Star Fortress ds-6 Read online

  It took time climbing down the jagged hill and time to cross the lunar plain. Marten kept thinking how the asteroid used to orbit Saturn. That disturbed him, and he wasn’t sure why.

  With their gyrocs trained on the dome, Marten’s group neared the low-built structure. Behind followed others, Osadar’s group bringing a plasma cannon.

  They crept from behind a large boulder. The dome was silvery in the starlight, and its destruction was more apparent, with gouges everywhere, shell craters. Three metallic lumps showed were laser-turrets had stood and melted. Debris littered the valley floor, a junkyard of slagged metal, old weapons and corpses from the fight two years ago.

  “What a horrible time,” Marten said, thinking about the battle onto their planet-wrecker. Was this the same one? He didn’t know and had forgotten to ask Felix.

  Omi grunted over the headphones as he followed Felix toward the dome.

  “What’s wrong?” Marten radioed.

  “I’ve a bad feeling about this,” Omi said.

  “Ambush?” asked Marten.

  “Maybe,” the Korean said.

  Marten rechecked his weapon, sliding it open to study the shell. He motioned the others to follow, and signaled: be careful.

  He stepped over slagged metal the size of a helmet and avoided an old missile casing. His boots put prints in the dust. All the while, he checked his suit’s sensors and watched the ground for telltale signs of booby-traps.

  With a pounding heart, Marten squeezed through an opening into the dome. He flicked on his helmet-lamp. The beam played over fused machines and endless debris on the floor. Ahead, Omi’s group and Felix moved from place to place, with weapons ready.

  Giant Felix pointed ahead to a door. Omi nodded and signaled Marten. Unlatching his tether, Marten shoved off and drifted toward them, with the gyroc aimed at the hatch. Something felt wrong, bad wrong.

  Felix readied his hand-cannon as he reached for the handle.

  Marten wanted to shout a warning.

  The door opened and Felix’s lamp-beam stabbed into the darkness. The Highborn moved in. Marten followed and grunted in shock.

  Dead Highborn in breached combat-armor lay on the floor. Most had smashed helmets. All gripped weapons. He counted seven. Some of the equipment around them was smashed. The rest looked useable.

  “What happened?” Omi radioed.

  Marten glanced at Felix. The Highborn stood very still, his lamp-beam centered on one dead Highborn in particular.

  “Look at this,” Nadia said. She picked up a wrist with a hand attached. It was skeletal, with titanium-reinforcement showing in places.

  Felix’s lamp-beam swiveled around, spotlighting Nadia’s find. “Cyborg,” the Highborn growled. “The cyborgs were here.”

  Marten turned fast, kneeling, raising his rifle at the door. He feared to see cyborgs pour in.

  The others didn’t seem as worried. “It looks like the cyborgs landed and killed your men,” Omi was saying.

  “Observe their glory,” Felix said proudly. “They died fighting and they took some of the enemy with them. What more can a man ask of the universe than to live as he desires? Come, we must continue searching.”

  “Are the cyborgs still here?” Marten asked.

  “If they were,” Felix said, “they would have attacked by now.”

  Marten wasn’t so certain.

  They searched the rest of the dome and then continued outside. The planet-wrecker had taken greater damage than the one Marten had conquered nearly two years ago. Most of the domes were thoroughly smashed inside and the giant engine within the asteroid was a slagged heap. Osadar believed an Ultra-laser had beamed directly through the massive port. Most of the defensive laser-turrets were molten lumps.

  “I wonder how near the Sun it orbited,” Nadia said later. “That might explain the uniformly melted state of the turrets.”

  They found another eleven dead Highborn in the tunnel systems. Apparently, the cyborgs had scoured the asteroid, hunting Felix’s fellow Ultraists.

  Later, they found the shuttles in a hidden hanger. Cyborgs had gutted both spaceships.

  In his armor, Felix turned toward a nearby tunnel wall. He stared fixedly at it as if he’d been turned to stone.

  “He morns his comrades,” Marten radioed Nadia. “Back away from him. They don’t like anyone seeing them like this.

  “Felix,” Marten radioed. “I will be in the command chamber of the first dome. When you’re ready, I ask that you join us there.”

  There was no response. They left Felix of the Ninth Iron Cohort to his grief.

  Marten, Omi and Osadar walked to the ruined dome. They began repairs in the chamber with the seven Highborn dead. More of the equipment was workable than they’d first believed. Soon, several of the systems came online.

  “These tachyon receivers are more sophisticated than ours,” Marten said. “The cyborgs don’t like being surprised.”

  From Osadar’s comments, it had become clear this was old cyborg equipment.

  “These thermal sensors,” Omi said, “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  Omi sat at a screen, adjusting the sensor sets so they worked in unison. After Omi flipped an activation switch, a light began blinking on a screen. Marten hurried near.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “I think it’s inert, a rock or another asteroid.”

  Marten sat down on the second chair. “I’m surprised the sensors even showed it. Look, the albedo is two percent.”

  “I’ve never heard of an albedo so low,” Omi said.

  That struck a chord in Marten. “That must be the cyborg craft.”

  Omi squinted through his visor. “The thing is drifting toward the Sun.”

  “Compute the drift,” Marten said.

  Omi did. “It’s going to pass near the Sun Station.” He turned to Marten. “Do you think the cyborgs tortured the Highborn, learning about it from them?”

  “The cyborgs have altered agents everywhere,” Felix said, entering the chamber. “They are even on Earth. We must take it as a given the cyborgs know about the Sun Station and will attempt its capture.”

  “We must alert the Highborn there,” Omi said.

  “Agreed,” Marten said.

  “No,” Felix said. “If we do, Maximus wins, because we will have given away our position. We will never sneak aboard the Sun Station then.”

  “We’ll use a communications drone to send the message,” Marten said, “catapulting it from the surface. We’ll do that on the other side of the asteroid as the cyborg ship.”

  “That gives the cyborgs more time to do whatever it is they’re doing than if we broadcast the message now,” Omi said.

  “That’s a problem,” Marten agreed. “So we’d better get the drone on its way as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  They monitored the stealth-ship until it disappeared from their dome’s screen. Just before that occurred, Ah Chen detected something else.

  She brought the file to the patrol boat, where Marten, Felix and Osadar studied it.

  “Notice this dark piece of mass leaving the main ship,” Osadar said.

  “What is its composition?” Felix asked.

  “Unknown,” Osadar said.

  “The cyborgs used ice-pods against the Highborn during the Third Battle for Mars,” Marten said.

  “This mass is not ice,” Osadar said. “Otherwise, this near the Sun, it would act like a comet and produce a visible tail.”

  “Whatever it is,” Marten said, “it is low albedo stealth-material. We have to include that in our data packet.” They had catapulted a drone and waited for it to reach a good distance before they sent the information.

  “When are we beaming the data?” Osadar asked.

  “Twenty hours,” Marten said.

  Osadar shook her head. “The Highborn need to know now in order to prepare.”

  Marten pushed up from his chair, floating across the cabin. He reached a wall a
nd pushed back the other way. As he floated, Marten shook his head. “This is all about timing, right?”

  “It’s about defeating the cyborgs,” Osadar said.

  “No,” Felix rumbled. “This is about victory. Make your broadcast in a day. Then we must use your boat and attack the enemy’s stealth-ship.”

  “Attack?” asked Marten.

  “Haven’t you studied the enemy’s methods?” Felix asked. “They use their ships like a machine gun, firing stealth-capsules at critical objectives. How many cyborgs will they use to capture the Sun Station? Logic dictates all of them, or nearly all. Very well, because they’ve emptied their ship, we will now storm and capture it for ourselves. Your Jovian boat lacks shielding to move near the Sun. The stealth-ship must surely be better shielded. With it, we will attack and storm the station.”

  Marten stared at the Highborn. When he realized that Felix meant what he said, Marten snorted in disbelief.

  “Has anyone stormed a cyborg vessel before?” Felix asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Marten said.

  “They won’t be expecting it.”

  “It’s insane,” Omi muttered.

  “So is the extinction of humanity,” Marten said, deciding he would show as much guts or more than the Highborn. “We have space marines and we’re the experts at fighting cyborgs. We beat them once in the Jovian System.”

  “Yes, by attacking at ten-to-one odds or better,” Omi said. “We always took massive causalities, remember? Here, we have thirty men—thirty!”

  “And a Highborn,” Felix said.

  “Right,” said Marten. “We’ll turn the tables on the cyborgs and do to them as they’ve been doing to everyone else. I like it.”

  “I wouldn’t count on success,” Osadar said.

  “It’s better than being fried to death in the Sun’s radiation in our patrol boat,” Marten said.

  Omi shrugged. “As long we’re not caught and turned into cyborgs, I’ll go.”

  “All life is a risk,” Marten said.

  “Spoken like a Highborn,” Felix said.

  “No,” Marten said. “Spoken like a man who’s willing to die for his freedom.”

  Felix’s face tightened. Then he nodded curtly. “As long as we kill cyborgs, I am content. Are we agreed?”

  Marten looked around. By their expressions, no one else liked the idea. Marten nodded anyway. “Yeah, we’re agreed.”

  -8-

  Across the Solar System in the Vladimir Lenin, Supreme Commander Hawthorne endured hard deceleration as the fleet approached the Neptune System.

  Hawthorne lay on an acceleration couch on the bridge. It was apart from the command module that Blackstone used—Hawthorne didn’t want to interfere with the Commodore’s regular functions. A large monitor hung above the Supreme Commander and pressure-pads lay near his fingers.

  Presently, blue Neptune filled the monitor’s screen. The ice giant possessed thirteen moons. The outer six were irregular satellites. The last two—Psamathe and Neso—had the largest orbits of any moon in the Solar System. Each took twenty-five years to orbit Neptune. Of the two moons, Psamathe was presently on the other side of Neptune, while Neso was far away in the direction of the southern pole. Each moon had a highly eccentric orbit.

  Unlike those orbits, the Alliance Fleet had traveled within the Solar System’s ecliptic: the path most of the planets followed along the Sun’s equator. Even out here, the Sun’s gravity ruled the planetary motions because of its dominating mass—the Sun accounted for ninety-nine point eight-six percent of the total mass of the Solar System.

  Triton was the biggest Neptunian moon. It was the seventh largest moon, and the sixteenth largest object, in the Solar System. It was slightly bigger than the dwarf planet Pluto. Triton comprised more than ninety-nine point five percent of the mass orbiting Neptune, meaning it dominated the other moons in terms of gravitational effect.

  The Neptunian System had been colonized about a century ago from Uranus. Before the cyborgs, there had been habitats here constructed of weird ice, orbiting Neptune at whatever distance the original buyers had desired. Some of the habs had been built within the rings of Neptune. Others orbited hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the surface. Some of the richest capitalists had constructed floating villas in Neptune’s highest atmosphere. By heating vast hydrogen balloons, large masses had been suspended underneath. Because of the distance from the planet’s core, the occupants in the floating villas had enjoyed near one G of gravity. Jupiter had lacked such floating cities because its size made the escape velocity too high and because of the gas giant’s intense radiation.

  Like Jupiter, however, the richest capitalists had launched robotic aerostats into the atmosphere. The floating machines gathered or “mined” deuterium and helium-3. Both fuels fed fusion reactors, giving the planetary system the needed power for the endless projects.

  Despite the many habitats, the floating cities and various moon-bases, the largest industrial and population concentration had always been on Triton. It was one of three moons in the Solar System with an atmosphere. Its mass gave it an appreciable gravity and the subsurface ammonia/water seas provided one of the critical components for human life. Triton was cryogenic and was therefore rich with geothermal energy. Most of Neptune’s banks had headquartered on Triton, as well as the core military establishments.

  By studying the enemy’s past behavior, Hawthorne and the Highborn admirals agreed that the concentration of cyborg strength would likely be on Triton. To ensure that the main enemy fleet came out and engaged, they had agreed the fleet must eventually drive for a primary objective. In this instance: Triton.

  The strategic objective was presently on the other side of Neptune. Basic military caution mandated keeping a planetary body between the enemy strength and the decelerating ships. Deceleration was a vulnerable time, allowing little latitude for maneuvers and signaling one’s presence with hot fusion exhaust.

  These and other thoughts passed through Hawthorne as he lay on the acceleration couch. By his side, his fingers twitched across the pressure-pads, changing the pictures on the monitor.

  Nereid appeared—it was the nearest of Neptune’s satellites to the fleet. It orbited an average of five-and-half million kilometers from the planet and had a polyhedron shape, with several flat or slightly concave facets.

  Debate had raged for days on the correct approach into the system. Hawthorne had sided with Sulla, who had finally convinced Scipio and Cato to hit a strategic center early.

  “We could take out several of the farthest orbiting habitats,” Hawthorne had told the Highborn. He’d shrugged. “Unfortunately, that would have minimal effect on the outcome. If the cyborgs mean to lure us—and it seems obvious they do—let us destroy important military installations while they’re giving us the opportunity.”

  Scipio’s analysis of the Third Battle of Mars made the commanders cautious. The cyborgs were devious. The enemy would likely act in a similar manner as they had at Mars. In other words, the cyborgs were likely hoping to snap a trap on them.

  “I’m detecting an increase in radiation on Nereid,” Commissar Kursk said from her couch.

  Hawthorne watched the monitor. They had launched probes twenty-three hours ago. The probes continued to hurtle toward Nereid at the fleet’s former velocity.

  The SU ships had been decelerating for some time. They had braked as the Doom Stars continued to rush toward Neptune. Finally, however, the Doom Stars began deceleration. Their long exhaust plumes acted as shields against most matter—missiles, cannon shells or plasma—with the needed heat to incinerate titanium.

  “If we’re right,” Blackstone said, “the cyborgs have a surprise for us behind Nereid.”

  They had been studying the system for weeks, picking up minute pieces of data a particle at a time. Slowly, they built a Neptunian map. All the while, each passive and active system had relentlessly scanned the void, seeking cyborg stealth-ships.

  “There!”
cried Kursk. “Laser-turrets are rising from Nereid’s surface. They’re firing.”

  Hawthorne’s fingers tapped across the pressure-pads. The image changed on the monitor. Polygonal-shaped Nereid appeared. Then a close-up zoomed into focus. The moon was mainly water ice and rock. Towers stood on formerly empty ground. Laser beams burned from each of the focusing mirrors.

  “They hit a probe,” Kursk said. “Make that two probes. That’s it,” she said a moment later. “They got all three.”

  “How long until Nereid is in ultra-laser range?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Three hours and sixteen minutes,” Kursk said.

  Hawthorne wanted to hit Nereid now, but not as Sulla planned. The idea was right, the method too risky. An SU fleet would have decelerated long ago and built up a prismatic crystal cloud before it. The SU fleet would have sent heavy reflectors to the cloud’s sides, bouncing the beams from them in relative safety.

  In Hawthorne’s opinion, the Highborn trusted their heavy lasers and collapsium shielding too much.

  “I don’t understand this,” Blackstone said.

  “What’s wrong?” Hawthorne asked the Commodore.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Blackstone said. “Will the cyborgs just let us sweep the moon with lasers?”

  “I doubt it,” Hawthorne said.

  “Then why haven’t they defended Nereid with P-Clouds?”

  “The obvious answer is so they can fire at us,” Hawthorne said. “A P-Cloud defends, but it also halts an attack. They could use mirrors, but mirrors make precision targeting more difficult.”

  “Permission to speak,” Kursk said.

  “Granted,” said Hawthorne.

  “We should have launched a swarm of missiles at them,” Kursk said.

  Hawthorne remained silent. He hadn’t agreed to that before and he still didn’t. Maybe if he could have resupplied the missile racks in several weeks, he would have agreed. They had come a long way, however, and had a limited number of missiles. Each one had to count. The inability to re-supply quickly was a critical weakness of taskforces that traveled so far from home.

  Hawthorne shivered on the couch as a chill worked up his back. The cyborgs were waiting for something. Did they have a longer-ranged beam than the Ultra-lasers? Why did they leave Nereid open like this? Were they daring the Highborn to strike, and if so, why?