Task Force 7 (Doom Star 7) Page 4

  Those crystals were a laser defensive layer. Each crystal reflected light. When a laser attempted to burn through—as Slovakia’s beam tried now—each crystal stole and diffused some of the laser’s strength. The beam turned crystals into slag-material and began devouring the sludge through heat. A burn-through took time, depending on a P-Cloud’s thickness and the intensity of the laser.

  Likely, Captain Han knew he didn’t have the time because the prismatic cloud was too thick. The beam snapped off, and the cyborg missile continued boring in.

  The critical event in the drama occurred soon thereafter. The cyborg missile entered the lead-laced cloud. As the missile did that, many hundreds of kilometers away, the mothership plowed out of the cloud, with its fusion engine engaged.

  It told Mule the captain had been waiting for just that event. While hidden behind the cloud, Han must have maneuvered the mothership away from the enemy missile. Captain Han tried to pull a fast one.

  The cyborg missile detonated. Mule didn’t witness the thermonuclear explosion, but his computer could tell because of the reaction of the gel cloud. The lead lacing in the cloud helped dampen some of the blast and radiation, but not all and maybe not enough.

  Several minutes later, Captain Han came online. “We survived, but many of us have taken deadly dosages of gamma rays. We’re not sure how long we can last, but we’ll put the mothership on autopilot in case we all succumb to the radiation.”

  The captain coughed. It sounded bad. He must have taken a heavy dosage, and if he had, how much had the rest of the bridge crew taken?

  The Marine squad outside the torpedo continued on the collision course with the planetoid, now with a possibly dying mothership behind them. Tyche loomed before them. Out here in the Oort cloud, it was almost absolute zero, so cold that methane froze hard. The planetoid had a high albedo due to the surface ice.

  As the remaining Alliance drones neared Tyche ahead of the torpedoes, the cyborgs must have detonated a proximity mine of their own. On his HUD, Mule witnessed a thermonuclear EMP. The blast took out most of the remaining drones. Three survived the explosion. Two of them were X-ray shooting missiles. These sprouted metal rods on their nosecones and detonated their own nuclear cores.

  The gamma and X-rays advanced ahead of the blast destruction. Rods in the nosecone focused the rays at whatever the drone radar had discovered. Those gamma and X-rays beamed onto Tyche’s surface. Fractions of a second later, the nuclear fireball destroyed the rods and the rest of the drone.

  The final drone, a hardened missile, dove onto the surface and exploded just as it touched.

  On his HUD, Mule saw a bloom of fire. The warhead exploded on the methane ice, causing vast crackling on the surface.

  “The missiles are softening up the enemy for us!” Chen shouted.

  Mule wanted to cheer. But instead he kept wondering about the best way to land in free-fall. How far should he bend his knees? It was too bad he didn’t have a suit thruster. If he’d been in his pod and ejected from the torpedo as planned, he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. The free-fall landing changed the procedures.

  After a half day more of travel time, the Marines finally neared Tyche, their comm chatter constant now. They used comm lasers directly toward each other so the cyborgs couldn’t pick up the talk. Enemy black-ice projectiles hit the lead torpedoes, destroying many but sparing the men on the lines. Luckily, theirs was one of the last struck.

  “Detach, detach, detach!” Chen shouted as they neared their target.

  “That’s not going to give us enough separation,” Mule said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If we’re only one hundred meters away from a destroyed torpedo, we’ll still be in range of flying shrapnel from the impact explosion. If we hope to survive, we have to be farther away from our ride.”

  “Talk to me, Mule,” Chen said. “Give me a suggestion.”

  Mule was already reeling himself down to the torpedo. “We have to reach the hull, detach the hoses and jump as hard as we can. We need distance from our torpedo and the jumping will give us that.”

  Through his headphones, Mule heard the roars of dying and outraged Marines ahead of him.

  “You heard Mule,” Chen told the others of their squad. “Let’s hurry.” The sergeant began contacting other torpedoes, telling them the same thing.

  Mule hauled as fast as he could. How much time did they have? He saw his squad-mates reaching the torpedo. Detached hoses sprayed air and mist as the Marines let them go. Then, one after another, his fellow squad-mates jumped. Hayes and Sumo first magnetically walked to the downward side of the torpedo, and jumped in that direction.

  Mule yanked on his hoses so he drifted down. He magnetized his boots and soon clanged against the hull. Chen landed nearby, having done the same thing.

  “This is a crazy way to make a surface landing,” Chen said.

  “Love the Corps or get out,” Mule said.

  “Semper fi,” Chen said.

  Mule leaped. Chen leaped, too. Their detached hoses flapped and twisted like snakes.

  Tyche loomed huge before them, getting bigger by the minute.

  “Look at it!” Hayes said.

  Mule looked down in time to see the torpedo’s nosecone crumple. Something ripped it open. Then the Phoenix began to tumble, spinning faster as it approached the planetoid.

  “We wouldn’t have survived that,” Chen said. “You saved our lives, Mule.”

  The others sent him thanks too.

  The minutes ticked down, and there were more shouts on the headphones, more dying Marines.

  “Sand!” a Marine sergeant shouted over the comm. “The cyborgs are shooting high velocity clouds of sand at us. It’s ripping through seams and breaking faceplates.”

  “Position yourselves feet-first at the planet,” Mule said. “Use your cameras to angle it right and run a gyro program on your computers to help keep you on target.”

  He did exactly as he suggested, and he used guide-jets to help position himself. Tyche filled his world, his camera vision. He saw lights on the surface and something bloomed into existence. Was that a nuclear fireball? Was it a sand-cannon blasting at them?

  Minutes went by. He heard something odd then, and he felt waves of pressure against the bottom of his feet.

  What the—

  Mule realized it must be sand, varying thicknesses of it.

  Sumo bought it because he tilted his head forward and took it right in the faceplate, a big gust without realizing it. Granules cracked his visor and vacuum did the rest.

  “We’re down to four,” Chen said.

  Marine chatter grew continuous. Men swore savagely at the cyborgs and promised direst vengeance.

  “Just let us get down!” a sergeant roared. “We’re Marines, and we’re here to kick your guts straight through to your butts, you metal heads!”

  Mule worked his guide-jets, trying to align himself perfectly and to keep himself that way. How many on their side had survived so far? How many Marines would survive planet-fall? The mothership had launched two thousand men.

  Although Mule checked his space program HUD, he failed to spot any igniting engines. It seemed the cyborgs had destroyed all the torpedoes. By the comm chatter, Mule figured there must be one third of the men left. Maybe there were six hundred and fifty Marines to conquer this last planetoid. Probably it was even less, maybe four hundred or three hundred and fifty Marines.

  Tyche in his vision grew until it blocked all the stars. Now Mule plunged down toward the planet.

  “I’m going to kill you cyborgs!” Chen roared. “I’m going rip off your heads and piss down your necks!”

  “Concentrate on landing,” Mule reminded him.

  “What?”

  “You have to land intact before you can kill anyone.”

  “Right,” Chen said. “Yeah, that’s good advice. Hey, you goons, this is it. You’d better land straight on your feet and get the servos ready. If
any of you apes fails me now I’m going make you wish you were dead.”

  “We will be dead then, Sarge,” Hayes said.

  “Just do what I say, and no back talk.”

  “Sure, Sarge,” Hayes said.

  Mule concentrated, and he wondered if this was going to break his legs.

  “Luck, Marine,” Chen said.

  Mule nodded. He was through talking. The surface rushed at him, and concern beat though him like a heartbeat. He found himself breathing harshly. The icy methane rushed nearer and nearer.

  Mule roared, and he bent slightly at the knees. Would his servos hold? Was the captain still alive or was Slovakia a drifting ghost ship in the Oort cloud? He didn’t have any more time to wonder. The icy surface rushed up, and Mule slammed against it.

  It felt as if the soles of his feet were shoved up against his chin. Servos whined. Battlesuit metal screeched and he heard blasting noises and crackling ice.

  No. That didn’t make sense. Vacuum couldn’t carry noise. Maybe the ice touching his suit could. Wait a minute…this little planetoid had a negligible atmosphere, a touch of nitrogen. Could that carry the sound?

  Mule plunged through the methane ice. It was a white blur on his HUD. The suit servos whined, and he felt himself slowing, slower and then he came to a stop. He blinked several times, breathing deeply. He had stopped moving. He had landed. He was alive.

  He almost opened communications with Chen. Caution stilled the impulse. He didn’t want the cyborgs to triangulate open communications and pinpoint their locations.

  Mule swallowed a lump down his throat. First flexing his fingers, he thrust his metal-protected hands into the ice and began to climb out of the gopher-like hole his plunge down from space had made. It was time to find the others and decide on their nearest objective.

  -6-

  Day 1096: Mule found Sergeant Chen first. The Marine’s landing into the ice had sent out jagged lines of crackling methane around the hole. The sergeant pushed his head and shoulders out of the impact-created tunnel, staring up at Mule with his black faceplate, watching him.

  A moment later, Chen climbed onto the surface. The gorilla in his battlesuit looked around at the bleak world. Afterward, Chen clumped beside Mule and turned on the link-line between their two suits. It was extremely short-range communication, meaning they could talk without any cyborgs listening in.

  “Did you find any of the others?” Chen asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “We got to start looking.”

  Mule scanned the barren icescape with his sensors. The visor gathered ambient starlight and gave him a simulated HUD. Tyche’s surface wasn’t smooth, but had ripples in it. That implied something in times past had made the methane into sludge or liquid so it could freeze in this manner. Did Tyche have cryovolcanoes as Triton did?

  Several minutes later, Mule spotted another of their squad climbing out of a hole with the obligatory crack lines spreading outward. It was Hayes. He lived, although one of his left leg servos sparked. Hayes told them he could hear it whine.

  “That can’t be good,” Hayes added over the link-line.

  Silently, Mule agreed. Marines needed mobility in order to employ their best tactics, and that went quadruple against cyborgs. If the servo gave out or limited Hayes’s mobility—this Hell-world would devour any mistakes or missteps.

  Ten minutes later, Mule spotted the last hole. Like theirs, the tunnel slanted and didn’t go straight down. He shined a light down the hole but couldn’t see anything moving. He was the scout, so he crawled into the tunnel and found a dead Marine at the bottom. It was Red, and his neck was broken. Mule took what he could off the battlesuit. Unfortunately, he would have needed a machine shop to pry off Red’s servos and put a good one into Hayes’s injured suit.

  We made it, or three of us did. I wonder how many other Marines are down.

  At the moment, they had three fighters, four gyroc rifles, one plasma flamer and many extra APEX rounds. What they didn’t have was an endless air supply.

  “We need to find the cyborgs pronto,” Chen said. “They breathe air, don’t they?”

  “Last I heard,” Mule said.

  “Which way do we go, sniper?”

  Mule ran another program and slowly turned in a circle. He raised an arm. “That way; we head in Tyche’s north.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Oxygen traces.”

  “Let’s get moving,” Chen said. “We need to get near the oxygen traces and fix our location of attack. What do you say, sniper? Do we move together or are you going to see what’s there first?”

  That was a good question. Mule gave it several seconds thought. “Let’s stick together for now. We need to find others before we do any attacking.”

  “Hey,” Hayes said, “I’m picking up a voice. It’s weak, though.”

  “What direction?” Chen asked.

  “Behind us,” Hayes said, “that way.” The gorilla with the sparking left knee-joint raised an arm and pointed.

  “I think you’re right,” Chen told Mule. “We need numbers and firepower before we hit the cyborgs.”

  Mule grunted, and they headed across the barren world to see if other Marines had made it alive onto the surface.

  ***

  Two hours and five more Marines later, the icescape had turned surreal with cracks or vents in the ice. Some of the vents billowed nitrogen and methane vapor a kilometer or more into the air. Occasionally vents spurted nitrogen or methane liquid. What a crazy place this was out here at the end of nowhere. Welcome to the Oort cloud, Mule thought.

  The vents and vapors told Mule that Tyche had a heat source somewhere within the planetoid. The extent of the cryogeysers meant it had to be a greater source than mere radioactive decay. Could Tyche have a molten core like Earth? That seemed preposterous. Before its destruction, Triton in the Neptune gravitational system had been heated by friction, the tidal forces that pulled and pushed the moon as it orbited the gas giant. There couldn’t be any tidal forces out here because there was no gravity source to cause them.

  What had the Neptunian scientists been doing out here anyway? They had been capitalists, meaning that something like a distant Oort Cloud science station would have needed to turn a profit sooner rather than later. Was there something more to Tyche that they didn’t know about?

  Mule spied a distant flicker of motion. He used extreme magnification. “Get down,” he shouted, “and don’t move!”

  He sprawled onto on the ice, hoping his chameleon systems hid him from the enemy. The others did likewise, big men in heavy battlesuits trying to blend in.

  “What’s wrong?” Chen asked through the link-line.

  “Check HUD three-nine-nine,” Mule whispered. “Use extreme magnification.”

  “What is that?” Chen asked. “It can’t be indigenous life, but it is moving.”

  In Mule’s opinion, the unknown contact was flying above the surface, just above the ice, maybe by a few meters.

  “Okay,” he said, scanning the computer analysis on his HUD. “I’m picking up some readings. It’s metallic and hot.”

  “Radioactive?” Chen asked.

  “No—hot, heat exhaust,” Mule said.

  “The cyborgs have a skimmer?”

  “Whatever you want to call it,” Mule said. “Skimmer sounds good.”

  “They’re headed here?” Chen asked.

  “Yup.”

  Sergeant Chen rolled onto his back so he stared up at the stars. He held the position for a short time until he faced the approaching enemy again.

  “Listen close,” Chen said. “We’re splitting up into two-man teams so they can’t kill us with a single missile or skimmer cannon, laser, whatever that thing has, and we have to try to ambush it. If you’re out of link-line range, maintain comm silence. Try to use the cryogeysers for cover. Mule, you’re coming with me. Hayes, I’ll carry the flamer for now.”

  Soon, Chen and Mule loped across the ice, staying
close together. They used low-gravity jumps, almost an extended glide, to cover ground fast. Mule’s boots crunched against ice each time he landed to take another bound.

  “They’re sure to see us,” Mule said.

  “I’m counting on the melds having motion detectors,” Chen said.

  “That’s means we’re making ourselves bait.”

  “Never ask your men to do something you’re not willing to do yourself,” Chen said. “This looks like a good spot. Get down and set up your rifle.”

  They landed behind an icy protrusion that was layered like a smooth wedding cake. It told Mule this must have come from a cryovolcano that had spewed liquid methane.

  “What makes this planetoid so hot?” Mule asked.

  “Concentrate, Marine. It’s firefight time.”

  Mule watched the distant object. It had gotten larger-looking and was moving faster than he’d realized. He readied his gyroc rifle. The APEX rounds could take down a cyborg in body armor. It should be able to punch through the hull of a skimmer.

  Time dragged as he waited. Cryogeysers continued to blow vapor, although it wasn’t continuous. He looked around. The four fire-teams had gone to ground and the skimmer loomed larger yet.

  “Too bad we don’t have heavy lasers,” Mule said.

  “Does the skimmer have a canopy, an enclosed compartment?” Chen asked.

  “No. It’s an open-air craft.”

  “Can you count the occupants?” Chen asked.

  “Crap!” Mule shouted. “They’re firing missiles.”

  A streak pulled away from the skimmer and moved above the ice. It split in two. No, no, there must have been two missiles to begin with. One zeroed in on them. The other missile presumably headed for another team.

  “Keep your rifle aimed at the skimmer,” Chen said. The sergeant lay behind the tripod flamer. With a flip of his gloved finger, he activated the heavy weapon.

  “It must be a homing missile,” Mule said. “They’ve locked onto our signatures. Should we split up to confuse it?”’

  “I said sit tight,” Chen snarled, “and shut up. Let me concentrate.”