Battle Pod ds-3

by Vaughn Heppner

  By that time, the proton beam chewed through the particle shield in another area. As the damage-control teams sealed their magnetic clamps on their exoskeleton-suits, the proton beam smashed through new living quarters, the food processors and a warhead storage area and then it hit the fusion core directly.

  Several of the storage warheads exploded, pumping heat, radiation and x-rays into the guts of the ship. Ninety-five percent of ship personnel died then. The damage-control parties had greater protection in their suits. Unfortunately, for them, most already began to cook like meat in a pot. They died horribly, screaming in agony. A few managed to undo the magnetic clamps and die through vacuum exposure.

  The Ho Chi Minh did not explode in a ball of fire. In space battles, few such mighty ships died like that. The proton beam had done its task, but the people in Olympus Mons didn’t know it yet. So the technicians continued to aim the deadly beam at the dead battleship, repeatedly punching proton holes through the particle shield and into the vessel.

  * * *

  Seven minutes after Secretary-General Chavez gave the order, the first sections of the enemy battleship began to break apart.

  “We killed it, sir!” an officer shouted in glee.

  There were wild cheers. Three officers tossed their caps, hitting the ceiling with them. Marten cheered as heartily as the others did.

  “Target another ship,” Chavez ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” the targeting officer said. He tapped keys. Maybe he forgot something. Maybe he overloaded the makeshift coils. As the mighty cannon began to move to target a different vessel, something gave between the deep-core mine and the dynamos. The targeting officer barely hit the shutdown key in time.

  An ominous silence occurred, as the dynamos no longer whined with their loud noise. The rooms no longer trembled.

  “What’s wrong?” Chavez shouted.

  A technician in the other room looked through the glass partition. Her face was whiter than Major Diaz’s face.

  “Somebody tell me what’s wrong?” Chavez shouted.

  “The coils have melted,” the targeting officer whispered.

  “Fix them!” Chavez shouted.

  The targeting officer began to type keys.

  Speakers on the wall crackled into life. “The coils have fused.”

  “Fix them!” Chavez repeated.

  Though the glass partition, the tech nodded. “Yes, sir, we will, in about six weeks.”

  Stunned silence filled the room. The euphoria of seconds earlier had departed.

  “How is this possible?” Chavez asked in a choked voice.

  No one answered.

  “No,” Chavez whispered. “No. We had them.”

  Major Diaz stepped smartly forward. “If the proton beam is broken, we must flee. We must all flee.”

  Marten thought that a wise suggestion.

  Secretary-General Chavez looked up ashen-faced. “What’s the point of fleeing?”

  “The point is the Highborn,” Major Diaz said. “They didn’t let Social Unity have Mars before. Why will they let Social Unity have Mars now?”

  “Must we always rely on others?” Chavez asked dispiritedly.

  “No,” Marten said, stepping near. “You hit them, sir. You killed a battleship. Now keep your Planetary Union alive by staying alive.”

  “…I can no longer hide,” Chavez said.

  Marten laughed harshly. “Is that how you gained your freedom the first time?” He slapped his chest. “I’ve fought for my freedom all my life. I refused to surrender. You must now refuse to surrender. You did what you could. Now hide among your people and lead the struggle against Social Unity. Keep these vital technicians alive for the next time you rise out of the ashes of defeat. As long as you fight, you haven’t lost. But once you surrender your will, sir, everything is over. Do you have the courage to keep on fighting, Mr. Secretary-General?”

  Chavez blinked at Marten. Many of the officers stood open-mouthed, looking at the ex-shock trooper.

  “They’ll send drop-troops to take you alive,” Marten told those in the room. “You have to be gone by then. You tried to go down fighting, but the proton beam broke in the middle of your victory. They won’t laugh at you now, not with a battleship killed. They’ll fear you. Keep them afraid by keeping out of their clutches to fight another grueling guerilla campaign. Never surrender, never, never, never.”

  “…yes,” Chavez said slowly. “There is wisdom in your words.”

  “Even better,” Major Diaz said, “there is fire in his belly.”

  “Let’s go!” Marten shouted. “We likely don’t have much time.”

  * * *

  Marten was more right than he knew. The destruction of the Ho Chi Minh sent a shock wave through the Battlefleet. The warship’s sudden death caused Blackstone to scream orders.

  The Kim Philby accelerated at full speed for the planet. Toll Seven had a battle pod nearby and quickly launched it toward Mars. Three other ships maneuvered for a combat drop on Olympus Mons. Even in his aguish, Commodore Blackstone realized they needed that proton beam against the Highborn. With the Ho Chi Minh’s destruction, they needed that beam more than ever. He could have ordered a saturation nuking of the giant volcano. Instead, he screamed orders for the volcano’s capture, and he screamed to pump out lead aerogels to they didn’t lose more ships to that beam.

  SU drop-troops and cyborgs donned battlesuits and then climbed into their drop shells. Machines and drop specialists used electronic trolleys to roll the drop-shells into firing position. Usually, a mass combat-drop from space took days of careful calculations. Precise entry points into the atmosphere were prefigured. Orbital spin, gravity, atmospheric density, wind velocity and other factors were each studied in detail. Today, there was no time for that. The selected ships roared for the entry point and then they braked hard.

  The Kim Philby was the first to reach the upper atmosphere. It was a mine-laying ship but could second as a drop-assault vessel. At high speed, it entered an insertion orbit. Then, like an old-fashioned soldier with a bolt-action rifle, the ship loaded its tube, fired, worked the bolt, chambered another shell and fired. One after another, the drop-shells slammed into the thin atmosphere and screamed down at the immensely vast, waiting volcano below.

  * * *

  OD12 blinked in growing perplexity. She lay in a battlesuit and in a drop-shell, surrounded by combat equipment. That shell was on a conveyer. The conveyer jerked and from somewhere OD12 heard a BANG! And her shell trembled.

  She knew from a thousand simulations that the BANG was from the ship firing a drop-shell at a planet. The shudder came from the same source. What had her perplexed was her luck. Until now, it had all been bad. She would not have been a cyborg unless her luck was horrible. After inserting jacks into the prisoners, she had been certain that a new, awful worsening of her fate would soon begin.

  It had been difficult these last few hours standing in a roomful of cyborgs. They had all stood motionless and expressionless. None had shown boredom because likely none of them had been bored. Likely, none of them had possessed stray thoughts. They waited for instructions. Essentially, they had all been dead. No emotions, no boredom, no worry, no questions—they were good cyborgs waiting for Toll Seven. OD12 had stood among them, realizing that she was not a good cyborg. She was a bad cyborg, a bored cyborg and full of questions and changing emotions. She had known elation, joy, a chaffing of spirit, depression and then a growing sense of dread of what would happen next.

  She had not wanted to enter Web-Mind. It would immediately know that her internal computer was damaged. Web-Mind would demand a new censor program. It might even demand she be deleted.

  That had not happened. Instead, she had floated into the Kim Philby and waited longer. Then klaxons had wailed and she and other cyborgs had run to don battlesuits for an attack on Mars.

  BANG!

  In her drop-shell, OD12 jerked nearer the firing tube.

  BANG!

  Her sto
mach churned, which should have been impossible. She was a cyborg. No. I am Osadar Di. I am alive and I am going to escape Web-Mind.

  A metallic clack occurred, the sound was loud and very near. She felt herself lifted and shoved somewhere and realized she was in the firing tube now. Seconds ticked by.

  BANG! BANG!

  The acceleration was brutal and badly jarred her. She lost her breath. She tried to think. Then weightlessness struck and everything seemed so peaceful. She knew that she was over the Red Planet.

  The beautiful Red Planet, the one I love.

  OD12—no, I am Osadar Di. Within the drop-shell, Osadar Di grinned. It was hard with her plastic-featured face, but she did it.

  She dropped toward Mars, toward Olympus Mons. They were supposed to kill or capture everyone on the volcano and in it. Compared to the attack on the moon, this was going to be a mass drop, with every available cyborg and SU drop-soldier. The volcano had greater mass and size then both the Martian moons combined.

  Because she was tougher than humans, her drop-shell fell fast. In a heavy atmosphere like Earth, her shell would have deployed successive chutes to slow her descent. But that made little sense in the thin Martian atmosphere because of lesser friction. Yet there was friction. Her shell pushed the thin Martian air ahead of it. That caused heat. The heat transferred to the shell and might have soon cooked Osadar Di.

  The drop-shells were made, however, to shed skin as they heated. The hot skin joined the atmosphere instead of transferring its heat to the deeper ‘skins’ and eventually to Osadar Di. Inside the shell, Osadar felt the skins shedding. It caused her drop-shell to wobble. If it wobbled too much and flipped over, she would be in trouble. Either the pilot of the Kim Philby had known what he was doing or more blind luck had helped Osadar. Her shell wobbled. The wobbling increased and then slowly began to stabilize.

  At that point, the last skin blew away and Osadar was freefalling toward the giant volcano. She had reached Martian terminal velocity, and that was too fast. She plunged through ice-crystal clouds and saw the vast base of Olympus Mons. She also saw the crater, her objective. Her computer told her she was going to miss the crater by twenty kilometers and land on the volcano’s side.

  Instead of chutes, Osadar Di wore a modified jetpack similar to those worn by Free Earth Corps Hawk Teams. It took constant practice to use jetpacks correctly. Until this moment, Osadar had never used a real jetpack. However, she had practiced this type of drop over a hundred times in the Web-Mind simulator. She knew what to do, and she did so now.

  She blasted the jetpack to slow her descent. In another life, she had been a first-rated pilot. So not only had she trained in the simulator doing this, but in her old life she’d loved this type of work. With the surfacing of her memories and emotions, the love emerged and gave her artistry.

  As Olympus Mons raced up toward her, Osadar glanced around. Other cyborgs used their jetpacks. One, however, must have had a wobbling shell that had flipped. That cyborg plunged headfirst toward Mars.

  Osadar wondered why the cyborg didn’t shift and assume a flying position to work himself upright. Then she wondered if something had happened to his internal computer. Had he regained enough of his old self that he now committed suicide? It was a sad thought, sobering and completely understandable. Not that she would commit suicide. As rotten as life was, she planned to live it to the very end, come what may.

  Osadar blasted jetpack air again, using more thrust. The plunging cyborg now used his jetpack, but he used it to speed his descent, not slow it.

  That brought a strange elation to Osadar. The Web-Mind could make more than one mistake. Or it was possible for the universe to sustain more than one glitch that went against the cold minds from Neptune. Did it follow therefore that it was possible to defeat Web-Mind and its cyborg soldiers? Osadar found that doubtful. Maybe she should simply be happy with her rebellion and call it a victory.

  She thrust again, and had managed to shift nearer the crater.

  She would not call it victory, this continued self-awareness. She would strive against Web-Mind’s goals. Yes, she would use this piece of good luck and she would extract every ounce of pleasure from it that she could. Therefore, she must plot to remain free of Web-Mind. The question was how.

  Yes… how?

  Osadar Di’s longish, metallic-plastic head twitched within her helmet. She had no more time for conjecture. The suicidal cyborg hit with a splat, becoming a smear on Olympus Mons.

  Osadar judged this to a nicety as she examined the vast cannon aimed at the pink sky. At precisely the right moment, she hit the thrust button and held it down. She passed the crater wall until she hit hard, but not as hard as against Phobos. She made a perfect two-point landing. Then she shed the jetpack and lifted a laser carbine. A metallic line from it snaked to a heavy laser-pack on her back. She charged with other landing cyborgs for the entrance to the proton cannon’s turret.

  -23-

  The cyborgs dropped hard, using jetpacks, shedding them upon landing and bounding for the vast structure that housed the proton-beam cannon.

  The human drop-troops used incredibly huge, multiple chutes, which only had minimal effect. They also used jetpacks at the end, although they lacked the cyborgs’ skill. Too many of them broke legs, arms, necks or their ribs. Too many of them tore their suits. Their breathers still worked, at least most of the time. But because the Martian atmosphere lacked an ozone layer, their skin would severely burn if exposed to direct sunlight for very long.

  The cyborgs moved with insect-like speed. Once inside the volcano, they tangled any Martian Unionist, and they worked down the vast network of elevators, levels, rooms and chambers. If a Mars Rebel fired a shot before the cyborgs captured him or her, red laser-beams cut them down. If the Rebel seemed to be in the act of sabotage, he died even faster.

  Much lower down in Olympus Mons, Marten, Omi, Major Diaz and Secretary-General Chavez rode a magnetic lift for the skimmer garage. Other military officers rode with them. It was quiet in the lift as each exhausted man was absorbed with his personal sorrow.

  They would have been gone long ago, but running the proton beam earlier had burned out more than just a few coils. In many places, the lifts didn’t work. In other places, the lack of working lights meant stygian darkness. Olympus Mons was vast. The men had raced through kilometers of empty corridors before finding this operational lift.

  The lift now slowed and the doors swished opened. “Go!” shouted Marten.

  The others were exhausted from running. They walked quickly, but none of them ran for their lives.

  Omi traded glances with Marten. Then the bullet-headed Korean sidled near. “If we wait too long to escape, we’re dead,” Omi whispered.

  The garage was huge, with a twenty-foot ceiling. It had long ago been blasted out of the volcano, with volcanic pillars instead of concrete stanchions. Crates, equipment, spare parts and tunnel machinery were everywhere. At the far end near the outer doors, almost out of sight, were parked skimmers and other EVA vehicles. The lights were low and the air was cold.

  “We must hurry,” Marten told the others.

  The thin Martians trotted for five minutes and then slowed back to a fast walk. They had been moving for some time. Most breathed heavily and despite the cold, sweat soaked their garments.

  Far behind them, the lift doors opened.

  Omi hissed. Marten turned, and his eyes grew huge.

  Able to cover ground many times faster than a human and with extreme stamina, three cyborgs made incredible, bounding leaps for the Martians. The three lacked helmets. Their polished metal faces combined with shiny black plastic and fleshy components horrified Marten.

  “What are those?” Omi whispered.

  Marten yanked Omi behind a huge crate. “This way,” he whispered. He crawled along the volcanic floor, using crates, machinery and more crates to try to ambush those things.

  None of the Martians had looked back. They were too absorbed with their fati
gue. Then something must have alerted them. Diaz shouted a warming.

  The cyborgs moved fast and they brought up their arms in a blur. Chugging sounds emitted from their short-barreled tanglers. Glistening black eggs sped at the humans. Sticky tangle-threads webbed individual officers. Shouting hoarsely, the officers thudded hard. Two hit their heads and they were knocked unconscious.

  The cyborgs shot another volley of the glistening black tangle-eggs. From hiding, Marten and Omi opened fire. For three seconds, their explosive bullets shredded uniforms, metal, plastic and flesh, but the cyborgs kept coming.

  “What are they?” Omi shouted.

  “Keep firing!” Marten hissed.

  Then tangle-eggs caught Marten and Omi and it was over. One of the cyborgs landed by them, kicked away their long-barrels and scanned the vast garage.

  “Who are you?” Omi asked.

  “Silence,” the cyborg said.

  It dragged Marten and Omi to the others, where two more cyborgs stood.

  The computer-like voice reminded Marten of Blake, the Bioram Taw2 that had run his old Tunnel Crawler Six in Sydney, Australian Sector. Marten knew that Blake would have been a cold-hearted killer if given a chance. Maybe it was the same with these horrors.

  The cyborgs exchanged glances. One of them bounded away, leaving two of them behind.

  The nearest cyborg stood motionless. The second cyborg scanned the garage. It seemed to be searching for something. That cyborg almost seemed agitated. Then it crouched beside the Martian officers.

  The first cyborg now watched the second one. “The specimens are secure,” the first cyborg said.

  “Why are they so emaciated?” the second cyborg asked.

  The first cyborg froze. Then its longish head cocked to the left. “Your question… it indicates—” The first cyborg aimed its tangler at the second cyborg. “There is a seventy-eight percent probability that your query stems from emotive reasons. You must immediately head to the rendezvous point and ask for a diagnostic check.”