Planet Wrecker

-64-

“Time’s running out for Earth,” Marten said.

Nadia sat beside him in a patrol boat, which was parked on the surface of the meteor-ship. Nadia was in the patrol boat’s pilot’s chair and wore an armored vacc-suit like everyone else. Her visor was open and her pretty features were strained.

As the space fighting continued, the asteroids reached the halfway point between Mars and Earth. All the commando missiles had either perished or disgorged their cargos. EMP blasts, hard radiation, x-rays, gamma rays, lasers—radio communications with others had become nearly impossible. Maybe as bad, the sensors picked up little more than harsh static.

“Are you ready?” Marten asked.

A red light flashed on Nadia’s board. She groaned fearfully.

The patrol boat had a direct link to the Spartacus’s controls. No one remained aboard the meteor-ship. They’d all crammed into the patrol boats that so far were still parked on the Spartacus’s outer shell, on the side farthest from the asteroids. In the end, mass made the best shield against lasers and against the big cyborg torpedoes.

Marten adjusted the controls of his screen. Their targeted asteroid was ten kilometers in diameter. It was deeper in the field and thus partly shielded by bigger asteroids. It still had lasers turrets and now several torpedoes lifted from it, accelerating for the Spartacus.

“Osadar!” Marten shouted, using a tight-link to a different patrol boat.

“I see them,” Osadar said. “And I’m launching.”

Even through the patrol boat, Marten felt the Spartacus shudder. It meant Zenos had blasted off the meteor-ship. The Spartacus decelerated, slowing its velocity as the asteroid loomed ever closer. The patrol boats still lacked enough thrust and fuel to decelerate hard enough to land. If the Spartacus died too soon….

“We should have decelerated before this,” Nadia whispered.

“Not a chance,” Marten said. “It would have left us exposed too long.”

Behind him in the patrol boat, space marines rustled as they adjusted their armored suits. Each vacc-suit was composed of articulated metal and ceramic-plate armor. A rigid, biphase carbide-ceramic corselet protected the torso, while articulated plates of BPC covered the arms and legs. Weapons clacked, boots shuffled and men breathed too heavily.

Through the tight-link, Osadar cursed.

Marten studied his board. Another flock of torpedoes zoomed toward them from deeper in the asteroids. How many cyborgs had toiled like ants to achieve those launches? In Marten’s opinion, there were simply too many asteroids to capture and redirect and too little time in which to do it.

“Light up the defenses,” said Marten.

Osadar in her patrol boat controlled some of the meteor-ship’s functions. Nadia controlled others and Omi the remaining aboard his patrol boat.

On his screen, Marten watched. The Spartacus’s point-defense cannons began to adjust as they targeted torpedoes. Each fired depleted uranium pellets. In the background, Marten saw the Zenos’ exhausts as the missiles sped at the torpedoes. Then a huge stabbing beam struck from a million-kilometers away. The beam hit a torpedo, destroying it.

“Highborn sensors must be better than ours,” Osadar said.

Marten tried to swallow in a dry throat. This was the worst part—the approach to landing. He wished he were anywhere but here. The cyborgs were living murder. The number of asteroids—there were seventeen of them if you counted the two debris fields as two loosely-packed asteroids. Seventeen objects, each large enough to bring extinction to Earth. How were they supposed to deflect them in time?

Another torpedo disintegrated in the beam of the Highborn laser. Then a smaller cyborg missile exploded, filling the vacuum with a powerful electromagnetic pulse.

“I’ve lost visual,” Omi said over the tight-link.

“I never should have brought you into this,” Marten told Nadia.

She was too busy with her board to respond. Now a second ultra-heavy laser flashed to their aid.

At that moment, a terrific jolt shook everyone in the patrol boat.

“What happened?” Omi asked over the tight-link.

“Here comes another torpedo,” Osadar said. “Prepare to detach.”

“It’s too soon,” Omi said.

Then Marten saw it on his screen. A black-as-sin torpedo sped at the Spartacus. A big laser flashed near the torpedo, missing it. Three point-defense pellets hit, tearing holes but failing to stop the monstrosity. Then the torpedo went nova. Through the patrol boat’s heavily-tinted window of ballistic glass, the intense flash hurt Marten’s eyeballs and put splotches in his vision. The terrific jolt of the shock-blast made Marten’s teeth rattle until he clamped them together. Twenty seconds later, a second explosion dwarfed the first. All around Marten, the boat’s bulkheads rattled uncontrollably and groaned in metallic complaint.

Outside, a jagged and growing crack splintered the meteor-ship’s shell. Oxygen sheeted upward as the inner ship spewed its precious air. A wobbling patrol boat fired thrusters, fighting to escape the Spartacus’s destruction.

“Launch!” someone screamed.

In a daze, Marten saw Nadia. She slapped buttons. Then Gs thrust him lower into his crash-seat. They were lifting off the dying ship.