Cyborg Assault

Here it comes, he thought.

“A cyborg is on the com-link,” she said. “It’s demanding to know what has occurred. Do you have any idea what I should say?”

“Can you mimic a controlled cyborg?”

“Not efficiently,” Osadar said. “There are too many variables that—”

“Open a channel and try to mimic a controlled cyborg the best you can. Tell them you have secured the ship. Then disconnect the com-unit. By then, I’ll be there with you.”

“They’ll destroy us,” Osadar said.

“We’re dead anyway. This way… this way we might be able to hurt them before we die.”

“I fail to—”

“Please, Osadar,” Marten said. His mouth felt bone dry. It was hard to talk. “Just do it while they’re still wondering what could have gone wrong.”

“Understood,” said Osadar. “I am complying.”

* * *

On his way to the shuttle’s control module, the answer came. Marten didn’t like it, but it seemed like the only way to survive the cyborgs. Either the melded creatures possessed a Jovian warship with a skeleton number of humans left, or the cyborgs were allied to the Jovians who controlled it. Those Jovians would all have to die if he, Omi and Osadar were to survive. That was a grim thing, but he wasn’t going to go soft now. He had clawed and fought his way out to Jupiter. He would claw and fight until he took his last breath, God willing.

Marten grimaced as he recalled his mother’s most quoted saying. She’d died in the Ring-Works Factory around Mercury. That seemed like a long time ago now. Political Harmony Corps had come for her then. As much as Marten hated PHC, it had still been composed of humans. The cyborgs—he was doing the humans aboard the Rousseau a favor killing them. If he could pull this off, that is.

Marten told the others his plan and they moved fast throughout the Mayflower. In six minutes, they met back at the airlock. Each of them had a hand-case and wore a vacc-suit with a helmet.

Osadar had already shrugged on a thruster-pack. Omi hooked tether lines between them.

“This will never work,” Osadar said over the tight-link. Her facial features were as much plastic as human, as much a mask as a face.

“I enjoy useless gestures,” Marten said.

Osadar stared at him.

“It’s a joke,” Marten said.

“Useless, yes,” Osadar said. She floated to the open airlock and pushed off toward the Rousseau’s drifting pod.

Omi jumped next, and afterward Marten jumped. Using her former piloting skills, Osadar maneuvered toward the pod, keeping the Mayflower between them and the Rousseau.

As he floated behind Omi, Marten studied his handscanner. Using it, he initiated a specially coded program aboard the Mayflower’s computer. The shuttle’s engine thrust particles from the exhaust. Gently, the shuttle eased toward the Rousseau in the distance.

Soon, Marten floated through the open hatch of the cyborg pod. This vessel had one-fifth the space as the Mayflower. They would not be making any intersystem journeys in it. They might not make any journeys whatsoever. Shortly after boarding, the three of them crammed into the pod’s control room. Voices spoke out of the com-unit. The voices spoke in a high-speed chatter.

“Can you understand them?” Marten asked.

From within her helmet, Osadar nodded solemnly.

“Well?” Marten asked.

“They are getting ready to fire on the Mayflower.”

“You have to tell them that everything is fine,” Marten said. “Tell them the other cyborgs are piloting the vessel to the warship.”

“They will never believe me,” Osadar said.

“Do it anyway.”

Osadar sat at the single pilot’s chair. Omi had already shut the hatch and pressurized the cabin. Opening her visor, Osadar opened a channel to the Rousseau.

Marten tore off his vacc-suit gloves and ran his fingers over the handscanner, using its keypad to pilot the shuttle.

Osadar was having a deliberate and unimaginative conversation with the cyborgs. The enemy queries were getting closer to deducing that the assault had failed.

“Engage the pod’s engines,” Marten whispered to Osadar. “Get us out of here.”

Her fingers flew over the pod’s controls.

Marten slid onto the floor and braced his back against a bulkhead. Omi did likewise.

Through the tiny screen of the handscanner, Marten studied the Rousseau. The scanner picked up the feed from the Mayflower’s forward cameras. The Jovian dreadnaught was similar in configuration to a Social Unity battleship, but with a more compact design. It was like a giant ball bearing with asteroid-like particle shields. One of them was locked open, revealing a hanger bay inside. The pod had no doubt come from there. If the bay was still open….

Marten watched the screen. He saw the hanger door lurch and begin to close. The Mayflower could fit through it. The heavy particle shield also began rotating into a defensive posture.

“Give us full thrust!” Marten shouted. His fingers typed over the keypad.

Over three kilometers away on the Mayflower, the warfare pod they had installed back in the Mars System activated. The shuttle possessed five Wasp 2000 missiles. Those missiles entered the launch tubes.

Several things happened at once then on the Mayflower. The engine engaged at full thrust, pushing the shuttle faster toward the much larger Rousseau. The Wasp 2000s ignited from the launch tubes, leading the charge at the Aristotle-class dreadnaught. Almost immediately, the dreadnaught’s point-defense cannons opened up. They targeted the missiles. A Wasp 2000 disintegrated. Another blew into a plume of light, while a third exploded in space, slightly damaging the Mayflower behind it. The fourth and fifth missiles slammed against the warship. One struck a particle shield, harmlessly blowing away asteroid-like rock. The last flew through the closing hanger door and exploded.

The hanger door froze.

The Mayflower closed with the Rousseau. The dreadnaught’s point-defense cannons began to target the shuttle.

As growing G-forces pushed Marten against the pod’s bulkhead, he pressed a button.

The accelerating Mayflower ignited its fusion engine, blowing the atomic pile in a nuclear explosion of obliterating power.

-2-

The Highborn Praetor commanded the Thutmosis III, and he was worried as his badly damaged missile-ship sped toward Jupiter.

The giant ship was a stealth vessel, painted with anti-sensor coating and colored as black as the void of space. Almost a year ago, they had circled the Sun gaining terrific velocity. Then they had broken Sun-orbit and shut off the ship’s engines. Like a rock from a slingshot, they had sped silently toward Mars. At the right moment, the Praetor