Planet Wrecker

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Marten used the last outer camera, turning it. Behind them, three patrol boats each burned a long exhaust plume. They each decelerated the last amount, which would hopefully allow them a soft landing.

“Nadia,” he said.

“I don’t dare push the engine any harder,” she said, as she pointed at her board.

Marten saw it. The coils were overheating and in the danger zone, far in the red. The patrol boat’s engine could easily explode. He computed their thrust and ran the probabilities of surviving a landing at this speed.

“You have to push it,” he told Nadia. “Otherwise, none of us will survive the crash landing.”

“I’ve spotted cyborgs,” Osadar said over the com-link. As she spoke, her patrol boat’s auto-cannons fired.

On the asteroid’s surface appeared tiny bright lights.

“What’s that?” Marten said.

Then his sensors picked up the objects. Shoulder-launched missiles zoomed at them.

Nadia punched a button. “That’s the last of the decoy chaff,” she said.

Marten couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen. The missiles—two veered toward the chaff. The last hit them, exploded and the patrol boat had another new hole, with three more deaths, this time from shrapnel.

“Push the engine to its limit!” Marten shouted. His eyes were glued to the screen, watching for more bright dots on the surface. Had Osadar’s auto-cannons killed those cyborgs?

The patrol boat began to vibrate, and the vibration increased steadily. So did the size of the asteroid, at least their view of it. The other asteroids were kilometers away now.

Then their ten-kilometer asteroid, the one designated as E, became their world. Marten viewed lunar-like hills, ancient impact craters and stardust. How long had this stellar object orbited Saturn before the cyborgs had ripped it out of orbit? The vibrating became unbearable, making it impossible to focus his eyes. Marten didn’t know it, but if there had been air in the main compartment, his eardrums would have burst from the sound. But because vacuum didn’t carry sound waves, those noises never affected him or any of the space marines.

The hills loomed bigger and they became more jagged. The patrol boat vibrated madly so Marten had to grip his seat. Then a single mountain became everything, and Nadia achieved the impossible. Instead of crashing against the hill, she landed their wounded boat and shut off the tortured engine. Stardust billowed upward, surrounding them, and then it slowly began to settle.

They’d reached Asteroid E. Now they had to kill the cyborgs, find the asteroid’s controls and engage its engines if they could.