Planet Wrecker ds-5

by Vaughn Heppner

  Planet Wrecker

  ( Doom Star - 5 )

  Vaughn Heppner

  One by one, the moons and habitats of the Outer Planets have gone silent: Neptune, Uranus and Saturn. After the cyborg assault against the Jupiter System, the reasons seem obvious.

  Those of the Inner Planets desperately scan the void for sign of a cyborg invasion fleet. Finally, one man discovers a blip. The blip becomes something terrifying: asteroids hurtling toward Earth. The asteroids bristle with lasers turrets and missiles, and their velocity and heading can only mean one thing. The rocky objects are meant to crash into Earth to annihilate the beleaguered, obsolete Homo sapiens and their Highborn tormenters.

  Into this grim situation arrives Marten Kluge, envoy from the Jovians and Force-Leader of a meteor-ship. He has elite patrol-boat pilots and his troop-pods are full of veteran space marines. Before this is through, he’s going to need them all.

  Planet Wrecker

  Book #5 of the Doom Star Series by Vaughn Heppner

  -1-

  Junk drifted around Athena Station. Twisted girders, shell casings, asteroid rocks and dust, endless dust—it formed a black halo around the Jovian moon.

  On the asteroid were shattered buildings, broken laser turrets and craters, many still hot and glowing red. In the tunnels, the underground storage facilities and now uninhabitable sleeping chambers were hundreds of Jovian corpses. Among them drifted cyborg bodies, most missing limbs or with smashed torsos. Deep in the station’s core were the radioactive ruins of the former cyborg conversion unit. Jovian space marines had attempted capturing it intact. They’d paid a bitter price in lost soldiers when the last cyborgs had detonated the nuclear device. That had ended the battle for Athena Station.

  The final patrol boat still on the moon ignited thrusters. It lifted off and began to thread its way through the endless debris orbiting the tiny planetoid.

  The mass of debris blown off Athena Station dwarfed that blown off Carme fifteen months ago. Cyborg Gharlane, the prime unit in the Jupiter Assault, had ordered the extensive detonations for a reason. He now lay dead in a box that floated four hundred kilometers from the asteroid’s surface. The box drifted among a field of rocks and fine particles of dust. Thick black-ice sheeted the box, which contained an AI, highly-advanced medical functions and battery power.

  The box’s power expenditure was minimal. With the ice-coating, it was low enough to have evaded Jovian sensor sweeps—at least so far. Lasers stabbed in the darkness, obliterating objects. The AI had run probability checks and concluded the Jovians weren’t taking any chances. It appeared they were destroying anything with signs of life, anything with possible cyborg devices. It was only a matter a time before they beamed these rocks and ice as a precautionary measure.

  Using a passive system, the AI monitored enemy communications. Then it used its intelligence to decipher the messages. One message met Gharlane’s preconditions by seventy-three percent, enough to activate resuscitation.

  Heaters warmed the dead bio-portions as energized blood began to pump through Gharlane. Needles entered his brainpan, injecting crystal-7, beginning the cryogenic de-thawing of his frozen tissues.

  Gharlane had miscalculated on the speed of the Jovian counter-attack. Instead of two years, it had only taken fifteen months for them to retake much of their system. During these final weeks, he’d credited the speed and success of the enemy to Chief Strategist Tan. Within his minimal personality a hatred had grown for Strategist Tan which had transformed into a desire for revenge. Combined with the total silence of the Prime Web-Mind of Neptune, Gharlane had decided on a deception option. He’d sacrificed the last cyborgs in the Jovian System to cover his insertion into orbit.

  The black-ice-coated box drifted through space, surrounded by the debris of battle. Around Gharlane’s ‘corpse’, the medical devices began to hum at optimal levels.

  In time, Gharlane opened his eyes: black plastic sockets with silver balls and red-lit pupils. His mouth twitched and he breathed shallowly, rapidly. Soon, the breathing deepened to a normal level.

  He was cocooned and cushioned, with tubes sticking in his body. With an effort, he twisted his neck, moving his head until he faced a monitor. His titanium-reinforced fingers activated the box’s passive sensors.

  It took time, but he discovered three meteor-ships around Athena Station. They were at equidistant points, each more than one-thousand kilometers away from the asteroid. The searching, obliterating lasers stabbed out from these platforms.

  Gharlane frowned. The AI should have—

  A binary blip of data played in his head. He heard the message the AI had used to approve his revival.

  Gharlane made a croaking sound, his first attempt at speech. He’d been right after all. The probabilities combined with the Jovians’ noted parameters….

  Powerful chemicals entered his bloodstream, cooling his elation. He would need cold calculation to achieve his last goal. The Chief Strategist had destroyed Athena Station, the last bastion of his life-function. Now he would exact a final penalty from her, and with it achieve a personal victory.

  Gharlane turned his head the other way, and he began to issue directives. Stimulants granted him greater strength. New life surged with each additional dosage. He drained battery power into his booster-joints, magnifying his mechanical abilities.

  Soon, the medical units whined as they began to retreat from him. Tubes popped out of his plasti-flesh. He slithered into a skintight garment and then crawled to a military vacc-suit. With painstaking care, he climbed into it and closed the seals. Then he attached primitive weapons to the belt. Enemy sensors would likely pick up higher-grade weaponry. Once finished, he uttered code words.

  Darkness became complete as everything within the box shutdown. He waited.

  …Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven—at zero, the locks snapped apart. The box split in two. That sent precise pressure against the outer ice. Cracks appeared in a zigzag line. From within the ruptured box, Gharlane exerted force. The lines in the ice crackled, and like a cocoon, the halves separated. The inner oxygen was a puff in the void. Then Gharlane appeared, climbing like a spiderling from its egg-sac.

  The vacc-suit was black—coated with anti-radar. He crawled across the ice, and he pointed his helmet at the nearest meteor-ship. It would have been invisible to a human eye, but not to his enhanced orbs with teleoptic sight.

  A patrol boat left the distant meteor-ship. The boat headed away from Athena Station. There was a high probability that the boat’s occupants would rendezvous with the last Jovian dreadnaught. The dreadnaught was two thousand kilometers away.

  Gharlane gathered himself. He had the dreadnaught’s coordinates, even though he couldn’t see the vessel. He calculated its orbital drift. Mighty Jupiter hung in the darkness, but he ignored it and the giant storm known as the Red Spot. With cyborg precision, Gharlane leapt, propelling himself toward the dreadnaught’s future location.

  He was presently beyond the hot zone of laser strikes. More chemicals entered his bloodstream. His brain shut down as his body entered into hibernation. He drifted through space, heading toward his final destination.

  -2-

  Marten Kluge let the hot spray of the shower massage his tired muscles. That felt so good.

  He had a lean, hard frame, with too many scars, tissue lumps and a purple bruise along the left side of his ribcage. A cyborg had almost killed him yesterday, using the stock of its laser carbine to butt his ribs. If they’d been fighting under regular gravity, he’d be dead now. Instead, he’d flown backward, cracking his helmeted head against a stanchion. The cyborg had been fast—they all were. Luckily, Marten’s draw had been faster. As the cyborg had flown at him, he’d drawn his gyroc pi
stol, killing it before it had reached him.

  The shower door opened then, causing the spray to cease automatically. Marten spun around, almost slipping on the wet tiles. A naked Nadia Pravda grinned at him. Then her eyes took in his purple bruise. She frowned.

  “Marten—”

  He grabbed a wrist and drew her into the tiny cubicle. He winced as she pressed against his ribs.

  “I’m hurting you,” she whispered.

  He kissed her, and the hot spray began to jet against the two of them….

  Lying on the bed afterward, Marten felt guilty about what he’d done. They weren’t married yet. Nadia sat on the edge of the bed, combing her long hair. Her skin was so smooth, and her back—

  “We should get married,” he said.

  Nadia turned her head, looking over her shoulder at him. “You mean by a priest?”

  “There are no priests among the Jovians,” he said.

  “How does one become married then?” she asked.

  Marten groaned as he sat up. His ribs throbbed because of their lovemaking.

  Worry filled her face. She set aside the brush and faced him. She had small, firm breasts, and her eyes were the most beautiful Marten had ever seen.

  “The Jovians are killing you,” she said.

  Marten shook his head.

  “Can’t you see they’re using you?” Nadia asked, anger entering her voice.

  “I’m the best at this. It’s what I do.”

  “No! They’re merciless, and are squeezing every ounce of use from you before a cyborg puts a bullet in your brain.”

  “We finished the cyborgs.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said.

  “Athena Station was it,” Marten said, “at least for the Jupiter System.”

  “That’s another thing I don’t understand,” she said. “Why did Tan send space marines onto the station? Why didn’t they just laser its offensive capabilities and annihilate it with nukes?”

  “The cyborg conversion chamber—”

  “Nearly got you and your men killed,” Nadia said with heat. “The cyborgs detonated the thing before anyone could reach it.”

  “Did Omi tell you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know. The Jovians are using you, and it nearly got you killed.”

  “I had to go down with my men.”

  “Why is it always you, Marten? Let others do the dirty work for once.”

  “Did Omi tell you we deactivated other nuclear devices? Without us there, all the space marines would have died.”

  “What?” Nadia asked, outraged.

  Marten looked away. The Jovians were using him, he knew that. And it had been too close this time. Athena Station had been one giant booby-trap. The Force-Leader running the operation had told them it was vital they go down and salvage what they could. The Strategists needed clues concerning the cyborgs, some hint at what the Neptunian Web-Minds planned next.

  Marten clenched his teeth as he rose up to his knees. He shuffled across the bed to Nadia. She was so beautiful. He put his hands on her bare shoulders and gently shook her.

  She gave him a questioning look.

  “I want you to be my wife, Nadia.” He firmed his resolve, deciding to ask her straight out. That was the only way to be fair to her. “Will you marry me?” he asked, searching her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, in a small voice.

  Marten grinned, and his grip on her shoulders tightened. “Then before God, I declare you to be my wife.”

  “What does that mean?” Nadia whispered.

  “It means that we’re married. It means I’m your husband and you’re my woman until death do us part.”

  “I don’t want you to die, Marten.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Now come here, wife.” He drew her to him, and they lay down, beginning all over again.

  -3-

  An hour later, Marten entered a different cubicle. The dreadnaught’s fusion engine made a soft thrum throughout the ship, and caused the bulkheads here to vibrate gently.

  Omi sat on his cot as he cleaned his gun. It was similar to Marten’s long-barreled slugthrower, which fired .38 caliber dum-dum bullets. A small piece of lead sat in the back of a bullet, in a tiny, domed-shaped cavity. When a dum-dum bullet struck an object, the lead in the cavity flew forward and caused the bullet to explode like a grenade. It made for murderous ammunition that caused ghastly wounds, a must against cyborgs.

  “You ready?” Omi asked.

  The Korean hadn’t changed much since Carme. The only exception was his eyes. They were a little more haunted and there was a new line on his face.

  “I married Nadia,” Marten said.

  Omi raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re supposed to congratulate me,” Marten said.

  Omi nodded slightly. Then he clipped the last part of his .38 back together and holstered it. “Chief Strategist Tan wants to speak with us.”

  “She’s here?”

  “Now that the war is over, the commander wants to inspect the front.”

  “I wonder what she’s after?”

  “You kidnapped her once, remember?”

  “That was over a year ago.”

  “Do you think she’s forgotten?” Omi asked.

  “My kidnapping helped save her life.”

  “She might not remember it that way.”

  “No. If she feels that way about me, why hasn’t she done something about it before now?”

  Omi made a sour sound that might have been a laugh. “Are you kidding? You’re the heart of their space marines, and you’re the blood, too.”

  “They have others units beside ours.”

  “Those others died,” Omi said, “or most of them died. We have the only unit that has survived contact with the enemy more than twice.”

  Marten crossed his arms. He could count the number of survivors on two hands—those that had made it through both Carme and Athena Station. When men faced cyborgs, the men died. He had a few theories now, some new tactics he wanted to try. The Battle for Jupiter was over, however, thank God.

  “You think Tan’s finished with us?” Marten asked.

  “Didn’t you notice the myrmidons when we came aboard, and the arbiter?”

  Marten vaguely remembered. Then he had been too busy noticing Nadia. Now that Omi mentioned it…there had been changes these past few months aboard the military vessels. They were little things, or so he’d thought then.

  “Arbiters and myrmidons,” Marten said. “I wonder if she’s going back to old Callisto methods.”

  Omi stood up. “My guess is we’re about to find out.”

  Marten glanced at Omi’s gun. Then he patted his own. “The arbiters don’t have any nullifiers that will protect them from these.”

  “How long do you think they’ll let us wear guns?” Omi asked.

  Marten shrugged.

  “She’s a Strategist,” Omi said, “and she’s separated us from our men on the Erasmus. Our ship is more than two-thousand kilometers away. ”

  “…Yeah,” Marten said, nodding. “Let’s go find out the worst.”

  “Let’s,” Omi said.

  The two of them headed for the door.

  -4-

  Marten forced himself to observe.

  The corridors in the dreadnaught were narrow. At various intervals on the walls were stylistic syllogisms, pithy aphorisms and logical deductions. There was a golden statue in the middle of a nexus. It showed a bearded philosopher in a toga, with a stylus in one hand and a tightly-bound scroll in the other.

  “I thought they’d removed all those,” Marten whispered to Omi.

  Omi was too busy glaring at the three myrmidons to answer. The myrmidons were from the gene-vats, and were a form of Jovian military police. None were as tall as Marten. Each was immensely broad of shoulder, with a deep chest and muscular arms that dangled like a gorilla’s arms. The heads hunched low and beady eyes peered from beneath short-billed helmets. They wore un
iforms with large epaulets on the shoulders, and carried an assortment of weaponry on their belts. The jangle of the weaponry mingled with the constant thrum of the fusion engine deep in the ship.

  A white-haired arbiter preceded them. The arbiter wore a crisp white uniform with red tabs. He was as short as the myrmidons, but was aesthetically lean. At his belt was a palm-pistol. Whereas the myrmidons seemed bestial, the arbiter was refined. He possessed delicate features and a superior attitude, most notable by the distaste that twisted his mouth whenever he glanced at Marten or Omi.

  “I thought they’d phased out arbiters,” Marten whispered.

  Omi nodded.

  Marten had been busy these past fifteen months. He’d trained space marines using Highborn techniques. Osadar and Omi had helped him, and then they’d been his lieutenants in combat. The fifteen months had been a blur of activity and endless drills. Occasionally, he’d read a news site. The cyborgs had shattered the Jovian System. Slowly, the human survivors had jelled together, attempting to form a more perfect union.

  Robot repair vessels had entered Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, fixing those deuterium and helium-3-gathering floaters they could. New storage facilities on the Inner group moons arose. Europa and Ganymede launched defensive satellites. Survey teams probed a smoldering Io. People fled exposed asteroids and the smaller moons, emigrating to the larger Galilean moons.

  Marten glanced at a golden triangle on the ceiling. A silver pyramid was in the center, with a lidless eye in the center of the pyramid. That had meaning in the old order of philosopher, guardian and mechanic. That order had died, however, when the cyborgs had destroyed ninety-seven percent of Callisto and its populace.

  “Have you been reading the news sites much?” Marten whispered.

  Omi grunted a negative.

  Marten frowned. Osadar Di often tried to talk to him about the Jovian political situation. He’d paid scant attention to her, too worried about how to train his space marines so they could face cyborgs and survive, and maybe even win.