Planet Wrecker

-6-

Gharlane withdrew his blade from the warm carcass. It collapsed in a seemingly boneless fashion at his feet. Kneeling, Gharlane plucked the hammer-gun from the corpse’s belt. He searched and found extra ammo magazines.

Gharlane had drifted through space for endless hours, submerged in a coma. His life-readings had been underneath the threshold of any sensors that had scanned his region of space. After a precise length of time, an internal chronometer had clicked and he’d been injected with vigorous stims. Upon waking, he’d discovered that his calculations had been off by point zero-zero-two percent. As he’d floated in space, he’d fired a spring-loaded spear gun. It had shot a barb with monofilament fiber over a kilometer, attaching to the dreadnaught’s particle-shield. Gharlane had reeled himself to the dreadnaught, crawled between two particle-shields and gained entry into the ship.

“Override,” he now whispered in the ship, adding a sequence of binary numbers. He overrode the calming chemicals in his bloodstream and gave himself combat-enhancing injections. His existence would end during the next few minutes. The achievement of his goal—that was primary.

The ship corridor was narrow, and there was a trace of oil in the atmosphere indicating working mechanisms and recycled air. The nearly imperceptibly-vibrating deckplates showed that the fusion engine was online.

Gharlane surged forward, colliding into a bio-form that came fast around the corner. Over three times its weight, Gharlane knocked the bio-form backward and off its feet. Its head snapped back hard against a deckplate, almost rendering the female unconscious. A precise kick of his vacc-suited foot against the female’s head killed it. A quick inspection of its torso added another hammer-gun to his growing collection.

Klaxons wailed as Gharlane trotted down the corridors—the ship was under centrifugal-gravity. He repeatedly emptied his hammer-guns, killing over two dozen humans, the last group obviously sent to intercept him. These were inferior specimens compared to the space marines that had stormed onto Athena Station. For a moment, he wondered if he could reach the fusion core and blow the entire ship.

No. The core would be protected. Every human captain had learned to guard it after the destruction of a Doom Star during the Martian Campaign. None of that mattered now, however.

Gharlane slammed a magazine into one of the hammer-guns. The other had malfunctioned. He’d sacrificed his last cyborgs so he could achieve this location. Chief Strategist Tan—she was a first level intellect that had used the Jovian military with canny ability. Web-Mind analysis of the Homo sapiens indicated the rarity of such unmodified first-level intellects. As primary targets, such rare individuals were to be expunged with extreme prejudice.

I will cease to exist soon. But I will take the first level intellect into the darkness with me.

The death of such a militarily important target was, according to a Web-Mind’s parameters, worth the deletion of a planetary system’s controlling cyborg.

Gharlane jumped around a corner into a fusillade of shots. They’d been waiting for him. A hammer-bolt smashed against his chest-plate. Another caromed off his titanium-reinforced skull. Instead of falling onto his back, Gharlane bent onto one knee. Smoothly, he snapped off three shots before another hammer-bolt clipped his hip, spinning him.

Painkillers already flooded his bodily system. Boosters accelerated his reactions. From his kneeling position, he leaped at the nexus-node, firing with cyborg precision.

A blue-uniformed woman tumbled back, her forehead a gory ruin. Three other ship-guardians were already twisted into bleeding heaps, their weapons clattering across the deckplates.

“Die, you freak!” a guardian shouted. He had a pulse rifle poked around a corner. A red pulse ejected from the tube. It missed by a fraction, blowing a hole into the wall of the corridor and producing a metallic-smelling gout of black smoke.

Gharlane fired. The man’s throat became a red ruin as he cartwheeled away from the corner. Before the pulse rifle could hit the deckplates, Gharlane snatched it out of the air.

He moved like a giant insect in a blur of motion. Black blood dripped from several of his wounds. Gouged titanium showed in places. His vacc-suit was useless now, torn in a dozen spots.

One sobbing guardian tried to run away. Gharlane hurled his expended hammer-gun, catching the slow-moving creature in the neck. With a howl, the man flew off his feet and hit the flooring with his chest. Gharlane cracked his left elbow into the last guardian’s face, breaking bones. A punch into the thing’s throat finished it.

Turning into the corridor with the prone guardian, Gharlane charged down it toward the commander’s cubicle. He connected with his steel-toed boot, caving in the guardian’s forehead. Then he moved his legs like pistons, firing from the hip as he sprinted through the ship.

He was at eighty-three percent capacity, the enemy shots having taken a toll of his efficiency. He was a master unit cyborg: heavier, and constructed of more durable materials than the combat models.

I will die soon. I will cease. Chief Strategist Tan defeated me. She cannot be allowed life. I must end her existence.

A growl alerted Gharlane. His lips drew back into a platinum smile. He spun around the last corner, firing the pulse rifle, adjusting as the pulse ejected from the tube.

A myrmidon sprang. The red pulse blew it backward, leaving a gaping hole in its thick chest.

Two others charged. There was no finesse to their attack. Stun impulses struck Gharlane’s body. It felt like steel balls slamming against him. The stun-shots would have dropped a Homo sapien and would have forced a Highborn to his knees. The stuns disoriented Gharlane. Then pain-rejecters momentarily numbed his nerve endings.

He fired the pulse rifle, and clipped a myrmidon’s shoulder. The attacking creatures snarled, and each stroked his body with their shock rods. Gharlane punched the pulse rifle’s tube into a myrmidon’s gut, achieving penetration. The thing howled, and it clawed his face. The other myrmidon must have recognized that its shock rod was having minimal effect. It dropped the rod and attacked barehanded.

Gharlane freed his blade, burying it in a myrmidon’s chest. The creature possessed amazing vitality, however. It kept attacking. So did the other, and it was damaging him. His efficiency had dropped to seventy-nine percent, and was dropping several percentage points each second of combat.

Yanking the blade free, Gharlane slashed and stabbed with cyborg speed and strength. If the myrmidons had held combat knives, it might have ended differently. But they didn’t.

Gharlane drew a ragged breath as he hurled the gene-warped creatures from him. Black blood soaked his vacc-suit, mingling with red myrmidon blood. Graphite-strengthened bones showed in places.

One myrmidon flopped on the deckplates, twitching in death. The other mewled with rage, attempting to crawl back into combat. But its back was broken and it made minimal progress.

Gharlane bent down to retrieve his pulse rifle.

The door to the commander’s chamber swished open. Gharlane didn’t waste time looking up. With blurring speed, he grabbed the rifle and hurled himself forward. While airborne, he lifted the rifle and paused a fraction of a second. He’d expected more charging myrmidons or humans leaning out of the door. He didn’t expect to see a man standing in the doorway, aiming a long-barreled slugthrower, tracking him.

Gharlane’s finger twitched. Maybe it was the sixty-eight percent efficiency. Maybe the man was just fast. He beat Gharlane to the trigger. The slugthrower bucked in his hands, and a dum-dum bullet exploded the pulse rifle, causing the pulse-shot to fizzle.

Landing on the deckplates, Gharlane scrambled fast, charging the human. If the human had hidden behind the door, shown even a margin of timidity—

The man with the slugthrower snapped off shots. Each dum-dum bullet blew off chunks of flesh and graphite-bones and twisted titanium-reinforcement. The kinetic force of the shots also slowed Gharlane. The man’s firm stance, his deliberate tracking and near perfect shots—each one telling effectively—caused Gharlane to smash against a bulkhead instead of taking out the human.

The man’s hands blurred as he slammed in a fresh clip. Gharlane lifted his torso, and he gathered himself for a final assault. If he could get into the room, he would detonate himself. Maybe he should detonate himself now and hope the blast reached Tan. She had to be in the room.

The man fired, aiming at the brainpan. Dum-dum bullets jarred the casing.

Explode, Gharlane thought. It was his last.

The final fusillade of bullets mashed enough brain tissue to garble the neuron impulses. The explode sequence never reached the explosives.

The man with the gun killed the master unit cyborg.