Star Fortress ds-6 Read online

  “Where are the others?” Blackstone said. “There must be more.”

  “Why aren’t the cyborg ships firing back at us?” Kursk asked.

  “That isn’t their purpose,” Hawthorne said. “Besides, I don’t think they can reach us.”

  “They can fire missiles,” Kursk said.

  “Do the cloaked ships have missiles?” Hawthorne asked. “I seriously doubt that. All the cyborg missiles are in the approaching horde.” He put his chin on his fist. “The stealth-ships, those are the cyborg eyes and ears. As long as some of the stealth-ships survive, they can guide the drones to us.”

  “Right,” Blackstone said. “The drones can’t see past all the nuclear detonations. They’ve been blinded, too, and need the eyes and ears.”

  Hawthorne grimaced. The cyborg plan wasn’t fancy, but it did depend on numbers. In the years and months given them, the cyborgs had been producing drones and missiles instead of a few battleships. It took time, sometimes years, to construct something like a Doom Star. A missile could be built in weeks, maybe even days.

  A chill squeezed the Supreme Commander. He suddenly felt old. The brilliance of the cyborg plan was obvious now. The Doom Stars possessed mass; the hordes of cyborg missiles negated that mass.

  “We have to run,” Hawthorne said. “Blackstone, ready your crew for full acceleration!”

  “Sir?” the Commodore asked.

  “We have to accelerate away from the drones,” Hawthorne said.

  “Do you see how fast they’re coming?” Blackstone asked. “It won’t make any difference. We can’t escape them.”

  “It’s not about escaping,” Hawthorne said. “First, we have to halt our momentum toward Neptune and then move away as fast as we can.”

  “We’ll be crawling compared to the drones.”

  “I understand,” Hawthorne said, “but it buys us time. Buying time means the cyborgs have to explode that many more nukes to remain semi-hidden.”

  Blackstone blinked several times. Then he opened ship-wide communications and began to give the order.

  “Sir,” Kursk said, “Admiral Sulla is online, wishing to speak with you.”

  “What now?” Hawthorne muttered. He waved his hand. “Put him on.”

  “Preman!” Sulla shouted. “You must accelerate away from the drones to prolong their exposure to us. We will accelerate, too.”

  Hawthorne pursed his lips. Highborn could accelerate faster. Could the three Doom Stars stop fast enough and accelerate quickly enough to pass the battleships before the missiles struck? If so, the swarms would hit the SU warships before they touched Highborn.

  “Acknowledged,” Hawthorne said.

  “The tactic will allow us more time,” Sulla said.

  “I understand,” Hawthorne said. And you’re going to try to get the cyborgs to hit our ships before they strike yours.

  In minutes, the Vladimir Lenin’s engines thrummed with power. Then they engaged and the thrusters roared, shaking the ship as they slowed the final momentum toward Neptune. The Gs shoved Hawthorne deeper into his couch.

  They could accelerate at five Gs, and briefly tolerate six. The Highborn could accelerate at twice that amount. The drones, however, accelerated at fifty gravities or more.

  “I should have thought of this sooner,” Hawthorne said.

  “You thought of it just as quickly as the Highborn,” Blackstone said. “So I’d call that pretty damn fast.”

  “We have to outthink the Highborn.”

  “You mean the cyborgs,” Blackstone said.

  “Both of them,” Hawthorne said, “both of them.”

  The Doom Stars halted their forward momentum quicker than the battleships could theirs. As they began to accelerate away from Neptune, the SU missiles sped fast, rushing toward the enemy. All the while, every sixteen or fifteen seconds, another cyborg drone detonated a nuke.

  “They won’t be able to hide from our lasers once they get within forty thousand kilometers,” Blackstone said.

  “Numbers,” Hawthorne said. “This will all depend on how many drones the cyborgs were able to make. I understand now why they haven’t been hitting us even as we’ve destroyed two powerful defensive establishments.”

  “Why?” Blackstone asked.

  “To save everything for one massive punch, one big hit using everything they have. This is the battle, gentlemen. The next few hours will decide everything.”

  * * *

  Tens of thousands of big drones steadily advanced on the Alliance Fleet. The eight ships fled, but at a crawl compared to the great velocity they had reached when crossing the void between Earth and Neptune.

  Then the SU missiles reached the accelerating cyborg drones. Some exploded into shrapnel. Some attacked the drones as if they were warships. Some detonated with nuclear bombs. The SU missiles found a target-rich environment. They reaped a grim harvest, destroying thousands of drones, which translated to sixteen percent of the swarm. Another seven percent had self-destructed so far to give the rest a sensor-shield.

  It meant that seventy-seven percent of the drone horde remained and bored in toward the slowly fleeing warships.

  On the Vladimir Lenin, Hawthorne said, “They’re going to reach the Doom Stars first. That’s something, at least.”

  “Use every missile!” Sulla roared over communications.

  Hawthorne agreed. Every SU battleship launched every one of its missiles. The Doom Stars launched theirs. In time, the combined mass took out another eleven percent of the original swarm. It meant that sixty-six percent of the drones survived.

  “We’re hurting them,” Blackstone said.

  Hawthorne laughed in a brittle manner. “Hurting what, drones?”

  Several officers looked up, stricken.

  “But it is something,” Hawthorne said, recognizing his mistake. As the Supreme Commander, he couldn’t afford the luxury of despair. “Yes!” he said. “We’re going to win this fight.”

  Blackstone nodded in approval.

  The next hour—it was among the greatest is Solar System history.

  The cyborg drones reached the hot zone. The Julius Caesar, the Genghis Khan and the Napoleon Bonaparte opened up with their heavy lasers. Despite the nuclear blasts, the beams hit targeted drones. They missed too often, however, streaking past a projectile. Then the SU battleships began to beam. A mere twenty thousand kilometers separated the Doom Stars from the Zhukov-class battlewagons of Social Unity.

  Aboard the Genghis Khan, Admiral Scipio rapped out orders. Decoys deployed, and packets of prismatic crystals clotted small areas of space. Mine were deployed and waited in the vacuum.

  During that time, three heavy beams blazed and the battleships fired their weaponry.

  Then a main laser-unit aboard the Julius Caesar ruptured. The heavy beam had been firing too long. Highborn damage-control parties raced to repair it.

  The drones kept coming. Every sixteen seconds more kept exploding.

  “Long live the Highborn!” Scipio shouted.

  Nuclear bombs exploded. EMP washed hardened electronics on the Doom Star.

  “Stop accelerating!” Scipio roared. The Genghis Khan stopped running. The distance between it and other two Doom Stars widened.

  “What’s the plan, sir?” the weapon’s officer asked.

  “Destruction,” Scipio said, “for as long as we can.”

  The Genghis Khan beamed. Its point defense cannons fired. Enemy drones died, and others kept coming.

  Then one of the giant missiles got within two hundred kilometers. It was an x-ray pumped missile. Fortunately, the collapsium stopped the x-rays cold.

  Far away in space, a cyborg on a Lurker observed that. He communicated, and gave himself away.

  The Lurker died to a laser, but the message got through to the Prime. It pulsed a change in tactics.

  Soon, one of the big drones reached the Genghis Khan. A massive thermonuclear explosion ruptured the collapsium.

  More drones swarmed toward t
he stricken ship. They came in bewildering numbers.

  Scipio waited. Another drone slammed the ship, blowing away an eighth of the vessel. Without fanfare, Admiral Scipio stabbed a button that detonated the core. Four seconds later, a mammoth explosion occurred. It disintegrated the Doom Star, and it destroyed one thousand and nine of the cyborg drones.

  Less than thirty-two percent of the drone swarm remained. Of those, fully one third now had faulty targeting systems.

  The Lurkers in the system began to beam them coordinates as the battle entered its most savage phase.

  Kursk monitored the occurrence and brought it to Hawthorne’s attention.

  In seconds, Hawthorne raised Admiral Sulla. “Look at the evidence,” the Supreme Commander said quietly.

  It broke through the hostility radiating from Sulla. “What do you expect, preman?”

  “Beam the stealth-ships,” Hawthorne said, “and you’ll blind some of the drones.”

  “I must kill the drones.”

  “We’re doing that now,” Hawthorne said.

  “How did you spot these stealth-ships and we did not?”

  “Because we sent probes,” Hawthorne said. “If you want to survive, destroy the stealth-ships now.”

  Sulla nodded slowly. “You need Doom Stars in order to reduce the various moons. You need the great range of our weapons. That’s why you’re trying to save us.”

  “We’re allies,” Hawthorne said. “I want to defeat the cyborgs.”

  Sulla laughed. Then the screen went blank. Moments later, the heavy beam reached out into the void, destroying the transmitting stealth-ships.

  The Doom Stars had closed the gap with the SU battlewagons. Together, Highborn and Humans fought against the blizzard of cyborg drones.

  The missile-ship was the first SU vessel to die under three terrific explosions. Each blasted away particle-shielding. Without its protection, neuron radiation killed the crew minutes before the last drone sent shielding, hull-plating and fleshy particles into the void.

  “Sir!” Kursk said.

  “I see it,” Hawthorne said wearily. The drones were finally getting through. There were simply too many of them.

  The Julius Caesar’s heavy beam came online again. But it was too late. Cyborg drones died in masses trying to reach the giant vessel. Then one did, wounding the great ship. Others rushed near as thermonuclear explosions proved superior to collapsium. Then a great monster of a missile slid into the wreckage and detonated. The terror of the Inner Planets became slag, shrapnel and fiery debris, exploding outward like a nova. Coils, powered armored, soy nutrients from the food stores, it was all sent spinning away.

  Soon, the Vice-Admiral’s flagship disintegrated under repeated strikes.

  In Mandela’s room on the Vladimir Lenin where he watched, the Vice-Admiral wept.

  The last Doom Star and the remaining battleships beamed and fired their point defense cannons. They had closed to within three hundred kilometers of each other. It was like an ancient battle where Celtic hordes roared their battle cries as they swarmed a lost cohort of desperate legionaries. Drones detonated, firing x and gamma rays. EMP blasts washed over the warships. Heat boiled away particle-shielding and shrapnel shredded entire areas.

  The Vladimir Lenin’s sister ship stopped responding to calls.

  “Are they dead?” Blackstone shouted to Kursk standing right beside him.

  She kept trying to hail the warship.

  “They’re not beaming anymore,” Hawthorne said from the acceleration couch. “I doubt anyone lives over there.”

  Two drones reached that battleship at almost precisely the same instant. Their nuclear explosions ended the debate on the Vladimir Lenin as another SU ship perished.

  The next few minutes were hell.

  “Sir!” an officer reported. “The one through five PD cannons are out of shells.”

  “Sir!” a different officer said. “Secondary laser number five has overheated. There’s a fire in the reactor chamber.”

  Hawthorne gripped his screen. He found it difficult to breathe. Drones exploded everywhere. The cyborgs had made too many missiles and—

  “Sir,” Kursk said, “the drones… I don’t see any heading toward us. There are drones, but they’re well past our ships and accelerating out-system.” She tapped her screen. “Over two thousand drones are heading away. There’s no indication they’re going to turn around, either.” Tears welled in her eyes as she stared across the bridge. “Supreme Commander Hawthorne, I wish to report that the last drone has detonated, been destroyed by our lasers or its targeting systems were likely damaged beyond recovery and are leaving us.”

  With an effort, Hawthorne pried his fingers from the screen. It dawned on him that the last explosions had been the cyborgs’ final attack. He blinked at the screen, bewildered.

  “Where are they going?” Blackstone said. He kept tapping his screen, no doubt switching camera feeds. “You’re right. Those missiles are heading away, accelerating away. I don’t see any missiles heading toward us. Have some gone invisible?”

  Kursk was laughing as tears streamed down her cheeks. “No, Joseph. Don’t you understand? We did it. The ones leaving—all those nuclear blasts had to damage some of them.” She threw her arms around his neck. “We won.”

  “We haven’t won,” Hawthorne said, “but it appears we’ve survived this round.” He adjusted his uniform as he sat up. “I want damage reports, people. Then I want shuttles launched. Let’s see if there’s anybody to save on those ships.”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Kursk.

  “I see one Doom Star and two SU battleships,” Hawthorne said. “That’s precious little to conquer the Neptune System. We need to search for survivors.”

  Blackstone disengaged from Kursk. “Don’t forget the three Jovian meteor-ships heading here.”

  “Do you think the drones that passed us are meant for the Jovians?” Kursk asked. She checked the module and soon shook her head. “No. The drones are heading elsewhere.”

  “It hardly matters,” Hawthorne said. “The meteor-ships are damaged and depleted.”

  “They are still a lot better than nothing,” Blackstone said.

  Hawthorne thought about it. “You have a point. Now get me those reports,” he told Kursk. “We don’t know how much time we have until the next cyborg move.”

  -11-

  Far from the horrendous battle in the Neptune System, the William Tell passed a HB interferometer beacon. There were hundreds of such beacons linked by a special communications net. Taken together the interferometer was thousands of kilometers wide, although its mass wouldn’t have filled an SU battleship.

  Inside the patrol boat, Marten shifted in his combat armor. The air in his armor was rank with sweat as the air-conditioning unit thrummed. The temp-gauge read 102 degrees. The jumpsuit he wore next to his skin was damp against his back. It seemed like he was always sucking on the water-tube.

  The temperature in his armor had steadily risen during the journey. He’d been living in his for some time now, just like everyone else. There was stubble on his chin and his right calf itched horribly.

  The Jovian craft had never been designed to fly so close to the Sun. The SU-derived modifications hadn’t changed that. Fortunately, Marten had looted the Mao Zedong, taking among other things a large supply of construction-foam sprayers.

  They were a combat engineer’s tool, used for fast construction. Riot police also used them to create quick barriers. The nozzles sprayed moldable foam, which quick hardened. During their shock trooper training, both Marten and Omi had been taught to spray blocks of construction-foam. There was a technique for shrinking the blocks, making them denser than ordinary.

  Felix drew up the blueprint and Marten and Omi sprayed the foam. They thickened the hull from the inside, shrinking the amount of livable space and sectioning off the piloting chamber. The troop-pods became unlivable due to their nearness to the Sun. There wasn’t enough construction-foam to
use inside them. That meant everyone was jammed into the main area of the boat. Only Osadar entered the piloting area. The logic was simple but brutal. She was a cyborg and could take more radiation and heat than any of them could. Marten was afraid she was dying as she brought them to the fabled Sun Station, but wouldn’t tell them.

  The deckplates were the same as always. It was the top and sides of the boat that were different. Gray foam blocks there absorbed the illumination shining from the few helmet-lamps.

  Everyone wore armor, including Ah Chen and Nadia. Some of the space marines checked their weapons. There were gyroc rifles, plasma cannons and the few remaining Cognitive missiles. Others recharged their suits. Everyone took turns hooking a cable into slots in their armor.

  Marten floated, partially resting on his knees before the compartment’s only screen, a portable one. It was easy in the weightless chamber. The patrol boat didn’t feel like home anymore with the foam walls, but an alien environment—like some strange alien ant’s tunnel system. The heat made it worse, so did the crackling in his headphones.

  Both were due to the Sun: a nuclear fireball of heat, radiation, harsh radio and electromagnetic waves. Marten had been checking the specifics. The Sun was a yellow dwarf star, its spectral class G2V. It was almost perfectly spherical, a mix of hot plasma and powerful magnetic fields. Its diameter was 109 times that of Earth, making it enormous. The Sun produced the largest continuous structure in the Solar System, the heliosphere. In effect, the heliosphere was a giant bubble “blown” by the solar wind and emanating all the way to Pluto’s orbital path.

  A space marine floated next to Marten. He read the nametag: OMI. Marten nodded a greeting.

  Omi gripped Marten’s right shoulder. The Korean then clanged his helmet against Marten’s.

  “Anything new?” Omi asked. His voice sounded far away.

  For an answer, Marten shook his head.

  Releasing Marten’s shoulders, Omi floated before the screen.

  The compartment was jammed with space marines and their equipment, almost filling the entire area. Omi probably asked because there had been plenty of evil to report earlier.