Cybership

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Don’t give your enemy too much credit,” Jon quoted quietly.

  “Is that something your colonel used to say?”

  Jon snapped his fingers at Gloria. Then, he pointed at Da Vinci. “Turn it on. We’re going to use the launcher’s computer system.”

  -3-

  Jon climbed into his battlesuit.

  He wore slick-suit overalls, as there wasn’t enough room inside the battlesuit to wear bulky clothing. It was a tight fit even so, but if he got an itch while wearing the armor, he should be able to squeeze an arm from an exoskeleton sleeve and scratch himself.

  The suit had outer BPC armor—an articulated biphase specially treated carbon sheathing. It had battery power, electric motors and exoskeleton strength that would amplify his normal muscles.

  The helmet had an HUD, a plastic nipple for water and another for nutrient paste. He had a medikit attached to him and loaded with stims and other drugs. The suit also had a complicated disposal system and short-range communication. If the enemy jammed them, they had hookup phone lines.

  It took him four minutes and thirty-two seconds to don and close the battlesuit.

  He hadn’t allowed Gloria to bring her SLN battlesuit. She and Da Vinci would stay in a mobile resupply vehicle. In essence, the small tracked vehicle was a mini-tank designed to ride along within an insertion boat. It carried supplies for the men and their suits, a generator for extra suit power, and it boasted an autocannon.

  Jon activated his battlesuit, using minimal power. With motors purring, he climbed through the insertion-boat’s hatch, shuffled along a narrow pathway and backed into his rack. It clacked around him, pinning him into place.

  It was claustrophobically tight inside the boat. Over one hundred and eighty suited-marines, the Centurion and his men, attached themselves to the racks.

  Gloria and Da Vinci had already sealed themselves in the supply vehicle that rode in this boat.

  Soon, the boat’s outer hatch sealed as the weird ice slid into place.

  Jon checked his chronometer. They had less than ten minutes until the Brezhnev made its final maneuver.

  Despite his fierce desire to beat the aliens, or maybe because of it, his heart rate accelerated. Butterflies made his gut flip. The sensation could have weakened his resolve. Instead, Jon felt intensely alive. He was worried about what the next few minutes would bring, but he would not trade this moment.

  Normally, an officer would be monitoring a med board attached to all the men. Said officer might also have suggested Jon take a mild trank.

  On Jon’s orders, they forwent such scrutiny. There would be no radio transmissions while they were outside the alien vessel. They dared not risk it, not against a cybernetic foe with such advanced technology.

  Jon’s mouth was dry again. With his chin, he activated the suit’s HUD. At the same time, he brought up an external control unit. He gripped it with his power-gloved hands.

  His fingers trembled with anticipation.

  On the HUD, he observed the Old Man’s insertion boat. It already rested in the launch holder. The other two boats were on the conveyer system.

  Everyone would have to remain strong on his or her own. Everyone except for a handful in the supply vehicles was cocooned in his battlesuit, alone with his thoughts.

  Da Vinci had set up a simple automated sequence in the Brezhnev’s auxiliary station using a tablet in lieu of the regular computer.

  The seconds ticked away. Jon watched his HUD timer. “Now,” he whispered.

  In the battlesuit, Jon sensed motion as the Brezhnev’s side-jets rotated the one-kilometer vessel. The battleship maneuvered so the selected hangar bay aimed in the correct direction.

  The flutters in his gut did summersaults. He purposefully slowed his breathing to counteract that.

  The Brezhnev lurched.

  On the HUD, Jon saw the hangar bay doors begin to open.

  He heaved a sigh of relief. The tablet had successfully drained the hangar bay of atmosphere, so the opening doors would not cause violent decompression.

  So far, this was working.

  Jon wiped his sweaty fingertips on the gloves’ interior pads.

  Through the HUD linkage with outer boat cameras, Jon saw the stars glittering in the stellar darkness. He spied a rounded edge of Triton. Then, he saw the giant alien vessel.

  His heart rate started upward again, faster than ever.

  “You’ll get your chance,” he whispered to himself. “Be patient. You’re going to teach the aliens a lesson they’ll never forget.”

  When the hangar bay doors had opened all the way, the launcher’s computer activated. It was crazy, but far more computer power guided the launcher than had guided the Brezhnev.

  Once more, the seconds moved with agonizing slowness. Then, a red light flashed on Jon’s HUD.

  “Get ready for it,” he whispered. “Get ready for it—”

  The catapult system activated. Much faster than any roller coaster, the holder with the Old Man’s insertion boat shot outward at terrific speed. Like a bullet from a rifle, the boat flew out of the hangar bay into the night. If everything had gone according to plan, the boat was now silently speeding toward the alien vessel.

  Jon didn’t have time to worry about the Old Man’s boat. A lurch and a feeling of destiny meant the launcher had picked up their craft as it trundled along the track.

  It felt as if everything dropped like an elevator. We’re in the launch holder, Jon realized.

  He pressed a button to ready the boat’s dark hydrogen-spray propulsion system. Once they were outside the battleship, Jon would have limited maneuvering ability.

  Now, everything seemed to speed up. A tumble of ideas rattled through Jon’s thoughts. Another warning light blinked on his HUD. It would be blinking on everyone else’s HUDs as well.

  “Three, two, one…zero,” Jon whispered.

  Instantly, heavy gravities slammed him back. It was a crushing force as the launcher hurled the boat into space. Then—nothing. Weightlessness resumed. They drifted toward the terrible alien vessel.

  A nervous laugh escaped Jon’s throat. He pushed his forehead forward in order to blot sweat from his brow. He needed steadiness, clear-headedness for the next sequence.

  He froze. A new red light blinked on the HUD. A few taps of his chin caused a message to run across his visor. Someone wanted to communicate with him.

  Was this the aliens?

  Pain twisted his stomach. How could the aliens—no, no, this was an internal request. Who was trying to contact him?

  Should I take the call?

  Something told him he’d better. Despite that something, he reluctantly opened channels.

  “Jon.” It was Gloria.

  “Why are you radioing me?” he demanded.

  “I wouldn’t do this unless it was critical.”

  “Get to the point,” he said. The longer they talked, the longer the aliens had to pick up the odd radio transmission.

  “Da Vinci rigged the battleship’s engines,” Gloria said.

  “To help us,” the Neptunian said in the background.

  “What are you talking about?” Jon said.

  “The engines, the Brezhnev’s nuclear-powered engines,” Gloria said. “They’re going to go critical.”

  “You mean the fool rigged a self-destruct for the Brezhnev?”

  “Yes.”

  “When’s it going to blow?”

  “In ten minutes.”

  “What?” Jon demanded. “Is he insane? What was he thinking?”

  “He miscalculated. He told me what he’d done. I won’t get all technical, but there was a failsafe he needed to engage in order to give us the hour he’d planned.”

  “But…” Jon said. “We won’t have reached the alien ship in ten minutes.”

  “Not unless we accelerate to get there faster,” Gloria said.

  “That won’t leave us enough time to brake sufficiently in order to land on the hull.”

 
“You have to change plans, Jon.”

  Rage washed through Jon. What had that little Neptunian bastard been thinking? He would throttle Da Vinci if they lived through this. Was the man a secret alien spy?

  “You have to radio the other boats,” Gloria said.

  Jon stared at his HUD, at the image of the alien vessel, Triton behind it and the stars around the Neptunian moon.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t dare. That will alert the aliens. That will give them an opportunity to shoot us down before we can grab their belt buckle. The others are going to have to guess what I’m doing and follow my action.”

  “And if they don’t guess?” Gloria asked.

  Jon scrunched his eyebrows together. The grimness surfaced full force. “Then they die,” he said.

  “You have to tell them. You have to risk it. I’ve computed the odds. You must alert them, Jon. We’ll never win unless you have what remains of the regiment.”

  Jon rubbed his dry lips together. This was a disaster. They’d actually gotten this far, and the stupid Neptunian had gone and rigged the battleship to detonate too soon.

  “Jon,” Gloria said.

  “Shut up!” he snarled. “Let me think.”

  -4-

  For a moment, Jon debated unhooking his battlesuit and going down to the supply vehicle. He would beat the Neptunian to death before he did anything more.

  The moment passed as he realized he didn’t have the luxury to devote time or mental energy to pleasant daydreams. He needed focus.

  Jon studied his HUD. It was linked to the boat’s main teleoptic sensor.

  The giant alien vessel waited out there in all its grotesque power. Triton provided a spectacular backdrop, dwarfing the one hundred-kilometer ship. The interstellar warship, he noticed, was teardrop-shaped.

  Jon scowled. The alien ship seemed different now that he could see it up close. It had…hull scars. Lots of them. It had…patches on different parts of the armored hull.

  What did the hull scars and patches mean? Had the alien vessel been in countless battles throughout the years? Was it ancient, perhaps? Had the aliens forgotten their past technological glory? Did the cybernetic creatures repair ancient ships so they could keep…raiding younger races?

  Possibilities swarmed through Jon’s thoughts.

  Focus. Get your men onto that ship. Nothing else matters.

  As the insertion boat drifted closer, Jon noticed that several hangar bay doors on the alien vessel were open. A spheroid left a bay. The spheroid followed an earlier-launched one. That spheroid seemed to be on a collision course with his boat.

  Jon’s head jerked back. Would the two of them crash?

  No, that’s an illusion. Why don’t you focus, Jon Hawkins? Why don’t you think?

  He glanced at the distance meter. He clicked his teeth together, thinking furiously. Damn Da Vinci! The fool—he’d get them all killed.

  Jon flexed his fingers. If the Leonid Brezhnev blew up, the nuclear blast would kill them with radiation, if nothing else. The blast was probably too far from the alien ship to do more than irradiate the deck levels nearest the hull. Should he have tried to maneuver the Brezhnev near the alien ship and gone kamikaze?

  “Could have, would have,” Jon muttered. This was the moment. Why couldn’t he make the obvious choice?

  Fear paralyzed his thinking. Fear of death made him wish for another way.

  For just a moment, Jon closed his eyes. The fear of dying coursed through him. The idea of humanity falling prey to a sick cybernetic race—

  “Oh, Hell,” Jon said. “Let’s go out with style.”

  He tapped an ancient Morse code, a navigational signal still used throughout the Solar System. It was three letters long: S.O.S. He did that three times for three boats. He hoped the sergeants were wise enough to keep from answering.

  With a manic laugh, Jon engaged the boat’s hydrogen thrusters. He expelled the hydrogen spray at full throttle.

  There was a bump in the boat. It wasn’t anything near a G of propulsion. Even so, the spray shoved the boat faster toward the looming alien ship. As he accelerated, Jon engaged the boat’s computer. It was a risk—everything was on the line. He aimed for the nearest open hangar bay door.

  NSN space-marine tactics called for an outer hull landing. From there, the battlesuited stealth-attackers were supposed to force hatches into the enemy vessel. That wasn’t the operational tactic now, as they had no more time.

  Jon planned to ram the boat straight down the enemy throat, so to speak. Would there be alien hangar police to fire on them?

  “Let’s find out,” Jon muttered.

  The seconds ticked away as the boat increased velocity. Jon used everything. There wouldn’t be any spray to decelerate. They were going to enter the hangar bay at speed. The space marines were going to have to trust the boat and the battlesuits to cushion the impact enough so some survived.

  An air-conditioner unit purred into life. Jon felt the cooling air sweep against his sweat.

  He was nervous, all right. He felt like a gambler standing naked at a craps table. He’d just put all his chips on one throw of the dice. The worst part was he’d also put all the regiment’s chips on the table. Win or lose, the next roll of the dice was going to determine—

  If we have a chance or not, Jon told himself.

  He used a rear camera. The other two boats followed him at speed. The Old Man and Sergeant Stark had understood the S.O.S. message.

  A shark’s grin spread across Jon’s face. “The Black Anvils are coming, you bastards.”

  Using the boat’s teleoptic sensor, he scanned the mighty invader. The hull seemed dingier by the moment. It had been trashed.

  As the boat neared, the sense of scale increased. The insertion craft was like a mite, a flea. How could five hundred and some Black Anvil mercenaries defeat the aliens inside the giant starship? Jon wanted to scoff at his hubris. They were less than a handful. The aliens had just destroyed the entire Neptunian Gravitational System. The SLN ships had failed—

  “No,” Jon said.

  That wasn’t how a handful of humans won immortal glory. That wasn’t how he was going to pull mankind’s fate out of the fire. He needed balls. He needed bitter determination. He could do this, but first he had to believe it was possible.

  This was a commando operation. Such a military operation would work gloriously or it would end in a fiasco.

  The acceleration quit suddenly. Jon knew because the slight pressure against him disappeared. He’d expelled all of the hydrogen particles from the boat’s fuel tanks.

  The alien vessel filled the teleoptic viewer. A port opened on the hull, and a weapon of sorts shoved into view.

  Jon tightened his stomach muscles as he waited for it, waited for—

  The boat passed the weapon.

  Motion caught Jon’s eyes. The hangar bay doors began to close. The aliens knew they were coming.

  Did the cybernetic organisms know fear? Or had these aliens long-ago scrubbed fear from their beings?

  Now the hangar bay loomed before them. It appeared to Jon that the stealth boat was going to make it. Would the other boats do likewise? Would the alien’s defensive guns destroy the other craft?

  Jon tried to ease for impact. He couldn’t. The boat flashed past the hangar bay doors. They were in, with a vast deck containing hundreds of grounded spheroids rushing before him. An even greater wall loomed before the teleoptic sensor—

  A loud and intense IMPACT shoved Jon. A moment later, a hammer, or something similar, smashed against his head and rendered him unconscious…

  -5-

  Jon groaned. He tasted something coppery that must have been blood, his blood.

  There was something intensely important he had to do. Why couldn’t he remember?

  Knocking noises made his head hurt. Something shuddered against him.

  He was…a mercenary in the Black Anvil Regiment. He led the Black Anvils…because Colonel Graham—

 
Everything flooded back then.

  With an effort, with a painful gonging in his head, he forced his eyes open. The coppery taste—he moved his tongue and winced. He’d bitten his tongue, probably worse than he’d ever done.

  This wasn’t a time to wallow, but to act, and he was the lead actor.

  With a low growl, he concentrated. That made his head hurt worse than ever.

  “I’ve had enough of this.”

  He activated the medikit, giving himself a stim shot. He sighed as a cooling sensation caused the gonging in his brain to lessen. Splotches appeared before his vision. Those dimmed as a helmet light snapped on.

  He was inside the boat, inside wreckage and among many unmoving battlesuits.

  Right! He activated a signal, sending a warning beacon into their suits.

  A few of his space marines began to move.

  “Centurion,” Jon radioed. “Do you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “Stark?”

  “Here, Captain,” Stark growled. “I’m in, and I’m offloading my company.”

  The Old Man sounded off and told Jon something similar. Then the Centurion finally answered.

  “Broke a forearm,” the Centurion said. “I’m blowing the boat open.”

  “Good idea,” Jon said.

  Around him, bulkheads blew away, some of them spinning into the darkness of the hangar bay. Jon had a sense of vastness. He didn’t spy movement out there, just the hugeness of the alien hangar bay, maybe a quarter of the size of the Brezhnev.

  Jon stood as his head reeled. He tested his battlesuit. It appeared to be functional. Around him, the Centurion’s company moved off the racks onto the hangar-bay’s decking.

  “Set up a perimeter,” Jon said. “We have to sort ourselves out as fast as we can.”

  He couldn’t believe it. They’d made it onto—into—the alien super-ship. So far, the aliens hadn’t counter-attacked, at least not that he could see. The regiment must have caught the interstellar invaders flat-footed.

  Jon barked a harsh laugh.

  Had the Leonid Brezhnev blown yet? Was that why it was dark in here? It hadn’t been dark as the boat crash-landed.