built up great speed while circling the Sun. Now he needed to shed that speed. A small part of him was tempted to aim directly at Jupiter and crash into it. That would end the agony. That would end the loneliness that he’d felt while hurtling toward Uranus, unsure whether the barely-repaired engines could slow them enough as they whipped past the gas giant.
If this didn’t work—
“It will work,” he rumbled. He lifted a fist and hit the arm of his command chair. In the past, he would have struck hard and forcefully. Now, it was a feeble gesture. The loneliness, the emptiness of deep space—
Why did such loneliness exist?
“Are you afraid?” he whispered at himself. “Are you a coward, Praetor? Or will you survive so you can spit in Grand Admiral Cassius’s face?”
That was the antidote to his worries—anger, injustice and revenge. He must cling to them. No, he must gird himself with anger, with the sense of injustice committed against him and with thoughts of vengeance. He must buckle them like armor against the awfulness that lurked out there in the empty void of space.
Soon, he must engage the engines. He would have to time it right, letting Jupiter’s vast gravity-well help slow them. The engines and gravity-well needed to slow the ship to less than Jupiter’s escape velocity.
Could they do it? Could the badly damaged ship stand the strain? And if they did it, what awaited him in the Jupiter System?
That was the least of the Praetor’s worries. He was Highborn. The pathetic Social Unity humans had joined with cyborgs. Those cyborgs had proven deadly. A Doom Star had died. But neither cyborgs nor Homo sapiens had proven tough enough to face the Highborn and survive.
The Praetor laughed as he pushed out of the command chair. If he could halt the Thutmosis III, he knew what he’d do in the Jupiter System. He would conquer it for the Highborn. He would show the ranking warriors of the Master Race that he was greater than Grand Admiral Cassius. With a crippled ship, he would conquer a planetary system. What Highborn had ever achieved that?
The facial tic quivered as the background engine whine rose an octave. First, he needed to shed the ship’s velocity. Soon, the survivors would strap onto the acceleration couches as they made their last attempt to survive in the Solar System.
If the engines failed, or if it looked as if they might fail, then he would aim the Thutmosis III at Jupiter. Or he would crash the ship into a human vessel or into an orbiting habitat. If he was about to die, he would try to kill as much of the universe as he could. Why he felt this way, he had no idea. He just knew it would make him feel better killing others if he himself wasn’t going to be allowed to live.
-3-
When the Mayflower exploded, Marten, Omi and Osadar had already been moving away from it in the stolen pod.
With their head start and by accelerating at full thrust, they outran any appreciable heat damage. Heat from a nuclear explosion in space had the shortest kill-radius of the three dangers. It also helped that the pod’s exhaust nozzle was aimed at the blast. A heat shield between the exhaust and the inhabitable quarters of the pod dampened what might have otherwise proven fatal.
The EMP blast washed over the pod’s electronics and fused several key functions, including life-support. It also knocked out engine control, which didn’t really matter as the most critical damage came from a piece of shrapnel. The size of an Old Earth penny, the jagged shrapnel sliced through the pod’s exhaust. Then it sliced through the heat shield and the engine. Lastly, it ricocheted out of the pod, barely missing the command chamber.
The penny-sized piece of shrapnel damaged a heat coil, causing the engine overload. Luckily, although ship engine controls were fused, the emergency detachment sequence wasn’t. It activated and began the procedure. With a shudder,
the engine-half of the pod separated from the forward compartments, but both halves still possessed the same heading and velocity. Fortunately, the pod designers had considered that possibility.
A red strobe-light washed the command chamber as a klaxon wailed.
“Hang on!” shouted Osadar.
All three of them had already sealed their vacc-suits. Thus, they spoke via radio.
The command chamber shook as a non-lethal blast violently separated the pod. Emergency hydrogen-thrust now accelerated them away from the engine compartment. Fifty seconds later and through the polarized window, Marten caught a glimpse of a white flash.
They waited. The explosion had obviously created shrapnel, shrapnel that could possibly destroy their compartment.
After two minutes had elapsed, Marten said over their helmet radios, “It looks like we made it.”
“Yes. Harmony has been achieved,” Osadar said from the pilot’s chair. “We are sealed in a speeding coffin, doomed to certain death.”
Marten made a harsh sound. “I’ve been in worse situations. We’re alive. We’ve escaped a wretched fate and now must rely on our wits to survive.”
“Fate haunts you,” Osadar said. “Whatever you do, you are doomed.”
“You’re wrong,” Marten said. “Political Harmony Corps, Highborn, cyborgs, everyone has had their shot at me. I’m still alive and now we’re in the Jupiter System, not lost between Mercury and Venus. We should be able to rig a distress beacon.”
“To call more cyborgs onto us,” Osadar said.
“Do cyborgs control the entire system?” Omi asked.
“You’d think we would have picked that up on our radio during the journey here,” Marten said. “There would have been fighting. But we’ve heard nothing about that.”
“Yet they are in the Jupiter System,” said Osadar. “They possess Jovian warships.”
“One less than before,” Marten said, with a curl to his lip.
“Never fear. More will come. It is inevitable.”
Marten squinted at Osadar. Listening to her, he hardened his resolve to do something. He began to examine the tiny command chamber. Soon, he’d torn off half the panels to see if he could fix something. They needed to recycle the air in their vacc-suits, to find a way to open the hatch—this crazy pod didn’t have manual override. What ship designer had left that out? What did that say about the Jovians? Had some of them really allied with cyborgs?
A sea of stars glittered outside the speeding coffin, as Osadar had called it. Jupiter was behind them. Marten could no longer see the gas giant. Sixty-three different asteroids and large moons made up this system, all orbiting Jupiter.
There. Marten could make out a yellow moon. It had to be Io, the one that spewed sulfur dioxide into space.
During the trip here, he’d studied the Mayflower’s computer files, reading what it had on the Jupiter System. He’d also questioned Osadar.
Jupiter had a Confederation made up of unequal members. Of the four Galilean moons—the biggest moons in the system—Io orbited the gas giant the closest. Io received massive doses of radiation. An unshielded person would receive 3,600 rems a day. Five hundred rems over a few days brought death.
Jupiter spewed radiation and heat, twice as much heat as it received from the Sun. Anyone living on Io needed constant protection. Jupiter’s massive gravitation and proximity and the gravity from nearby Europa and Ganymede pulled and pushed at Io. The planetary body constantly stretched like a rubber band. That friction heated the insides of Io enough to create the most active volcanoes in the Solar System. It also created permanent lava lakes. Those lakes were Io’s prized possession. Fissionable materials spewed up from the moon’s core. Those fissionables helped feed the system’s reactors. It meant that lava miners on floating platforms and under harsh radioactive conditions made up the majority of Io’s population.
The second Galilean moon—Europa—also received massive amounts of radiation, five hundred and forty rems a day. Ice one-hundred kilometers thick covered the surface, with liquid water below. The ice mantle made Europa the smoothest planetary body in the Solar System.
While staring at Io, Marten wondered if the pod had enough radiation shielding. He shook his head. How did it help him worrying about that now? He had to fix the air-recycler first, attach water and waste tubes to their vacc-suits. If he failed, they would die in less than a day.
Marten went back to the panels and began to work.
***
Three days later, Marten sat back in despair. They had air, but no extra water and their suit’s disposal systems were near their limit. His stomach growled. He was hungry and tired. According to his best estimate, they had traveled at least twenty-one thousand kilometers from the cyborg-infested dreadnaught.
Omi floated near the sealed hatch. Osadar sat in the pilot’s chair, staring out of the window.
Marten picked up a calibrating wrench. He had to keep trying.
“What’s that?” Osadar whispered.
It took Marten several seconds to respond. “What do you see?”
Osadar pointed at the window.
“Stars?” asked Marten.
Osadar swiveled in the pilot’s chair. Behind her helmet’s visor, she had an elongated face that suited her elongated body. Her arms and legs were titanium girders with hydraulic joints, presently hidden by her vacc-suit. Silver sockets cupped black plastic eyes, with tiny red dots for pupils.
Marten recalled that cyborgs had enhanced vision.
Osadar faced the window again. “There is a flare of light. A vessel is braking, likely matching velocities with us. That means the cyborgs have found us.”
With his heart beating faster, Marten floated toward the window. He saw nothing but stars. Wait, far in the distance, one of the stars pulsed the slightest bit.
“Do you wish me to kill you?” Osadar asked.
“Listen to her,” Omi said hoarsely.
“I entered the conversion machine,” Osadar told him. “It peels off your skin, removes organs—”
“No!” Marten said. “We keep fighting.”
“Once you’re on the conveyer,” said Osadar, “you will wish you had chosen otherwise.”
“If it comes to that, Omi can shoot me.”
“You are mere humans,” said Osadar, “with pathetic human reflexes. Once you decide to shoot each other, you will already be tangled and on your way to conversion.”
“You’re depressed,” Marten said. “You know what helps me get out of my depression?”
“Yes, your inability to correctly assess reality.”
“I get angry. I get angry with people or cyborgs trying to use me. I’ve learned you have to bend sometimes. You do it, waiting for your one opportunity to strike back.”
“Bravado is useless against the cyborgs,” said Osadar.
“The cyborgs lost on Mars,” Marten said.
“That was a minor setback,” Osadar said. “Social Unity and the Highborn are even more doomed now than before the Battle for Mars.”
“That’s an odd way to look at it.”
Osadar shook her head. “I believe the Highborn have frightened the Neptunian Web-Mind. That will make it even more ruthless than before.”
“How could that be possible?” Marten asked.
Osadar stared into space.
Marten glanced back at Omi. Omi shrugged. Marten studied the dot. It seemed brighter than before, making his gut twist. More cyborgs—he had no idea how to defeat them this time.
Osadar spoke again. “I do not know how, Marten Kluge. But I know that whatever the cyborgs have decided to do, it will be to destroy the Highborn. A sense of fear will compel them.”
“Can computers fear?”
“They are not computers, but symbiotic creatures of flesh and machine. Beings of any kind are always more dangerous when they fear their enemy, for then they fight with the ruthlessness of terror.”
Fear bit into Marten as the bloom of starry brightness be
gan to turn into a spaceship. How could he defeat the cyborgs a second time? He had no idea.
-4-
The ship was a small asteroid or a large meteor. To Marten, staring out of the pod’s window, it seemed as if someone had magnetized the inter-solar rock. Then that someone had brushed it over a planetary junkyard. Pipes, tanks, tubes, missile-clusters, engine-exhausts, globes and other assorted junk stuck to it. He suspected that the life-supporting chambers were buried in the center of the meteor. Instead of adding particle shields to a regular ship, the builders had started with a tiny asteroid and added to it.
Using his handscanner, he studied the ship’s dimensions. It was smaller than the Rousseau had been.
“A Thales-class vessel,” Osadar said. “They were being phased out before the war with Social Unity thirteen years ago. The near total annihilation of the Jovian expeditionary fleet returned them to favor.”
“That makes it a military vessel.”
“And therefore the probability is ninety percent that it is under cyborg control,” Osadar said.
Marten bit his lip as his gut curled. They had nothing to fight with but two Gauss needlers. He hated the helpless feeling. He should have recharged the portable plasma cannon.
“I’m picking up something on my headphones,” Omi said. “They’re asking if anyone is alive.”
“Do not answer,” Osadar said.
“Should we just sit here and die until our vacc-suits give out?” Marten asked. “Answer them.”
“You will regret it,” Osadar said.
Doom Star: Book 04 - Cyborg Assault Page 3