“Nadia,” Marten said as calmly as he could. “You have to cut him loose. Kleon is dead.”
With a groan, she drew a vibroblade from her belt and cut the tether.
“Good,” Marten said. He began to drag her down to the surface.
“We’ve got cyborgs coming!” shouted Omi.
-69-
“Stay here,” Marten told Nadia. He barely remembered to unhook his tether to her. Then he crawled up the slope.
On either side of his former position, space marines were crouched at the crater lip. Marten eased into position twenty meters from where the cyborg missile had struck. Using his helmet’s zoom, Marten scanned the domes and then the plain between them and him. His gut clenched as he saw twenty, no, twenty-three cyborgs charging toward them. The cyborgs used their trademark glide, moving four to five times faster in the nearly weightless environment than a human could do.
“Twenty-three of the aliens,” Omi said.
“Twenty-three cyborgs,” corrected Osadar.
“Sure,” Omi said.
Marten studied the enemy. Each cyborg carried a bulky backpack, with a line from it to his laser-carbine. Twenty-three of them were coming. Under normal circumstances, a cyborg was worth ten space marines. They were therefore badly outnumbered using that counting system.
More space marines crawled to the lip of the slope. Many settled their IMLs, aiming at the approaching cyborgs.
“Hold your fire,” Marten said.
“Isn’t this the perfect opportunity?” asked a space marine. “Our Cognitive missiles can easily take them out at this range.”
“Wrong,” Marten said. “The distance is far enough to give the cyborgs time to sight and fire their lasers, taking down our missiles.”
“They can’t be that good,” the space marine said.
“They are that good,” said Omi.
“Beside,” Marten said. “They’re sure to have other anti-missile ammunition in the domes. Think of the domes as heavy support stations.”
“Do we run for it?” asked Osadar.
“Negative,” Marten said. “We use our missiles, just not right away.”
“Ports are opening in the domes,” Omi called.
Marten waited two heartbeats before he shouted, “Down, down, down, crawl down from the lip!”
Most of the space marines listened. They had learned in a hard school that Marten Kluge had good instincts. Unfortunately, not all of them listened in time. Small cyborg missiles from the domes blew away two marines, and sent another two space-borne.
“Help us!” shouted a marine, as he failed his arms and legs, slowly drifting higher after the corpse that had jerked him into orbit. Tied to him was another flailing marine.
“Use filament line!” Marten shouted. “Shoot it to him. Hurry!”
Before anyone could uncoil filament line, another missile streaked into view, exploding and killing the two drifting marines.
“We’re dead men!” a marine wailed through the headphones.
“Shut up,” Marten ordered. “We’re far from dead. If we’re going to save Earth, we have to keep our heads, marine.”
“How do you defeat the invincible?” another space marine asked.
“First, by realizing that no one is invincible,” Marten said. “Second, by playing to our strengths. Omi, I want you set up fire-control teams. When you see those missiles coming, use antipersonnel gyroc rounds.”
“Got it,” said Omi, “shrapnel defense.”
“Right,” said Marten, afraid the cyborgs might send airburst missiles and end the fight before it could really get started.
“Ports are opening in the domes,” said Osadar. “They’re launching more missiles.”
Omi raised his gyroc rifle. So did twenty other marines. “Look at your HUD’s,” Omi said. “Fire into your vector—now!”
Rocket-propelled shells leapt out of the gyroc rifles. A nanosecond later, the shells’ mini-engines ignited. They flew at the cyborg missiles, exploded and sprayed antipersonnel shrapnel into the missiles’ flight paths. Some of the cyborg missiles exploded. Others crashed onto their side of the crater-slope, hitting like duds.
During that time, the twenty-three cyborgs gliding toward them rapidly closed the distance. Now red laser beams began to flash. A space marine visor slagged into a glob of ballistic glass. In other places on the lip, stardust melted into a dirty-colored glaze.
“Ready your Cognitive missiles,” Marten said, who lay out-of-sight of the cyborgs on his side of the slope.
“We’re losing too many men,” a space marine cried.
“We’ll lose more before this is through,” Marten said. “Now do as I say.” He crawled to the crater-lip and peered onto the plain. A cyborg about three hundred meters away swung his head around and lifted the carbine into position. Marten slammed himself prone onto the stardust. It puffed around him. He flipped a switch, heard the ping of lock-on, pulled the trigger and felt the blast of the missile whooshing away. Immediately, he ducked behind the crater-lip. A beam cut through the ground where he’d just been.
On top of the slope, other space marines were doing likewise.
“Now switch to gyrocs,” Marten said. He counted to five, and crawled back up. Many cyborgs lay sprawled in death. Too many—more than a dozen—kept gliding toward the slope, fast.
The surviving space marines opened up with gyroc fire, while lasers stabbed back. More space marines died. All the cyborgs then perished under the withering volley.
“Get under cover,” said Marten.
Most of the space marines knew what to do now. Three more didn’t, and they paid with their lives as missiles from the domes killed them.
“We’re losing too many men,” Omi said a few moments later as he lay beside Marten.
Marten’s air-conditioner-unit blew cold against his face. He was breathing hard, and he saw the still corpses on their side of the slope.
“We can’t win like this,” Omi added.
Nadia crawled near, entering into the two-way with them. “We have to reach the domes,” she said. “Otherwise….”
“We’ll never reach the domes on our own,” Omi said. “The cyborg missiles will cut us down if we try to charge across the plain. We need space support.”
“And how do we get that?” asked Nadia.
“We don’t,” said Marten.
“Then we’re finished,” said Omi.
“No,” Marten said. “There’s another way.”
“What is it?” asked Omi.
Marten told him.
-70-
It took an hour to reach the huge exhaust crater.
“I don’t like this,” Osadar said, while standing beside Marten. They looked down at the massive cavity that sank into the guts of the asteroid. “All the cyborgs have to do is turn on the engine and burn us to death.”
“That’s right,” said Marten.
“Why won’t they it?” Osadar asked.
“We’re taking a risk,” Marten said. “But it’s certain death to march across the crater-plain to the domes. Our only other choice is to reenter the patrol boats and fly our way to the domes.”
“That would be suicide,” Osadar said.
“Can you think of anything better than this then?”
“I cannot.”
“Should we do nothing?” Marten asked.
“That is not logical.”
“So this is the only rational choice we have,” Marten said.
“We never really had a chance,” Osadar said.
“Yeah,” said Marten. “I’ve heard you say that for a long time now, but we’re still here. These big rocks are still heading for Earth. So I can’t dither all day talking to you. Are you coming?”
The tall cyborg took her time answering. Finally, her voice crackled over his headphones. “Lead the way, Marten Kluge.”
Gripping his gyroc rifle, Marten began the descent into the massive exhaust-port.
-71-
It w
as dark inside the long exhaust tunnel that extended deep into the asteroid. Space marines used infrared to see where they were going. The sides of the rocky surfaces were coated with high-grade photon-fiber.
“I don’t like this,” Omi said.
The photon-fiber produced an odd bounce in the radio transmissions. It sounded to Marten as if Omi were a million kilometers away.
“If you feel a thrum,” Osadar said, “it will mean that death is seconds away.”
“Thank you for the update,” Marten said. “Now let’s move, people. Since we don’t have to worry about flying off the asteroid anymore, I want all of you to run. Watch your heads, though. I don’t want any of you to crack your helmet.
Suiting words to action, Marten began to take long, loping leaps. He glanced back, and saw the many red forms that indicated space marines. Then he concentrated on what he was doing. The exhaust tunnel was huge, like an immense cavern. When the mighty fusion engine had been going, it must have sent an exhaust plume an easy one hundred kilometers behind the asteroid.
“What was that?” Omi asked.
Marten had felt the sudden vibration too. Did that mean the cyborgs had turned on the fusion core?
“Faster,” he said. And now Marten moved. He’d spacewalked early as a lad on the Sun-Works Factory. It was something that felt natural. Osadar kept up with him and so did Omi and a few other space marines. The others fell back, as they weren’t as good at this.
Back in the Jovian System fifteen months ago, he’d studied Carme Moon for weeks. Marten recalled its exhaust-port and tube. There had been repair hatches in that asteroid’s exhaust-port. He was hoping for the same thing in this one, as his plan was predicated upon it.
The vibration in the tunnel grew.
“They must be starting up the fusion core,” Osadar said.
“We know they can’t start it right away,” Marten said. “And it’s likely been off for a long time. I’m counting on that.”
“Hope is futile once they turn on the core,” Osadar said.
The exhaust-tube changed now. It was no longer simply bored-out asteroid with photon-fiber coating. The chamber possessed the same polymer as one used in a warship’s exhaust-tubes.
“What if the repair hatches are locked?” asked Osadar.
“Keep a sharp lookout,” Marten said. He’d been using his HUD and reading a Carme Moon file.
“There!” Omi shouted. “I see a hatch.”
The growing vibration made Marten leap harder. If the fusion core started while Nadia and the slower space marines were still in the tube….
Osadar landed near the repair hatch. She walked to and tried it, but the hatch remained closed.
A space marine cursed profusely. “There’s no way she’s strong enough to force that hatch. The thing was made to take the pressure of—”
“I didn’t see this,” Osadar said. She turned something in the hatch.
On Marten’s infrared HUD, the hatch opened into blazing red heat.
“We have to pass the coils,” Osadar told them. “They’re on and it’s hot in there.”
“Don’t talk,” Marten said. “Go, go, go!”
-72-
“Cyborgs!” a space marine shouted.
Marten threw himself onto the floor amid the huge coils that glowed red with energy. There were rows upon rows of the giant coils. Each stood six meters high and was thirteen meters across. They pulsed with power and emitted intense heat.
Sweat trickled down Marten’s neck as his air-conditioning unit thrummed overtime. There was screaming in his headphones, and coils blew apart.
Marten crawled as sweat slid from his back and across his ribs. He fired his weapon. So did space marines near him. The flashing gyroc rounds blew apart cyborgs, smashed coils and spilled laser-fluid from the bulky packs on the enemies’ backs. Electrical discharges made it nearly impossible to see and jammed the helmet’s sensors. In this vast coil-chamber, the Cognitive missiles were useless. It was head-to-head fighting with gyroc rifles, vibroblades and shock grenades.
Using his elbows and knees, Marten kept crawling across the floor. Communications were jammed in this chamber. It was just training, warrior-instinct and fighting skills.
A cyborg stood up and aimed its laser at Marten. As the cyborg did, a jagged piece of shrapnel cut into its chest-plate. The titanium-reinforced arms and legs went rigid. The carbine slowly dropped to the floor.
From his prone position, Marten pumped three APEX rounds into the cyborg, blowing it backward each time. Then he crawled to the fused machine-man and felt his nape hairs stand on end as the thing’s head turned toward him. Marten shoved his rifle barrel against the head and blew it to pieces.
This was a horrible place to fight. A cyborg could be hiding behind any of a hundred giant coils. The baking heat, the lack of sensor-data and the frightening bolts writhing everywhere, even into the ceiling so tiles and chunks of plasti-steel rained down, made this a nightmare. Snatches of words or phrases occasionally broke through the static in his headphones.
“Advance!” shouted Marten.
There wasn’t anything refined or clever about the tactics. It was like two wrestlers grunting on the floor, trying to choke the other one to death using brute strength.
A cyborg jumped before Marten. Its laser-beam burned a good meter above his prone body. There was a scream in Marten’s headphones. He had no idea what had just happened. He didn’t really care. He just lifted his gyroc and fired. But the cyborg jumped fast behind a coil. The gyroc round whooshed past the thing’s former position and exploded against a coil farther back. The coil emitted bolts like sparks, and Marten rolled wildly out of the way, barely avoiding the energy-bolts as they hit the floor like lightening from some god’s hand.
Gripping his rifle with manic strength, Marten cursed and jumped to his feet. Always do the unexpected with cyborgs. It was something he’d learned the hard way. They were logic wizards, and had incredible computing ability. Marten leaped at the coil the cyborg had used. The cyborg took that moment to roll around the edge, aim its carbine at the floor where Marten would have been, and adjusted with insect-like speed as it spotted Marten coming down from a high leap.
Three APEX (Armor-Piercing EXplosive) shells spewed from the rifle. They penetrated the cyborg’s armor and blasted the thing apart. As it tumbled backward, Marten landed, pumping three more rounds into it. Through bitter lessons, Marten had learned to make triple-certain a cyborg was in pieces before he declared it dead.
Terrible explosions began to occur throughout the coil chamber. There didn’t seem to be any rationality as to why one area blew and another didn’t. Space marines were fried. Cyborgs melted.
“Get out here!” Marten shouted. “Get outside!”
He had no idea if anyone heard him. As his suit’s air-conditioner unit thrummed, as the chamber became an intense red wall of heat and flame, Marten loped in almost zero gravity. The sweat poured down his body now, and the air burned down his throat, almost too hot to breathe.
He spied a heavy door. A cyborg set up a plasma-cannon there. Other charging space marines shot madly, and the cyborg went down.
The vacc-suit’s functions were approaching critical. Marten blinked, and blinked again as sweat stung his eyes. He wasn’t sure what happened next. There were gaps in his consciousness. Then he loped over the dead cyborg and shoved his shoulder against the heavy door, slowly opening it to another compartment in the asteroid’s vast engine complex.
-73-
The coil chamber was murder, a gauntlet of death that halved the number of Jovian space marines. Marten and Omi dragged out heat-fatigued men from the hellhole. Then coils in the middle of the chamber began to explode.
“Shut the door,” said Osadar.
“Nadia!” cried Marten. “I haven’t seen Nadia.”
Osadar shoved Marten away as more coils erupted in the vast chamber. With cyborg strength and speed, she slammed the heavy door shut and engaged the locks.
Marten’s last vision was of a space marine on the floor, raising his arm for aid and the door closing on his last hope. Then explosions caused the hall to tremble, and the door buckled and seemed as if it would blow into them. But it held.
As if in a dream, Marten turned toward Osadar. He was aware of the rifle in his hands, and he contemplated aiming it at the cyborg.
“We would have all died if Osadar hadn’t done that,” Omi said.
Marten’s tongue was thick in his mouth. “Nadia,” he whispered. Had that been her raising her arm to plead with him to help her? He never should have brought her to this nightmare. He—
“Sound off,” Omi said through the headphones. “Let’s see who made it. First Platoon, begin.”
“Thebes here,” said the Group-Leader.
“Jason.”
“Cleon.”
“Marten, where are you?”
That was Nadia’s voice. Marten’s arms went limp as he looked around. “Nadia,” he said, using his override function. “Raise your arm.”
In the back of a group of space marines, Nadia raised her arm. Her vacc-suit was black and one of the lines had torn free. But she was alive.
As the others continued to sound off, Marten waded through a group of marines and clutched Nadia’s gloved hand.
“You’re alive,” he said.
She nodded her helmeted head.
“What do we do now?” A half moment later, someone strong turned Marten around. The armored speaker was tall. It was Osadar. “What do we do now?” she asked again.
Marten had to think about it. Nadia was alive. To keep her alive, he had to kill all the cyborgs. “Right,” he said. “We made it through the exhaust. Now its time to come out of here like the Japanese did to us. Do you remember?”
“Japan?” asked Osadar.
“That’s right,” Marten said. “You weren’t with us then. It was Stick and Turbo during the Japan Campaign.”
Planet Wrecker ds-5 Page 26
