Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod Read online

  ***

  “Begin ship-shielding maneuver,” Grand Admiral Cassius ordered. He sank into his chair as the Julius Caesar’s engines engaged hard.

  With grim concentration, Cassius studied the battlefield on his holographic display. Radiation, EMP blasts, X-rays, enemy jamming and debris meant his holographic image was fuzzy in places. He lacked full intelligence. But that had always been the nature of the battlefield. Making the right decision with only partial information had been a commander’s lot for untold millennia. They had destroyed countless enemy vessels. Finally, Cassius had come to realize that many of those kills had been shells, decoys. The heart of the enemy fleet remained: the Zhukov-class battleships. Even a Doom Star needed time to take out the most modern of them.

  Those SU battleships concentrated on the Hannibal Barca. Admiral Brutus’s Doom Star had taken damage. Now it was time to relieve the Hannibal Barca, to shield it with the relatively intact Julius Caesar.

  “A few more minutes, old friend,” Grand Admiral Cassius muttered. “More speed!” he ordered, keeping any worry out of his voice. In another twenty seconds, Cassius was pushed even deeper into his chair as the warship sped for war and glory.

  “You’re fighting hard, premen,” Cassius muttered. “But it’s not going to be enough to give you victory over me.”

  ***

  Aboard the Vladimir Lenin, Blackstone wanted to shout himself hoarse. The fight had come down to two giants grappling for a death-hold, to break the other giant’s back.

  His orbital fighters were nearly all destroyed. They had never had a chance against the Doom Stars. It had been a grim order to give and still sickened him. The bulk of the decoy fleet was space wreckage. Now he faced off against the battered Hannibal Barca. He had maneuvered the battlewagons so the first Doom Star shielded his battleships from the other Doom Stars. It might have been a clever tactic, but Blackstone felt too sick at Social Unity’s losses to feel elated.

  “We’re beaming into the Doom Star’s hull!” the targeting officer shouted.

  “It’s so huge,” Commissar Kursk said. “A super-ship like that will take time to die.”

  “It’s rotating!” the targeting officer shouted. “Damn! They’re swinging the entire ship to bring an untouched shield into our line of fire.”

  Blackstone wondered if he dared to order a charge. It would likely mean the final destruction of the last battleships of his fleet. If he bored in now and kept chewing the particle-shields, he might actually kill a Doom Star. But the cost, the entire SU Battlefleet, that seemed too high a price.

  As he hesitated, General Fromm’s eyes narrowed. “We must accelerate,” Fromm said in his strangely calm voice.

  “…no,” Blackstone whispered. “We can kill the Hannibal Barca from here.”

  The stout Earth General cocked his head strangely. Then a small dark object appeared in his hands. It was a needler. General Fromm aimed it at Blackstone.

  “You will order full acceleration toward the Doom Star,” Fromm said.

  “He has a needler!” someone shouted.

  Fromm drew a solar grenade from his garments. “One flick of my thumb,” he said, “and I can destroy the command center of the Battlefleet. If you want to live, you must do as I order.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Blackstone asked.

  “Do not attempt any subterfuge tactics,” Fromm said. “You will obey me or—”

  There was a strange sound and then General Fromm crumpled, sliding in an almost boneless fashion from the map-module and onto the floor. Commissar Kursk rushed around the module. She had a stun gun in her hand. She had shot Fromm at full power. The tall Commissar knelt beside the Earth General as Blackstone stumbled to that side of the module. He watched in shock as Kursk picked up Fromm’s needler. She pressed the tip of the needler against Fromm’s head, shooting twenty needles into his cranium, making it a bloody mass of mush and bone. She dropped the needler and snatched the solar grenade, carefully examining it.

  Her face pale, Kursk looked up and met Blackstone’s eyes.

  “You killed General Fromm,” was all Blackstone could say.

  “I’m taking this elsewhere,” Kursk said, hefting the still live solar grenade.

  Blackstone was too stunned to respond.

  “Commodore!” Kursk snapped in her best PHC voice. “You have a battle to run. See to it and let me worry about security.”

  A moment later, Blackstone nodded and turned back to the map-module.

  -19-

  The Hannibal Barca was vast beyond any other class of spacecraft. It contained thousands of decks, chambers, corridors, storage bays, launching tubes, laser coils, reactor space, sleeping quarters, exercise areas, weapons lockers, toilet cubicles, hatches and repair space-ways in a complex maze. The cyborgs propelled themselves through the maze like a metallic infestation. Their memories were flawless. Their execution of attack proved fast, lethal and bewildering.

  Out of Hatch ATR-19 shot cyborg after cyborg. During the weightless periods, they magnetized their palms and pressed them against the metal walls to propel themselves like swimmers. When ship acceleration produced pseudo-gravity, the cyborgs magnetized their boots and ran in a clank, clank, clank charge.

  The first Highborn to witness them was Third Rank Marco in a damage-control suit. He swiveled toward a strange sound, gawked at the cyborgs for a full second. Then he snatched up his laser-welder, roared a battle cry and died in a fusillade of red laser-light. Each cyborg in turn, including LA31, leaped over his smoldering corpse as they invaded deeper into the Hannibal Barca, seeking the massive fusion cores.

  A minute later, interior ship-cameras recorded the slaughter of a Highborn reaction-team.

  On the command deck, Admiral Brutus roared, “What are those?”

  The admiral received his answer two-and-a-half minutes later. In gymnasium F-7, three Highborn in battleoid-armor opened up with .55-caliber rotating hand-cannons. A cyborg staggered backward before dodging behind a bulkhead. Depleted uranium slugs had slammed against its armored torso, but failed to kill it. Return laser-fire reflected off the shiny battleoid skin.

  “The things aren’t human. They’re some kind of battle machine!” the Highborn officer shouted into his mike. “I don’t think they feel pain, and they’re faster than greased death.”

  As if to prove the officer’s point, three cyborgs sheathed their laser-carbines and charged with vibroknives. A single cyborg blew backward from more hand-cannon fire. The three Highborn had targeted its head. The .55-caliber Gatling guns were an integral part of a Highborn’s battleoid-arm. The two surviving cyborgs were wasp-fast. Graphite-enhanced muscles drove the vibroknives as the blades whined at high-performance. And in a shocking display of knife-fighting techniques, the cyborgs opened the three battleoid-suits and butchered the giants inside.

  Now that they were meeting real resistance, the cyborgs broke into triad teams. They ceased the single concentrated thrust and attacked in a wave-assault. The next ten minutes saw savage fighting as cyborgs clashed with more battleoid-armored Highborn. To the astonishment of Admiral Brutus, it took three Highborn dead to produce a cyborg kill.

  “Are they better than us?” Brutus shouted, as he pounded the arm of his command chair.

  Three Highborn dead verses one cyborg killed, the honor went to the cyborgs but the victory pushed toward the Highborn. As remorseless as the cyborgs were, the Highborn kept setting up ambushes, taking the losses and killing the alien things.

  LA31’s triad reached deeper into the Doom Star than any other cyborg team. Because of that, she neared the mighty fusion cores. Those cores produced a constant sound and caused the ship’s walls and corridors to vibrate with power.

  Five Highborn waited for her in a narrow corridor, one painted with yellow and black stripes, with red warning signs. They had set up a plasma cannon. One Highborn watched a monitor-board, which showed the cyborgs advancing toward them. Two Highborn knelt beside and readied the plasma cannon. An
other battleoid soldier stood behind it, eager to fire the dangerous weapon. The last Highborn stood back with his rotating hand-cannon ready, playing lookout.

  “Eight seconds,” the monitor-board watching Highborn said.

  “I’m ready,” the plasma gunner said.

  ***

  LA31 led the other two cyborgs against the waiting Highborn. They floated fast as they pushed off the walls and attacked around the corridor.

  A Highborn in battleoid-armor shouted. Another pointed. Then superheated plasma roiled toward LA31. She pushed off against a deckplate, moving even faster. The plasma caught the cyborg behind her, killing it in a wash of superheated mass. Bits of plasma scorched the back of LA31’s legs, eating into her. It caused a microsecond of intense pain. Then her internal computer shut it off.

  Two Highborn swiveled the big gun. Another aimed his hand-cannon. It rotated wildly as flames spewed. The shells spanged off LA31’s shoulder-guards and the impacts slowed her. Then her left arm refused to respond to her will.

  Before the .55 caliber shells could halt or kill her, however, LA31 and the other cyborg were among the Highborn. The battle was lethally quick. The second last Highborn with battleoid-armored strength, twisted the head off the other cyborg. Then LA31 used her vibroblade to deadly effect, slaughtering the last two giants.

  LA31 might have smiled, but she felt sick and her emotions had died some time ago. Remorselessly, she continued her lonely charge toward the fusion cores.

  ***

  A lone Highborn waited in LA31’s path. He was the last of the battleoid-armored super-soldiers to stand between her and the fusion cores. He watched a monitor and knew she was injured. He could kill this thing. He promised Admiral Brutus that over his com-link.

  But the last battleoid-armored Highborn was unaware that another factor was about to enter the situation.

  Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen lurked nearby. With Hansen were seven other neutraloids. They had floated past many dropped guns and knives, taking several. The floating globules of blood and the Highborn corpses had unhinged them. The teeth-gnashing, blue-tattooed berserks wanted to kill the Masters. They wanted the joy of feeling the Masters gasping their last breath as the giants shuddered in death-agony.

  Hansen raised a hand for silence. He heard the lone Highborn ahead of them in the corridor. “We must kill him,” he said in his strangely high-pitched voice.

  The others whined with eagerness.

  Hansen smiled savagely as he remembered the training table. Then he hissed with rage and floated around the corridor and behind the last Highborn defending the fusion cores from LA31.

  The Highborn must have heard something. He turned, with his servos whining. Then he brought up his arm as the hand-cannon boomed.

  Neutraloids screamed. Neutraloids lost fist-sized pieces of flesh as the .55 caliber bullets shredded them. Yet they kept coming, and three of them gripped vibroknives, finally have learned to hang onto them.

  The neutraloids grappled with the armored Highborn. He squeezed the head of one, killing it. Then vibroknives entered his armor, and one smashed into his guts. He staggered, and he crashed onto the deckplates.

  The remaining neutraloids howled with glee. Then the three grinned down at the fallen Highborn.

  “Fools,” the Highborn said.

  One of the neutraloid slapped his chest. “I am Heydrich Hanson.” He couldn’t say more. Instead, Hanson screamed in high-pitched rage. So did the others.

  They tore the last Highborn before the fusion cores out of his armor. They tore him out and began to beat him to death.

  -20-

  “It’s too late, Commodore,” the targeting officer said. “If the Doom Star hadn’t rotated to a relatively undamaged particle-shield, we would have killed it. Unless the cyborgs are going to do something…”

  Blackstone stared down at the map-module. On the holographic display, two huge Doom Stars appeared like vast planets. They moved into position above and below the most damaged Doom Star. Blackstone gripped the map-module’s steel-gleaming sides and willed the first Doom Star to die. What had happened to the cyborgs and their stealth attacks? He had five battleships left and one missile-ship. He couldn’t lose an entire SU Battlefleet and not even kill a single Doom Star. Were the Highborn that much better than regular humans and cyborgs?

  Blackstone’s gut churned with the knowledge of defeat. He had been given the solemn task of halting the Highborn, and he had failed miserably and totally. The Solar System belonged to the Highborn. The genetic super-soldiers would rule. The question now was how to die. Should he charge with the remnants of his fleet? Or should he take these last vessels and run to try to fight another day?

  “Sir,” the communications officer whispered. “I’ve decrypted a strange message.”

  “What is it?” Blackstone asked listlessly.

  “The Highborn are broadcasting it openly, sir,” the communications officer said. “I think you should see this.”

  “Put it on the map-module,” Blackstone said.

  The images of the space battle wavered and Blackstone frowned. It looked like a cyborg in a fusion reactor area. The cyborg used a laser, beaming into delicate equipment.

  “Who is broadcasting this again?” Blackstone asked.

  “The Highborn, sir.”

  Blackstone continued to blink at the startling image.

  ***

  “Kill it!” Admiral Brutus roared. “Destroy it! The machine is in a fusion core!”

  Ten Highborn reaction-teams in battleoid armor clanked through the corridors, each knowing life and death for an entire Doom Star depended on reaching that thing soon enough.

  ***

  Even cyborgs couldn’t take lethal doses of radiation for long. LA31 could hardly see anymore. Her pain sensors—

  It stopped mattering then as the fusion core overloaded. In another three seconds, the former Lisa Aster ceased to exist.

  ***

  From his command bridge, Grand Admiral Cassius watched in horror as the Hannibal Barca went nova.

  The vast bulk of the super-ship absorbed some of the radiation, X-rays and EMP blasts. Then the incredible mass and tonnage exploded outward like a vast grenade. Its bulkheads, cargos, particle-shields, coils, walls and hull became projectiles.

  The Napoleon Bonaparte and the Julius Caesar took the brunt of those projectiles. The heavy SU battlewagons received a lesser wave. The majority of the former Hannibal Barca sped out into space and toward Mars in the near distance as a million particles of debris.

  ***

  The Vladimir Lenin shuddered as its particle-shields took the heavy impacts of the exploded Doom Star. Blackstone was pitched off his feet and he hit his shoulder hard against the map-module. He lay stunned for seconds and in throbbing pain. Then someone was helping him up.

  Blackstone stared at the image of the map-module. There were two Doom Stars where seconds earlier there had been three. The SU Battlefleet had destroyed a Doom Star. The other two must have taken heavy damage from the blast.

  “Awaiting orders, Commodore,” the targeting officer said.

  Blackstone blinked at the map-module. What was the correct decision now? One third of the Highborn fleet was dead. The other two Doom Stars were hurt, perhaps critically. The question was: Could he finish them off?

  He listened several seconds to battle reports. The SU Battlefleet was almost gone. He had four battleships left and no missile-ships. The last one hadn’t survived the Doom Star’s destruction. Four battleships could not defeat two Doom Stars, not even badly wounded ones.

  “It’s time to run,” Blackstone said.

  “Run where, sir?” the targeting officer asked. “We can’t outrun a Doom Star’s long-range lasers.”

  Then it hit Blackstone, and he realized this could be his most brilliant move of the battle. “We run for Mars. We head for the outer edge of the atmosphere.”

  “Sir?” the targeting officer asked.

  “We run toward the p
roton beam,” Blackstone said.

  -21-

  Only a handful of the Martian commandos had survived the last firefight. Without Osadar’s swift reactions, the lone cyborg on guard would have slain all of them.

  Marten, Omi, Osadar, Major Diaz, Rojas and two other Martian commandos rode a magnetic lift. Everyone else who had broken through the blast doors and seen the cyborg converter was either dead or captured.

  Marten was grim-faced and thoughtful. Omi cradled a burned hand, his face white and strained with the pain. Osadar seemed impassive. Major Diaz stared wordlessly at a spot in the elevator.

  Diaz finally turned his head. “Did you see those things on the conveyer?”

  Marten had been the one to shoot those things. None of those things had possessed skin, only exposed musculature.

  “People turned into cyborgs,” Omi whispered.

  “Is that what awaits Mars?” Diaz asked in a choked voice.

  “Yes,” Osadar said.

  Diaz shivered and squeezed his eyes closed as sweat oozed onto his forehead.

  Marten checked the lift monitor. “We’re almost there. Let’s get ready.” He flicked off the safety of his gyroc rifle as his thighs tensed for running.

  The whine of the lift slowed, stopped and the doors swished open. And each of them opened fire even before they saw the two cyborgs waiting for them. One cyborg went down, his brainpan smashed through. The other lifted its carbine and cut down two commandos before Osadar leaped out and shoved a vibroblade into it.

  “Don’t stand around and gawk!” Marten shouted. “Follow me!”

  He dragged Diaz with him. Then they ran for the hanger as the sounds in the volcano became unbearably loud.