“Re-target enemy turrets!” Blackstone shouted harshly. He was going to save the
Leon Trotsky
. Social Unity couldn’t afford any more losses. The alien creatures on the asteroids meant to obliterate humanity—he wanted to murder every one of them.
Blackstone roared an oath as a heavy laser took out a cyborg laser turret. These creatures weren’t invincible. It was possible to hurt them. Now he had to kill them, and stop them from pouring that concentrated fire into the
Leon Trotsky
. Then the second enemy turret on Asteroid A burst into uselessness. He saw that through the battleship’s teleoptics.
A ragged cheer went up on the bridge. It brought life to Kursk, enough that she wiped the vomit from her mouth.
Then they destroyed a third turret, even as the
Leon Trotsky
took out a fourth.
During that time, the asteroids continued their steady advanced on Earth. And the battleships moved closer to them lengthwise, if desperately trying to put more distance away
width
wise from the asteroids. In that time, the cyborg lasers stripped the last shreds of shielding from the
Leon Trotsky
.
“Captain Jensen,” Blackstone said. The monitor wavered, and Jensen appeared on it. She was an older woman with a hawkish nose. Despite her name, she was of Arab descent and wore a green crescent symbol on her cap.
“Deploy your escape pods,” Blackstone said, as he watched through a spilt-screen.
One screen showed Captain Jensen shouting orders. The red light flashed on and off on the bridge. The other screen showed the
Leon Trotsky
. The asteroid-like particle-shield had almost completely melted away. In places, Blackstone saw the exposed composite armor underneath the shielding, which was the hull of the battleship. Then the cyborgs lasers struck again.
Blackstone heard shouting. Only vaguely did he realize he was the one shouting. The death of a battleship was a horrible thing to witness. To know he had taken the vessel into combat only made it worse. The lasers struck and burned through the composite armor. In a fantastically short time, the
Leon Trotsky
became twelve separate pieces. Thousands of little bits of debris spilled out of the broken battleship. Some of those bits were crewmembers.
Blackstone felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He blinked rapidly, and something hardened in him. That battleship had faced Doom Stars and survived, but now it was gone, nothing more than a bitter memory.
“The cyborgs are re-targeting!” shouted Wu.
Blackstone snapped out of his daze as he studied his monitor.
“I loved you,” Kursk told him.
Blackstone stared at her. “What?” he said, his mouth bone dry.
“I’m entering a different sub-routine!” the pilot shouted.
The enemy lasers continued to beam. The three battleships attempted to jink out of death, pump more crystals and gels and burn more enemy turrets. As the asteroids zoomed toward Earth, they killed another battleship, slicing it apart as they had the
Leon Trotsky
. Then the full brunt of the cyborg lasers turned on the
Vladimir Lenin
.
Fortunately for Blackstone and his crew, their own emergency acceleration and new sub-routine helped. Even more important was the steady velocity of the asteroids. It meant the Saturn-rocks reached a point where instead of heading toward them they went away. That distance grew rapidly in a length sense, and even more in a width way as the battleships continued to accelerate away from the enemy. Before the lasers completely stripped away the particle-shielding from the ship, the distance grew too great. At the greater distances, the lasers missed more often and hit with lesser power. The laser beams dissipated their coherence. Because of these various factors, Blackstone and his crew survived the first encounter with the asteroids. But before the
Vladimir Lenin
entered another fight, it would need a new six-hundred meter particle-shield.
The battle report came in from the defeated Mars Battlefleet at the speed of light. The cyborg lasers, their targeting tactics and lack of prismatic-crystals became well known even on the Meteor-ship
Spartacus
.
“The first round goes to the cyborgs,” Osadar said.
Marten and she stood in the think-tank. With the hand-unit, he opened a link with the ship’s computer and downloaded the latest information from Chief Strategist Tan. It was dark in the think-tank, with simulated light showing the star fields.
“Now we know exactly what the Highborn plan to do,” Marten said.
“It strikes me as overly complicated,” said Osadar.
Marten nodded as he switched to strategic zoom. According to Tan, the plan had originated with Grand Admiral Cassius.
Their part was interesting. They had passed the Sun and now sped through the Inner System faster than anyone else did. Their objective was to land on the asteroids. They couldn’t do that if they sped straight at the cyborg taskforce head-to-head. The two objects with their velocities as they headed at each other would make landing impossible. Any space marine in a patrol boat trying to land on the surface in those circumstances would be instantly crushed like an insect. Instead of trying to land head-to-head, the
Spartacus
would soon whip around Mars, turn enough and speed toward the asteroids as the asteroids went away from them. The meteor-ship could have accelerated even faster during the trip. But for what they needed to do, they couldn’t whip around Mars until the asteroids had passed the Red Planet.
For the Earth and Luna-launched ships and missiles, the problem was similar—at least for those vessels that wished to land on the asteroid surfaces. If they headed straight at the asteroids, none of them would be able to land troops but would smash like two cars in a head-on collision. The angle for Mars was wrong for Earth and Luna-launched vessels. Instead, they headed for Venus. The Saturn-launched asteroids moved almost parallel to the Sun, at least in relation to Earth.
For tactical purposes, the Solar System wasn’t just empty space. Planets and gravity were the major terrain features, as it were. Because of the near parallel line of attack from Saturn to Earth—parallel in relation to the Sun—Venus became critical. The Earth and Luna-launched vessels traveling to Venus, would whip around it, turning, and then accelerate on their new heading. They would come at the planet wreckers at an oblique angle. This angle would allow the SU and Highborn vessels to decelerate enough so troops could theoretically land on the surfaces.
It was the gut of the plan.
As Marten examined it, his doubts grew.
“We will have little time to defeat any cyborg occupants, learn how to control the asteroid and then move it out of position enough so it misses Earth,” said Osadar.
Marten silently agreed. The Saturn-launched asteroids had gained their initial velocity long ago around the gas giant. That velocity had taken the taskforce across the great gulf between Saturn and the Inner Planets. Roughly, the distance from Saturn to Earth was 1,400,000,000 kilometers. The distance from Mars to Earth was presently nearly 210,000,000 kilometers. In other words, the asteroids had already traveled six-sevenths of their journey, and now time was running out.
A klaxon began to blare.
Marten checked his watch, and he grew queasy. Was it already time?
“Mars approaches,” said Osadar.
“It seems we just left it,” Marten said.
“Not for me,” said Osadar.
“…Do you remember much of what it was like under the Web-Mind’s control?” Marten recalled that Osadar had first come to Mars as a full-fledged cyborg.
“Do you recall any of your childhood nightmares?” asked Osadar.
Marten thought about the bad dream he’d had the other day. “They stick with me,” he said.
“Yes,” said Osadar. Then she made a vague gesture and headed for the hatch. “It is time, Force-Leader.”
Marten switched off the think-tank before heading to the control center.
As the
Spartacus
neared Mars, Grand Admiral Cassius endured heavy acceleration aboard the
Julius Caesar
. His ship and the
Genghis Khan
trailed the Luna-launched missiles and the six Orion-ships from Earth. They fast approached Venus.
Cassius lay in his quarters as he refined the plan. There were so many variables to contend with that the plan absorbed his interest. This was why he’d been created. Some premen gambled for enjoyment. Others rutted. Still others ate gourmet meals. For Cassius, war-planning and its execution was the elixir of life.
He’d been ingesting the information gleaned from the Martian Battlefleet. It had been a pitiful waste of military assets using the battleships like that. One of them could have achieved the data. It also became clear yet again that left to themselves the premen would fall before the cyborgs. This attack on Earth was brilliant, if genocidal madness. To counter it, he’d have to use every ounce of his brilliance.
Cassius rubbed his big hands together. He was under hard acceleration toward the battle of his life. Several of his agendas merged in this fight. He needed to defeat the cyborgs and then smash the remains of Social Unity’s pitiful space-forces. Hawthorne’s harrying tactic of keeping a fleet-in-being had been making everything more difficult than it needed to be.
After cracking his knuckles, Cassius adjusted his screen. His was the supreme strategic mind in the Solar System. Now was the time to bend every facet and find a slot for it in his schemes.
First, the big Cohort-7 Missiles sped at Venus. Behind them followed the Orion-ships and then the commando missiles. The main wave attack would occur after they used Venus as a pivoting post, redirected their heading at an oblique angle toward the asteroids. The
Julius Caesar
and the
Genghis Khan
would follow close behind them, also using the planet.
Secondly, the
Gustavus Adolphus
accelerated toward the asteroids. Behind them accelerated the so-called SU Fifth Fleet with two battleships and a missile-ship. They could theoretically engage the asteroids before the
Julius Caesar
was in range, but Cassius had already forbidden that. The cyborgs had shown the destructive power of concentrated fire. He would do likewise.
Cassius tapped his screen. The cyborgs hadn’t deployed any prismatic crystals or gels. That did not necessarily mean the cyborgs didn’t have any. He would assume they had crystals and gels and would deploy them at the needed time. It would be a preman mistake to think otherwise.
Hmm, the Jovian meteor-ship neared Mars. It was a small military asset, but it would play its part before the cyborgs eliminated it. Was it worth the designation of third factor? No. It was too puny. Maybe if the Jovians had sent a fleet…but they hadn’t. Given this miserliness, it was clear that conquering the Jovian System should prove to be simplicity itself once the cyborg menace was eradicated.
Third then, was Scipio’s space defense of Earth. After pivoting around Venus, he would send an inquiry to the Highborn and see how matters stood.
The fourth and final component was the Earth-based defense of proton beams, merculite missiles and Highborn orbitals and laser satellites.
Together, it was an impressive array of military hardware and personnel. The heart of the plan, however, was the Highborn commandoes, whatever the Earth soldiers could perform and the Jovian space marines. Earth would live or die on their collective abilities.
“I can lose this fight,” Cassius said.
He scowled, as he hated losing. But it would be a weakness if he couldn’t see the real possibility. To that end, he’d ordered every Highborn off-planet and into space. That could mean a possible loss of control of Earth. That would depend in the end on the FEC formations and their loyalty. But if the asteroids made it through everything he could throw at them, he wasn’t going to let precious Highborn die. Let the premen cattle do that in their teeming billions.
Scowling more deeply, Cassius shook his head. He did not intend to lose to these aliens freaks from Saturn. How was it possible the cyborgs had conquered Saturn without at least some premen sending out a message of the awful conquest? It showed once again how pathetic premen soldiers really were. Premen were good for rutting and menial labor, nothing else. In the New Order of the coming Solar System, they might not even be good enough for that. Cassius had toyed with the idea of mass geldings. There were too many premen in the Solar System, far too many.
“Grand Admiral.”
Cassius looked up, and opened channels with the bridge. “Yes?”
“Venus is near, Your Excellency.”
First rubbing his hands, Cassius swung his legs off the acceleration couch. It was time to head to the bridge. “I’m coming,” he said. “Carry on.”
With a grunt, Cassius stood under the heavy-Gs. Then he slowly headed for the hatch. The battle of his life was fast approaching.
Marten sat in his badly shaking command chair. Around him, metal screeched in complaint and loud groans occurred that sounded like wounded whales. The vibration of the fusion core became so horrible that his head felt like it was coming part. He sank into the cushions of his chair, forced there by the heavy Gs.