Planet Wrecker

-72-

“Cyborgs!” a space marine shouted.

Marten threw himself onto the floor amid the huge coils that glowed red with energy. There were rows upon rows of the giant coils. Each stood six meters high and was thirteen meters across. They pulsed with power and emitted intense heat.

Sweat trickled down Marten’s neck as his air-conditioning unit thrummed overtime. There was screaming in his headphones, and coils blew apart.

Marten crawled as sweat slid from his back and across his ribs. He fired his weapon. So did space marines near him. The flashing gyroc rounds blew apart cyborgs, smashed coils and spilled laser-fluid from the bulky packs on the enemies’ backs. Electrical discharges made it nearly impossible to see and jammed the helmet’s sensors. In this vast coil-chamber, the Cognitive missiles were useless. It was head-to-head fighting with gyroc rifles, vibroblades and shock grenades.

Using his elbows and knees, Marten kept crawling across the floor. Communications were jammed in this chamber. It was just training, warrior-instinct and fighting skills.

A cyborg stood up and aimed its laser at Marten. As the cyborg did, a jagged piece of shrapnel cut into its chest-plate. The titanium-reinforced arms and legs went rigid. The carbine slowly dropped to the floor.

From his prone position, Marten pumped three APEX rounds into the cyborg, blowing it backward each time. Then he crawled to the fused machine-man and felt his nape hairs stand on end as the thing’s head turned toward him. Marten shoved his rifle barrel against the head and blew it to pieces.

This was a horrible place to fight. A cyborg could be hiding behind any of a hundred giant coils. The baking heat, the lack of sensor-data and the frightening bolts writhing everywhere, even into the ceiling so tiles and chunks of plasti-steel rained down, made this a nightmare. Snatches of words or phrases occasionally broke through the static in his headphones.

“Advance!” shouted Marten.

There wasn’t anything refined or clever about the tactics. It was like two wrestlers grunting on the floor, trying to choke the other one to death using brute strength.

A cyborg jumped before Marten. Its laser-beam burned a good meter above his prone body. There was a scream in Marten’s headphones. He had no idea what had just happened. He didn’t really care. He just lifted his gyroc and fired. But the cyborg jumped fast behind a coil. The gyroc round whooshed past the thing’s former position and exploded against a coil farther back. The coil emitted bolts like sparks, and Marten rolled wildly out of the way, barely avoiding the energy-bolts as they hit the floor like lightening from some god’s hand.

Gripping his rifle with manic strength, Marten cursed and jumped to his feet. Always do the unexpected with cyborgs. It was something he’d learned the hard way. They were logic wizards, and had incredible computing ability. Marten leaped at the coil the cyborg had used. The cyborg took that moment to roll around the edge, aim its carbine at the floor where Marten would have been, and adjusted with insect-like speed as it spotted Marten coming down from a high leap.

Three APEX (Armor-Piercing EXplosive) shells spewed from the rifle. They penetrated the cyborg’s armor and blasted the thing apart. As it tumbled backward, Marten landed, pumping three more rounds into it. Through bitter lessons, Marten had learned to make triple-certain a cyborg was in pieces before he declared it dead.

Terrible explosions began to occur throughout the coil chamber. There didn’t seem to be any rationality as to why one area blew and another didn’t. Space marines were fried. Cyborgs melted.

“Get out here!” Marten shouted. “Get outside!”

He had no idea if anyone heard him. As his suit’s air-conditioner unit thrummed, as the chamber became an intense red wall of heat and flame, Marten loped in almost zero gravity. The sweat poured down his body now, and the air burned down his throat, almost too hot to breathe.

He spied a heavy door. A cyborg set up a plasma-cannon there. Other charging space marines shot madly, and the cyborg went down.

The vacc-suit’s functions were approaching critical. Marten blinked, and blinked again as sweat stung his eyes. He wasn’t sure what happened next. There were gaps in his consciousness. Then he loped over the dead cyborg and shoved his shoulder against the heavy door, slowly opening it to another compartment in the asteroid’s vast engine complex.