Planet Wrecker

-59-

“It’s like a blizzard,” Marten said in awe.

It was quiet in the command center as the people watched their screens. The Spartacus raced almost directly behind the asteroids, still catching up fast—although not as quickly as before. As seen from the meteor-ship, the first wave of Luna-launched missiles zoomed in at an oblique angle from the left.

Each missile was three times the size of a Zeno. Behind them came another wave, the giant Orion-ships and more missiles. Behind that were the majestic Doom Stars, two of them. The third Doom Star approached from a different angle.

“Look,” said Nadia.

An equally thick blizzard of objects detached from the rear asteroids.

“They’ve gone hot,” she said.

On the many screens, the cyborg-torpedoes turned from blue to red.

Time then passed in agonizing slowness, one hour, two. Before the third passed, a quarter of the Luna-launched missiles detonated.

They were x-ray missiles, one of the deadliest in space combat. Each missile’s onboard AI targeted a single enemy craft. Then a thermonuclear warhead exploded. The mass of x-rays and gamma rays traveled up special targeting rods. Those rods concentrated the rays into a coherent beam that shot at the various targets. As the rods concentrated the x and gamma rays, the nuclear explosion obliterated its own missile and its various components. The shape-charged warhead ensured that the blast all went ahead, instead of in a ball of force in all directions. This protected the rearward missiles from friendly-fire damage.

“Eighty-three percent devastation,” declared Osadar several minutes later.

Marten watched as torpedo after cyborg torpedo went from red, to blue and then often winked away. The x-rays destroyed many torpedoes, but not all of them. Those torpedoes—the surviving cyborg devices—now detonated. They were cruder than the x-ray missiles, and depended upon electromagnetic pulse and heat damage. The Highborn-launched objects were hardened against such attacks, but twenty-seven percent of them succumbed to the cyborg explosions.

Then lasers began to beam from the rearmost asteroids.

“No,” Nadia whispered. “They’ll destroy the remaining missiles.”

“Don’t count on it,” Marten said.

“How can the Highborn stop it?” Nadia asked.

Her answer came two minutes later. The one-million kilometer-range ultra lasers of the Julius Caesar and the Genghis Khan stabbed at the asteroids turrets.

“That’s unbelievable,” Nadia said.

Another ultra-heavy beam stabbed against the asteroids. It came from the Gustavus Adolphus.

The giant lasers took out enemy turret after enemy turret. But they couldn’t take them out fast enough to keep the cyborg lasers from obliterating another eighteen percent of the x-ray missiles. Then those sleek objects came into range. There was another mass explosion of thermonuclear warheads. The x-rays and gamma rays targeted the many torpedo launch-sites and laser turrets on the rearmost asteroids.

For a few seconds, masses of lines stabbed on the various screens of the Spartacus command center. When the lines disappeared, the vast majority of the rearward-facing cyborg turrets were dead.

The expenditure of hardware and firepower left a pall of silence aboard the meteor-ship. There had never been anything like this in the Jupiter System, not in such quantity.

“What happens next?” asked Nadia.

Marten swallowed, and said quietly. “Now it’s up to the Orion-ships.”