Cyborg Assault

being launched in a prefixed pod—he continued to whoop with laughter. Oh, his certain death had miraculously changed into life and coming revenge. He could almost feel the thrill of shocking a captured Marten Kluge for the first time.

“Hurry!” shouted Octagon. He waved his arms as his hysterical laughter increased. Oh, this was the most glorious moment in his existence. What had he ever done to deserve this? It was uncanny. It was—

The vacc-suited worker reached him. It was such a serene thing. The worker grabbed his boot and halted the slow tumbling. With a strong hand and a deft twist that shoved against his hip, the worker hooked the tether line to Octagon’s belt.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Octagon whispered.

Then something cold blossomed in Octagon’s gut. It came from the sight of a silvery sheen, something… metallic. The worker’s faceplate—Octagon craned his neck, trying to get another glimpse.

The worker drew him closer and Octagon had his first good look into his rescuer’s faceplate. Behind the glassy visor was a mask-like face with black, plastic sockets and silver eyeballs. Each ball bearing-like eye contained a red dot for a pupil. His rescuer wasn’t human, but a cyborg.

The cold in Octagon’s gut mushroomed outward until his arms and legs felt numb. If a cyborg was rescuing him… that meant the melded creature would take him to a converter. Evil Marten Kluge had warned him about this. The barbarian had suggested that suicide would be preferable to cyborg conversion.

With a hoarse cry, Octagon grabbed the tether-line’s hook, trying to tear it off his belt.

The cyborg moved with an insect’s speed. It gripped his wrists, immobilizing his hands. Then the thing activated a thruster-pack. They lurched. Octagon whipped his head back and forth. He saw the hydrogen particles propelling them. He saw the open airlock in the pod. It was like the jaws of a beast. It was hideous doom, and the airlock seemed to grin and hiss with Marten Kluge’s voice.

“No,” Octagon said. “You can’t do this.”

The cyborg paid no heed as it jetted for the pod. With a madman’s bellow, Octagon attempted to fight, to flail against fate. Remorselessly and with steely strength, the cyborg tightened its hold, taking him to a sinister new future that promised a metallic world of enslaved electrons and motorized limbs.

-2-

The Descartes headed toward Jupiter, deeper into the heavy gravity-well. Behind it followed the last Zeno, rapidly closing in. At the present speeds, the ship had less than ninety minutes until the drone reached it. Unfortunately, the Highborn ship had already swept past in its comet-like rush and no longer fired its laser.

Marten sat in his module in the command center. He scowled at his screen, at the Praetor’s wide face, at the pink, arrogant eyes and the predatory features chiseled in flat planes. Marten quietly replayed the Praetor’s system-wide speech. He heard the harsh voice that had once told Training Master Lycon that the shock troopers needed to be gelded. What he couldn’t understand is why the Highborn had sent a lone ship all the way out here.

Marten clicked off the Praetor’s image. On the screen, he brought up Chief Controller Su-Shan. She’d spoken to Yakov, to the officers of the Descartes. Marten had learned that she was the ranking governor of the Guardian Fleet. She was presently in one of the laser-satellites of Callisto Orbital Defense.

Su-Shan had the same elfin quality as Tan. She wore a golden headband, had pale hair and strikingly green eyes. Surprisingly, she wore a sheer robe. Every time she’d moved, Marten had caught a glimpse of her perfect breasts or the slenderness of her waist.

Marten replayed her quiet voice. It was utterly devoid of emotion. She’d spoken with Yakov, demanding an audience with Strategist Tan. When Yakov had said that was impossible, Su-Shan had informed Yakov about armed uprisings on Ganymede and the detention of visiting dignitaries. She’d told him of his coming destruction and that of every terrorist. She said it in such inflectionless tones that Marten couldn’t decide if it was comical or chilling.

Marten froze her image. He’d listened to Yakov’s attempts to reason with her. She’d fallen silent then, as if waiting for Yakov to halt his flood of nonsense. When he’d stopped talking, she’d continued where she had left off, as if Yakov had never spoken.

Marten squeezed out of the module and moved to Yakov in his chair. The Force-Leader examined a holographic image. It hovered over a rectangular section of flooring before him. Yakov made adjustments with a control unit. The orbital paths of the four Galilean moons appeared as dotted lines around holographic Jupiter.

“Ours is a complicated system,” Yakov said.

Marten nodded.

Jupiter dominated everything with its size and its horrendous gravitational pull. It meant that moving here took much greater fuel as compared to other planetary systems. It also meant that maintaining a high orbit, the high ground, was even more advantageous here than elsewhere.

It would take eleven Earths placed side-by-side to stretch across Jupiter’s visible disk. More than one thousand Earths would be needed to fill Jupiter’s volume. Because Earth was denser than Jupiter, the Jovian planet only had three hundred times the Earth’s mass.

Yakov fiddled with the control unit. A sea of pale dots appeared. They were everywhere. Some circled the Galilean moons. Some traveled between them. Others boosted from Jupiter and headed to the Inner group moons. The majority of the dots were obviously civilian or corporation spaceships. Yakov adjusted the control, and orange dots appeared among them, a fraction of the number.

“Those are the known locations of Guardian Fleet warships,” Yakov said. “By their maneuverings, we should now be able to tell if they’re cyborg-controlled.” He pressed a button. Two of the orange dots turned green. “Those are under Secessionist control, those who have radioed us.”

“It doesn’t look as if any of those can help us against the Zeno,” Marten said.

“They cannot,” Yakov said.

After Jupiter, the biggest bodies were the four Galilean moons. The last two were larger than Mercury, while Io was larger than Luna of Earth. Io, the nearest to Jupiter, completed an orbital circuit every 1.77 days. According to Yakov, the mineral complexes on Io had light defensive equipment, enough to hurt orbital fighters, but negligible against even one meteor-ship.

“The cyborgs could easily cripple mining on Io,” Yakov said.

“How does any of this help us against the Zeno?” Marten asked.

“Patience,” Yakov said.

Europa was an ice-ball. The intense radiation from Jupiter and Io’s volcanoes made it a harsh place on the surface. Its ice provided most of the system’s water and protected the deep communities there.

A green dot orbited Europa.

Yakov indicated it. “We have a Secessionist dreadnaught and several patrol boats there. At the moment, it is our greatest concentration of strength.”

“This orange dot,” Marten said, pointing out a ship moving between Europa and Ganymede. “It’s not traveling in a direct route. Is there a reason for that?”

“Yes. The reason is the Laplace resonance.”

“Meaning what?”

Yakov began to explain.

The first three Galilean moons formed a pattern known as a Laplace resonance. For every four orbits Io made around Jupiter, Europa made a perfect two orbits and Ganymede made a perfect one. The resonance caused the gravitational effects that distorted the orbits into elliptical shapes. Each moon received an extra tug from its neighbors at the same point in every orbit. However, Jupiter’s strong tidal force helped to circularize the orbits and negate some of the elliptical shape. Those forces also affected ships traveling between the three moons.

Yakov clicked his control unit.

Three orange dots were highlighted as they moved into a low-Ganymede orbit. Those were clearly Guardian