Cherubim

by David Hallquist

  Vesta’s an asteroid that has everything. It’s the second largest asteroid, large enough that minerals were concentrated in its molten stage, and those minerals are easily accessible though the deep craters and fissures on the asteroid. There’s enough water trapped in the rock for everyone, and it’s in a good position for trade with the rest of the solar system. Still, it’s remained a dark and primitive rock because of the various Vestal rulers.

  The pirate lords of early Vesta used it as a central processing site for plunder, enslaved captives, and smuggling. The Saturnine had a major naval and intelligence base there and maintained the fiction of Vesta being an independent world. The whole time, though, the place has remained undeveloped and poor, after a succession of plundering rulers.

  Now they have a new thug in charge, and they probably aren’t expecting Jupiter or anyone else will ever be any better.

  We’ve launched four squadrons, holding one in reserve. The idea is, we’ll split on passing Vesta, going over the equatorial and polar regions. Around us, space will be filled with countermeasures dust and sensor dazzlers, as well as attack and decoy drones.

  No one’s fired a shot…yet. We’re still broadcasting for them to stand down. Maybe they will, but I don’t believe it. If they were going to stand down, they would’ve done it long ago. If they wanted to be civilized, they wouldn’t have deliberately provoked an attack by murdering hostages. Finally, all the ships that didn’t want to stay and fight have already left. No, they want to fight it out to the end on the dream of a raiding society that was long dead before any of them were ever born.

  Up ahead, the Vestal ships have put to space, arrayed above both poles in loose squadrons of four. They’re not the real threat, though. The constellation of Saturnine anti-space heavy maser cannon, each one larger than our frames, are the main danger, followed by clusters of stealth nuclear starburst mines. My guess is the departing Saturnine told the Vestals this would be enough firepower to wipe out whatever force Jupiter sends against Vesta. That was a lie, of course, but it’s still probably going to hurt.

  Seconds creep by as we close…

  Microwave burst!

  One of the enemy maser cannons fired, taking out a decoy, maybe too eager or too afraid to wait for the order. Either way, it’s on now.

  The enemy maser cannons open up, their beams visible as they melt through the dust clouds and pan back and forth like search lights. Lasers and rail guns open fire from the asteroid surface and ships, trying to fill all of space with projectiles and deadly coherent light. Every missile launcher on the asteroid and those ships belches forth clouds of crude secondhand and improvised missiles. They probably figure they’ll have to fire everything they’ve got before it’s taken out.

  If so, they’re right.

  My squadron goes into cyber-boosted quick-time, and the battlespace slows down to a perceptible crawl as everything moves in apparent slow motion. The enemy is out of time, and we’ve got all the time in the world.

  We launch our heavy torpedoes against the maser emplacements. This is point-blank range for these big boys, so they immediately burst into clouds of anti-space missiles, jammer decoys, and countermeasures dust, one for each of the big guns to worry about. Next, our squadrons empty about half of our smaller but faster Lancer missiles in a swarm of plasma trails heading out to those enemy spaceships and surface weapons emplacements. The Invictus drones, along with us, fire spreads of missiles at identified enemy targets.

  We’re in range for our x-ray lances, but our lasers will have to deal with that cloud of incoming missiles first. We target the most modern missiles first, because it’s not numbers or warheads that are the most dangerous, but modern tracking systems. One by one, missiles wink out as we launch our own decoys, jammers, dust, and countermeasures SPGs. Now the oncoming missiles come into range for our UV point defense laser networks to carve glowing tracks through the dust and space ahead of us that bloom into clouds of detonations. Improvised chemical explosives, ion-plasma charges, and a few old-fashioned dirty nukes detonate around us. When it’s over, they’ve killed a lot of decoys and a few drones, and scorched off the first layer of armor from one of our frames. None of us got hit bad.

  Now, it’s our turn.

  Our missiles arrive at their targets. Wild and desperate anti-missile fire erupts from the asteroid, ships, and stations, trying to take out our incoming missiles as they dance and jink behind our missiles’ jamming systems and decoys. Finally, their defenses overwhelmed, the Vestals detonate their minefield. X-ray lasers radiate from nuclear fireballs, burning through our missiles and attacking drones. The mines take out most of our swam.

  It won’t be enough.

  Our missiles finally get through. Vestal ships and gunnery platforms detonate in flashes of sharp blue light, while dust is thrown up from the flashes of surface impacts. We’re not using anything heavy, just variable-intensity shaped plasma charges, but it’s enough for the thin-skinned vessels and emplacements the Vestals have. Without any kind of proper armor or structural reinforcement, even a miss would be catastrophic to those ships, and we don’t miss.

  Now Vesta’s fleet and defense network is gone, and the asteroid has a few new craters.

  We close in.

  * * *

  We split into squadrons as we pass the asteroid.

  Ours is going under the southern pole. Below me, the massive Veneia crater seems to take up the whole of the asteroid. Solar reflectors line the crater rim, along with glittering greenhouse domes. Transit tunnels radiate from the center, along with collections of docking facilities and industrial buildings in the most built-up part of Vesta. The central peak towers over the crater plain, glittering with lights, windows, and solar reflectors.

  There’s no fire coming up from below right now.

  I expected they’d have fanatics and pop-up guns showing up everywhere, taking shots at us as we make our pass, but it isn’t happening. Maybe we took out everything they’ve got, but I don’t believe it. I’d like to think we’ve taken all the fight out of them, but I don’t believe that, either. My guess is, they’re all hunkered down, waiting to ambush us when the Marine landing ships show up.

  As we pass by, we light our boosters to swing around the asteroid’s far side. A minute body like Vesta doesn’t have enough gravity for us to orbit quickly, so we maintain our high-speed circuit by thrusting toward the asteroid. Sparsely settled rock races by underneath, quiet and still. The other three squadrons meet us on the far side, and we pass each other on our patrol.

  Still, nothing is happening.

  We continue on, passing over the cratered northern pole and back around to the side of the asteroid facing the fleet. The craters and damage from our strikes are visible all over the surface, but it looks like we didn’t hit any civilian structures—fortunately. Soon, our other squadrons pass us by on our orbit, and we’re on the way back over the southern pole again.

  Rackham has us circle the asteroid three times before he gives the OK for the Marine transports.

  We take up position by the Veneia crater walls facing the fleet. Each of us scans everything, searching every grain of regolith for movement or an energy signature that shouldn’t be there. We fire off spreads of SPGs in reconnaissance mode, then link up with the drones hovering overhead. We’ve got to be ready for everything.

  Here come the transports. The Marines are coming in a dozen heavily armored and armed transports, escorted by twice that number of gunships. Our squadron links up with the formation when they meet us, and we go over the crater rim.

  Fire and mayhem greet us as we clear the rim wall.

  * * *

  Laser fire rakes across our formation, targeting radar and lidar lights us up, and missiles are on the way from almost everywhere. Alarms are screaming everywhere.

  I link up with Talon, and my cyber systems take me into the slow time of battle. With access to the full, unfiltered sensory data of my frame, and with my objective timeframe accelerated
, I can actually tell what’s happening in all the chaos.

  Most of the laser fire is scattering off our deflection coatings, doing little more than dazzling our sensors some, and providing targeting back-scatter for follow-up attacks. A few glancing strikes by high-powered lasers mostly causes armor to volatilize outer layers, dissipating heat away from our frames and ships. The real danger is what’s coming up next. There are swarms of smaller missiles and homemade drones on the way, ready to hit in a few seconds.

  Plenty of time, from an accelerated perspective.

  We fill space with lasers. Our frames, drones, the Marine gunships, and transports open up with a coordinated anti-missile pattern. We destroy the swarms of incoming targets, the closet first, then move outward to the more distant missiles and drones in an expanding wave of explosive destruction. A couple seconds later, there’s nothing but glowing fragments left of the incoming missiles.

  Now to deal with the rest of the enemy fire.

  There are hostiles in abundance. Spacesuited figures have popped out of airlocks all over the crater, buried attack drones are lifting off in clouds of regolith dust, and civilian vehicles and robots are firing on us with concealed bolted-on weapons. The closest fire is coming from the reverse slope of the crater rim mountains we’ve passed over, and the most intense fire is coming from the central peak up ahead, but there’s fire lancing up from all over the hundred-plus kilometers of crater valley floor.

  The positions on the crater rim need to go first; they can depress their fire to turn the entire crater floor into a kill box for anyone who lands or dismounts. I focus our fire on the rim wall right behind us. Light stuff only, UV lasers and SPGs—we don’t want to burst open any dome habitats around the battlefield. Next, I send Larry and Jack to either side to circle the crater and clear out those rim positions.

  As the rest of us fly over the crater floor, we pick off everything right below us. A few of the shooters try to hide behind cover, but that doesn’t help against the guided SPG cluster munitions we’re raining down behind us. I direct the vast majority of our drones to suppress fire coming from the crater floor.

  The central mountain peak is coming up. Towering over 20 kilometers above the crater floor, its imposing bulk gives it perfect overwatch to cover all approaches along the crater, while the crater rim wall protects it from horizontal fire from outside the crater. It looks like the central keep of a vast, ancient fortress, and it is. Weapons systems that were dormant during the earlier battle open up, lashing out with heavy lasers while more missiles go aloft.

  The laser fire intensifies, heating up our vehicles until they glow and leave trails of vaporized armor. The rapid-fire missile launchers are keeping our whole defensive laser network fully engaged, trying to prevent the raging wall of explosions from getting any closer to us. Other squadrons are on the way to relieve our forces hitting the crater walls and help us take the central mountain, but they’re long minutes away.

  It may as well be an eternity.

  This is more fire than we can take for long, no matter how primitive and poorly aimed it is. Linked together in our accelerated comm-net, we can communicate faster than speech or words—and there isn’t time for that, either. The Marine commander and I link for an instant and agree; we go all in to take the central mountain command center, right now, before we get bogged down.

  We open up with the weapons we’ve held in reserve until now.

  Our heavy x-ray laser lances and Marine gunship particle beam cannon burn though the armored and fortified weapons emplacements with pinpoint precision. At this range, it’s impossible for us to miss against stationary targets. Our frames and the gunships launch spreads of Lancer missiles, set to take out the remaining enemy weapons emplacements, communications, targeting, and command centers in blasts of searing blue plasma.

  Enemy fire from the mountain drops to next to nothing as the towering mass rears up ahead of us.

  Where to land?

  We considered several possible points of entry in the meetings before. Land at the bottom and work our way up? Hit several locations around the outside, then fight in to take the center? All would take a long time, and likely result in excess casualties. Instead, we’re going to end this quickly and take the main space-dock near the mountain peak.

  This is the personal hangar for the Vestal commander, the main route by which he’d flee the asteroid and the quickest access to his palace wing and the central command nexus. Once we take that, we’ll have taken the military and political center for all of Vesta.

  We might also capture the bastard responsible for all this.

  He might not be there, of course. It’s possible he’s already fled deep into the interior of the asteroid, or even left Vesta entirely by now.

  I don’t think so, however. I’m betting he’s cast himself as an old-school pirate lord, and that means his personal presence in the battle, leading his men. If he ran, resistance would probably evaporate, so he’s here…waiting for us.

  * * *

  We open up with all our remaining missiles.

  The doors blow off and tumble out into space, beginning the long, slow drop to the crater floor below. They’re not alone. Vehicles, crates, and flailing, spacesuited figures also race out in a cloud of evacuating atmosphere. There, illuminated by the hangar’s lights through the icy mist of decompression, is the gleaming hull of the pirate lord’s personal ship. Perhaps he was preparing to escape in it or raid our surface forces after we’ve landed.

  Not anymore.

  We fire x-ray lances and particle beams into the ship at point-blank range. Our shots hammer through the ship’s thin skin easily, and flashes of light and fire erupt through the windows and hatches. Our UV laser clusters seek out any moving hostiles, while we send the rest of our remaining SPGs into the ravaged hangar to fill it with plasma and hyper-velocity fragments.

  I ignite my plasma sword and lead my squadron into the hangar bay.

  Pop-up guns fold out from the walls, floor, and ceiling, spraying us down with hyper-velocity darts that spark and scream off our armor. We blast most of those away with our laser clusters, while the rest of us close in to cut them in half with searing plasma blades.

  Now that we’re in and have secured the hangar, the Marines arrive to take the rest of the base. There’s not enough room for any of the transports to land within the bay itself, because of all of the wreckage. Instead, transports pull up to the edge of the hangar and disgorge platoons of Jovian Marines in full power armor, while other Marines exit their hovering transports outside and jet over the gap to land within. The Marines take up position behind cover quickly, with rail guns and plasma cannon ready to fire on anything that comes out of any of the hatches into the hangar. Our AIs infiltrate the local computer systems and devices, first denying use of them to the enemy, then taking control of all the systems ourselves. In time, our programs should be able to take over everything in the base, unless they run into modern countermeasures.

  Now all we have to do is hold the hangar until the Marines are ready to begin their assault.

  Hatch doors blow in all around the hangar bay.

  Vestal raiders pour in from every direction in a charge of suicidal bravery. Their spacesuits are painted in garish colors, and many actually have bandanas wrapped around their helmets. The raiders brandish rail guns, lasers, old-style chemical firearms, and even swords.

  Our laser clusters, rail guns, plasma repeaters, and x-ray lances carve through the oncoming horde. Their spacesuits do nothing to stop the searing wave of fire crashing into them, and the front ranks just disintegrate, while the men behind drop instantly. Still, they come onward through an inferno, firing wildly as they advance. Their shots glance off our armor, but they keep coming anyway. I don’t know whether to call it bravery, desperation, or madness, but they never slow their advance, even as it’s obviously hopeless. In seconds, the last one of them, a raider holding an improvised mine, is gunned down.

  Why? What did t
hey hope to accomplish?

  The big cargo bay doors to the hangar begin to open, emitting a blast of air and frozen ice clouds.

  They just made their second biggest mistake. The biggest mistake was executing the hostages and pulling the Jovian military out here. The second was opening a hatch big enough for our frames to access. Now we’re going to…

  Oh—so that’s why…

  Giant, red-eyed, spidery black, mechanized Saturnine assault-battleoids rush us from the cargo bay…because of course they do. So much for Saturn having taken all their equipment off Vesta.

  Lasers, rail cannon, particle beams, and plasma bolts lance across the hangar, turning it into a sea of chaos and melting metal. The assault-battleoids unleash a swarm of SPGs, forcing our laser clusters into full defensive mode as we thin them out and force them to explode prematurely in a cascade of blinding blue-white plasma fire. Saturnine high-powered particle beams and x-ray lances are cutting through the armor of our frames and power armor, but we’ve already taken down half of them before they can even enter the hangar.

  Here they come.

  A towering monstrosity of weapon arms, black armored carapaces, and glowing red camera eyes is upon me in a blink, even with my accelerated timeframe. The battle shrinks to the intensely personal as I’m doing everything I can do just to stay alive. I cut away two of the spinning, bladed weapons arms with my plasma blade and parry others clumsily with my other arm, badly mauling it in the process. Cutting implements and plasma torches try to tear through my frontal armor while its writhing, metallic tentacles and cables try to entrap my frame. Both our laser clusters fire at each other in a microsecond battle to destroy laser systems and sensors before the other can. Saturnine AI viruses are trying to infiltrate all my systems, and ever-changing scramblers make most of my sensors and communications worthless. My x-ray lances and other heavy weapons are useless against an opponent in this close. I try to get my arms free of the cables that enwrap them and—