Planet Wrecker

-65-

It was a Hell-ride to the asteroid. The patrol boat’s auto-cannons fired constantly. Anti-missiles bloomed around them. And the lunar-like surface grew larger. Then a patrol boat to their left exploded.

Marten tried to open channels with the others. Because they’d lifted off the meteor-ship, he’d lost the tight-links and had to rely solely on radio transmissions. Harsh static played in his ears. With a shake of his head, Marten decided to ignore the others for now as he studied the growing asteroid. It had a crater-sized exhaust-port, which was a huge cavity making it like a massive cave. Near the port—

“Laser turret!” shouted Marten.

Whether the cyborgs had saved it as an ace card or maybe had made fast repairs was impossible to know. The critical thing was that a beam erupted from it, lancing straight at them.

Nadia yanked the controls. Gs forced everyone to the left as the patrol boat banked sharply. Decoy chaff spewed. The beam struck, and one of the stubby, wing-like projections disappeared in a slag of hot metal, taking two auto-cannons with it.

The beam lanced again, and now it cooked decoy chaff.

The last launch of a counter-missile made the patrol boat shudder. Blips on Marten’s screen showed that other patrol-boats had fired missiles. For a moment, he heard Osadar’s voice. The patrol boat banked hard in a different direction as Nadia ejected an electronic counter-measure pod. Its single purpose was to emit dummy patrol-boat signals.

The laser turret beamed again. The right side of their patrol boat turned red and some of that side melted away. Hot globs of metal cooked seven space marines in their armor.

Marten shouted obscenities as he struck his board in helpless rage.

Then a patrol-boat-launched missile exploded against the laser turret. The armored turret absorbed the effect as it lost mass. Two more hit as depleted uranium pellets hammered it, gouging and blowing away armor. As the beam stabbed again, taking out a counter-measure pod, a last missile destroyed the turret.

By now, the lunar-like surface filled half of Marten’s screen. “There,” he said, pointing at a computer-generated map with his stylus. “Is everyone seeing this?”

Like the others, Marten’s visor was down and his HUD on. There were domes on the surface, three of them in a cluster. There were also many burnt turrets, slagged point-defense cannons and empty torpedo bays. As Osadar had once predicted, a long rail system had been laid on the surface. Some of the rail-line was twisted and melted in places. A Doom Star laser must have done that.

“Can we land?” asked Marten.

Nadia’s gloved hands worked over the controls. “Maybe,” she said. “The enemy laser took out our—”

“Don’t give me excuses,” Marten snapped. “Just get us down.”

Nadia’s silver-colored visor turned sharply toward him.

“Get us down, honey,” he said. “But do it fast.”

She turned back to her controls as the space marines in their crash-seats watched the window or the laser-opened section of the boat.