Battle Pod ds-3

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Y-You’re not going to shoot me?” the captain whispered.

  “I’m no murderer,” Marten said.

  The captain gulped as a tear leaked from an eye. In a quavering voice, he told Marten what had come in over communications.

  Marten knew the truth when he heard it. He told Squad Leader Rojas. “Watch these three, but let them live. That’s an order.”

  “I understand,” Rojas said.

  Marten motioned the other Unionists into the next room, leaving Rojas with the three enemy communications men.

  Diaz glared at him. This was a central command room with vidscreens and a small cooler to the side. Many of the other Unionist raiders were piled in the room, their manner ugly and angry as they stared at Omi.

  “You have dared lay hands on me,” Diaz pronounced. “You have shamed me in front of Social Unity swine. I will have my revenge, I promise you.”

  “You had your fun,” Marten said, “blowing holes in men who wanted to surrender.”

  “It is a war to the death!” Diaz shouted. “They sought to make us slaves. Now they pay the price for their arrogance.”

  “The Battlefleet has moved,” Marten said.

  Major Diaz shook his head as if to shake off a fly.

  “Space commandos have stormed Phobos and Deimos,” Marten said.

  “PHC lies!” Diaz spat.

  “Not this time.”

  Diaz’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting we scamper home with the mission only a quarter completed?”

  Marten took his time answering. They were under a communications blackout so no eavesdropping equipment could pinpoint them. Social Unity would know about them now. Marten debated radioing Chavez, and he saw how the other Unionists listened intently. Several fingered their weapons as if thinking about turning them on him. Marten debated with himself on how to do this. Diaz was a man of rage. So shouting and raging at him likely wouldn’t work. Likely, nothing would work with Diaz but determination and the upper hand. Marten realized he had to win the other Unionists to him. They had to realize he was right and that Diaz had horribly compromised the mission.

  Marten let a sneer slide onto his face. He spoke contemptuously. “Scamper home, Major? I wish to abort the mission before you kill the rest of the men the Secretary-General gave into my keeping.”

  Diaz’s head swayed. “I only killed Social Unity swine.”

  Marten sneered. “You were like a teenager with his first woman. You did everything in a rush. What might have been beautiful, you spoiled by finishing before her clothes were even half off.”

  Livid, Diaz shot to his feet.

  “I was still firing missiles when you led a madman’s charge at the airfield,” Marten said. “You pulled everyone with you. You lead unarmored skimmers straight into enemy fire. I lost a third of my men because of that. Did you count them, Major? Five skimmers lost out of twenty and thirty-one effectives left. We barely have a little over half our raiding force intact. Do you think I can hit each airfield in turn while losing almost half my men? Do you think I’m going to return to Secretary-General Chavez with handful of men left?”

  “I killed no one—”

  “Bah!” Marten said. “A third of our force was wiped out because you hunted for glory.”

  Major Diaz blinked in shock. “I want to kill the enemy.”

  “Good,” Marten said. “So do I. But this isn’t an assassin’s mission where we nerve ourselves up to face the cops, blow them away and run. This is a military strike. You do it by the numbers, not through heroics. You charged this base like a white knight on a mythical horse. The men followed you, forgetting everything I taught them. Because of that, a third of them are dead. Can you understand that? They are dead and we are too weakened to continue the mission.”

  “Next time—”

  “There won’t be a next time, Major. I’ve lost faith that you and your men want to learn how to fight like soldiers.” Marten began to stride back and forth, gesturing angrily. He had to drive this lesson home. “Not only do you act like a heroic fool, but you butcher those who could have given me important information. You even tried to kill those communications officers. We could have used those soldiers you killed to help us gain entrance onto the next airfield. I can appreciate that you’re a fighter Diaz. I like your hot-blooded courage. What I can’t abide is that you lose all sense while your bloodlust consumes your better intelligence. A good soldier has to stay cool-headed. That’s how he keeps his men alive for the next fight.”

  One of the Unionists actually nodded. That gave Marten hope.

  Major Diaz stared at the floor. He wore a puzzled look. Then he nodded the slightest bit and glanced at the men, glanced at Omi and finally at Marten. He opened his mouth, let it hang open and then shut it. Without another word, he headed for the outer door. He moved without his customary arrogance.

  Omi watched the major as if he expected Diaz to whirl around and open fire.

  Marten didn’t think Diaz would. Maybe there was hope for the man, although Diaz’s hate ran deep. For the moment, the major would think about this day.

  After the door closed, Omi glanced at Marten. His look said: now what?

  Marten crossed his arms, staring at the door as if he thought deeply about Major Diaz. He did it for the benefit of those watching. What he really wondered was what he should do next. And he wondered about the orbital launch station where the Mayflower was docked. If the SU Battlefleet was attacking the moons, what had they done to his precious shuttle?

  -17-

  The news was horrible and sent a shudder of fear through the surviving space defense forces of the Planetary Union.

  The last defenders of Phobos had broadcasted strange images of battle-suited invaders. Those SU invaders had moved with insect-like speed and used inhuman cunning. To see them glide over the moon’s surface without bounding into space, no Martian could have done likewise. Nothing had stopped the space invaders, and their reactions had been brutally efficient as bunkers, missile-sites, laser batteries and shuttle hangers had all fallen before them. The last broadcast had shown invaders blasting surrendering Martians. The poor sods had crumpled and lain so utterly still. Then a helmeted invader had turned to a camera. For a moment, the metallic face inside the helmet had stared at the broadcast unit. That image had been frozen and set everywhere throughout the Planetary Union. Then the thing had lifted its weapon. There had been a flash, and nothing more had broadcast out of Phobos.

  Shortly thereafter, Deimos had also gone offline.

  Now Commander Zapata stood in his command center. He was ashen-faced and trembling. He watched the main vidscreen as harsh laser beams chewed through the prismatic crystal field around his orbital station. More crystals flowed from the supply tanks, trying to rebuild the field faster than the enemy lasers could chew through it. Soon, however, the station’s tanks would run dry. Then nothing could save them.

  Those laser beams originated from big SU Battleships. Those warships accelerated hard for near-Mars orbit.

  The prismatic crystals were the orbital launch station’s primary defense against such killing beams. The crystals were highly reflective and contained all the colors of the rainbow. Their purpose was to bounce or reflect the laser’s light and dissipate its strength. If deep enough, a prismatic crystal field could completely absorb a laser.

  The intense strength of these battle-beams slagged the crystals by the bucketful. That stole the reflective power and meant the full force of the beam soon hit them. In space-battle terms, the lasers did a burn through.

  Zapata shouted questions at the few people still at their screens.

  “Eighty percent of the crystal supplies are gone, commander.”

  To stop his hands from trembling, Zapata gripped a monitor as he stared at the main screen.

  “Emergency deployment,” he whispered.

  Computer keys told him someone carried out his command. He swallowed hard as sweat prickled his back. Most of the station personnel
were abandoning the station. The last of the orbital fighters were even now catapulted from the hangers. He could have ordered them to burn for Phobos. Maybe a strafing run over the moon would kill some of those metallic horrors. Somehow, he doubted it. Besides, the Planetary Union needed those orbitals. Mars couldn’t give up just like that. It had taken so many grueling years gaining their precious freedom. To return to serfdom so easily—who were those metallic soldiers? What were they? Where had Social Unity found them?

  Zapata made a sound deep in his throat. All those years of hiding, of gunning down PHC police, making secret plans.… He couldn’t throw it all away now on a gesture.

  His hands hurt he was gripping a monitor so hard. He had elected to remain behind and run a last ditch defense. They had to save the orbitals and anyone else they could. He had to scrape something together out of this disastrous defeat.

  He thought about the shuttle, the one the ex-shock troopers had used. Several days ago, he’d ordered its codes broken. Engineers had entered the shuttle, refueled the tanks and stocked it with supplies. He wondered who else knew about it. Surely, a few of those fleeing would have entered the Highborn shuttle and tried for somewhere.

  “Burn through,” someone whispered.

  Commander Zapata looked up with his one good eye. The power of Social Unity was too much. After everything the Highborn had done to Inner Planets, how was it possible that the SU military still possessed so many warships? He shook his badly scarred head. At least, Mars had tasted a few months of freedom. It had been a good feeling. For the first time in twelve years, a Martian had been able to hold his head up again. Despite their arrogance, he wished the Highborn had stayed at Mars. Social Unity would have never dared attack if a Doom Star had orbited the planet. Zapata frowned. Could the genetic super-soldiers have known this would happen? After a moment’s thought, he shrugged. They couldn’t have known. No one could have.

  On the main screen, incredibly powerful lasers burned holes through the drifting field of prismatic crystals. Those lasers now speared toward the station. The armored hull could withstand the hellish beams for a few seconds. More lasers now burned through the crystals.

  Zapata turned to those who had remained at their screens. He saluted them. “For the Mars Planetary Union!” he shouted.

  Chairs scraped back as one by one the others stood. They glanced at the large screen. Tears ran down one man’s face. They saluted, and shouted, “For the Mars Planetary Union, sir!”

  Seconds later, the powerful lasers punched ten-meter wide holes through the orbiting structure. Terrific explosions began and fires roared. Then the vacuum of space stole the needed oxygen to let fires burn. Long before that, however, the personnel aboard the command center were dead, charred into horribly shriveled things that barely resembled humans.

  Parts of the gutted station tore free or had been shredded free and drifted. Among those sections was the Mayflower. No one had entered the shuttle. The engineers who had broken in had failed to let the others know it could be used an escape vehicle. No beam had touched it and ignited the fuel in its tanks. Instead, the former Highborn shuttle floated high above Mars, another piece of debris formed by the deadly Inner Planets civil war.

  -18-

  As the cyborgs stormed Phobos and Deimos and as the SU Battlefleet destroyed the rest of the Martian space defense, the Highborn were on the move. Nearly 249 million kilometers away, the Highborn Praetor circled the Sun.

  The nine-foot tall Highborn lay on an acceleration couch and endured debilitating G-forces. The Sun was vast, with a diameter of 1,392,000 kilometers. If the Earth were the size of a dime, the Sun would be two meters in size. The Sun had 109 times the diameter of the Earth. The distance from the Earth to the Moon was approximately 350,000 kilometers. Thus, orbiting one full circuit around the Sun would roughly be like Luna orbiting twice its normal distance from Earth. The Bangladesh had orbited the Sun much nearer than the Praetor did now. His ship lacked the special shielding that had allowed the experimental beamship to survive the Sun’s terrible x-rays and radiation at so close a range.

  The Praetor and his Highborn crew had endured the Gs for some time as the Thutmosis III build up speed. Highborn could endure greater Gs than a Homo sapien, who blacked out at a sustained 6 or 7 Gs.

  The former SU missile-ship had undergone radical transformation at the Sun-Works Factory. First, the massive particle shields had been removed. Then it had received a new low radar signature hull and a new coat of anti-teleoptic paint. Massive, detachable tanks and huge warfare pods had also been added. The tanks contained propellant for the fusion engines. The warfare pods held specially designed drones and missiles.

  The Praetor lay on the couch, enduring and mentally cursing himself as a fool to have trusted Grand Admiral Cassius. If the Praetor were to design a clever punishment module, he would use the Thutmosis III. Instead of having the freedom and energy to plot to unseat the Grand Admiral, the Praetor had lost weight under the emergency acceleration. He was no longer near the center of power, the Doom Stars in Earth orbit, but tucked away near the Sun. If the constant acceleration didn’t kill him, the Sun’s radiation would. In his opinion, they flew much too near the nuclear ball of matter. And the warship’s velocity—if this went on much longer, the Praetor’s ship would reach speeds for a trip to Alpha Centauri.

  The Praetor had studied the files about the Bangladesh. The SU beamship had reached respectable speeds, but the acceleration of the Thutmosis III dwarfed what the SU ship had achieved.

  As he lay on the acceleration couch, the Praetor made a grotesque grin. The acceleration deformed his features and made bowel moments a horror. But if a Homo sapien could do a thing, a Highborn could do it twice as well, even three, or four times better. The Bangladesh’s attack plan had been clever, and it had employed its fantastically-ranged beam to good effect. The new Highborn strategy for drones and missiles would be even cleverer.

  Yet it would only be clever, if Social Unity moved as the Grand Admiral had predicted. If not, then soon the Thutmosis III would have to begin deceleration. The Praetor made a grotesquely wry face. The Grand Admiral had never been specific about how the Thutmosis III was to stop its terrific velocity. The only reasonable method would use Jupiter or Saturn’s gravity to brake the Thutmosis III. Would the lords of Jupiter or Saturn allow that?

  Like all Highborn, the Praetor was well aware of his superiority. The Grand Admiral might assume that those of Jupiter or Saturn would fear Highborn too much to harm a lone ship. Unfortunately, he’d learned one thing as the governor of the Sun-Works Factory: Premen were strangely resistant to rational behavior. Some preferred death to the logical submission to their betters.

  The Praetor slowly shifted upon his acceleration couch. He had learned through his crew that anything but slow moves could cause muscle tears. Already, several Highborn lay in mortal agony on their couches. Groin, gut and sexual organ tears were the worst. Pulled hamstrings and triceps were also bad, but not necessarily fatal.

  For the upcoming battle, the Thutmosis III was the Highborn secret weapon. It would win them the war for Inner Planets. On that, Grand Admiral Cassius had been certain. The Praetor had studied the plan in detail. He had even received reports that the SU Battlefleet Mars had finally made its stab at the planetary defenses. The Grand Admiral had correctly predicated each of those moves. Soon, the Doom Stars would accelerate for Mars. Then the fateful clash between the space fleets would determine who controlled the high ground between the planets. Whoever controlled space could quarantine the separate planets.

  Were the premen truly foolish enough to think they could destroy Doom Stars? Would they actually remain at Mars to do battle? That seemed incredible to the Praetor. Yet the Grand Admiral was certain the premen would possess a secret weapon of their own and that the premen would be brash enough to think their secret weapon could give them victory over their superiors.

  The Praetor grinned harshly. The Thutmosis III was the weapon that wou
ld trump anything the premen could cobble together. It would shatter the preman surprise. His drones and missiles would hit their fleet at precisely the worst time for them. It would cause the premen to panic. They would then make even more foolish tactical decisions than otherwise and face annihilation.

  “Good,” the Praetor whispered. He yearned to burn premen hopes into ashes. He’d suffered for too long aboard this death-ship. The Highborn under his command had suffered as well. But their suffering would end the Inner Planets war. Yes, after such an annihilating blow, the hope would drain from the lower order. Many would drop their weapons and meekly seek the good graces of their genetic superiors. Premen would cower in fear, and they would finally realize that a New Order had come to the Solar System.

  “Then,” the Praetor whispered. Then he would have achieved his dream. He would have won military glory in the most stunning victory of the war. That would catapult him into every Highborn’s thoughts. The Praetor had patiently videoed every aspect of his ordeal. He would replay the files and show the others what he had endured to bring them unqualified success. He already had a following. That following would grow, and in time, he would topple Grand Admiral Cassius from his high seat of supreme power.

  As he pondered such lovely thoughts, the Praetor of the Thutmosis III missile-ship groaned as his stomach cramped. He feared a muscle tear. He panted, but slowly the pain faded. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position. He could not take many more days of this.

  The screen before him crackled. It was fuzzy, and it told him better than anything else could that his ship was too near the Sun.

  “Praetor.”

  “Here,” the Praetor whispered. Through screen static, he barely made out Grand Admiral Cassius’s features.

  “The premen of Social Unity have finally made their move,” the Grand Admiral said in a distorted voice.

  The Praetor wanted to groan with relief. Instead, he glared at the Grand Admiral’s fuzzy image.