Planet Wrecker

-89-

Chief Coordinator of Earth Defense Scipio read the news with alarm.

The tall Highborn with the prosthetic hand stood before a large screen. It took up an entire wall of the largest room in the former laser satellite. The satellite had once orbited Earth. It was torus-shaped. As the satellite traveled through built-up velocity, the torus rotated, creating centrifugal-gravity.

“There’s no more they can do.”

Scipio barely heard the words of the Social Unity Earthling beside him. To him, the woman was tiny, barely five and half feet tall. She’d coordinated the SU premen, the Earthlings as Scipio tried to call them in his mind. Those Earthlings from Eurasia and Africa had brought engine-machinery and helped install them. Tens of thousands of Earthlings had helped the Highborn repair the least-damaged habitats orbiting Earth. Once, those habitats had contained algae pools and bacteria tanks.

Instead of drifting uselessly in orbit, Scipio had coordinated the repairs and sent the habitats toward the asteroids. As slow as they were, they’d built-up speed. The critical aspect of each was its mass. As constructs, the habitats were huge, many greater in bulk than a Doom Star, although none had as much mass.

Scipio still couldn’t believe the Gustavus Adolphus had been destroyed. The Highborn were down to three Doom Stars, one at the Sun-Works Factory under repairs. Once, they had possessed five of the giant warships.

“The Grand Admiral can do no more,” the woman said.

“You are correct,” said Scipio.

On the wall, the asteroids less than three days away from impact against the Earth appeared as red images.

Cassius had sent the grim message. The Doom Stars had used every nuclear weapon in their cargo-holds. Scouring the captured asteroids—all fifteen of them—the Highborn had found more nukes and used them, too. Highborn had maneuvered some of those nuclear bombs deep into the debris-fields before detonating them. Most of the debris, the rocks, had blown outward, enough that eighty-seven percent of the mass no longer constituted a threat against Earth. That still left a critical thirteen percent of the debris-fields. Other nuclear explosions had deflected smaller asteroids. A few of the biggest nukes had been sunk into the center of the monster silicon-based rocks and detonated. Those asteroids had splintered and separated into pieces, a few of those pieces were still on a collision course for Earth. There were seven major objects left and the lesser remains of the former debris-fields and asteroid-smashed debris. One of the seven major objects was a giant, thirty-kilometers in diameter. The Doom Stars, Orion-ships, Highborn commandoes and SU warships had done all they could. Now it was Scipio’s turn.

“We needed to refit more habitats,” the SU woman said. “We simply didn’t have enough time.”

“We shall see,” Scipio said.

“Have you read the data?” she demanded.

Scipio frowned. The preman, the SU Earthling, acted too familiarly with him. Any other Highborn would have slapped her into obedience. It was such a trying task working with premen.

“Do not query me,” Scipio told her.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, as she cringed. “I didn’t mean any offense.”

Scipio squinted at the wall, at the red images representing the seven major objects and debris. Blue dots were the advancing habitats, eight of them.

Curtly, he nodded. It was time to put in the final coordinates and drive the habitats against the asteroids. The question that plagued him was this. How many should he send at each? Or should he send all of the habitats at the four biggest rocks and ignore the rest? Let the Earthlings use their merculite missiles and proton beams on the remainder. What was the best decision?

Scipio touched his prosthetic hand. It was better to be certain with a few. If the Earth were to survive, let its occupants defend it. Otherwise…maybe the planet and the premen weren’t worthy of life.