Cyborg Assault

had launched a decisive salvo of missiles and drones. Unfortunately for the crew, they had one other mission to accomplish. Using teleoptic scopes and as they’d passed Mars, the Praetor had relayed precious combat information to the Doom Stars.

It was then that Corporal Bess O’Connor of the former Phobos moon-station had logged a blip of a lightguide message. With it, the SU commander of the former moon-station had launched hunter-killer missiles after the Thutmosis III. Phobos no longer existed. Highborn asteroid busters had destroyed the Martian moon during the battle. As a final quirk of fate, one of the deceased moon’s hunter-killers had struck the Thutmosis III long after Phobos’ destruction. The strike had killed eighty percent of the Thutmosis III’s crew and crippled the missile-ship.

For many harrowing months afterward, the Praetor and the last survivors had labored intensely to effect repairs. Their problems had nearly been unsolvable, as the Thutmosis III had sped from Mars under terrific velocity. The hunter-killer had struck the ship before it had begun deceleration.

With the horribly damaged engines, the Thutmosis III had been unable to decelerate. For everyone aboard ship, it had looked hopeless. Unable to brake, the ship would leave the Solar System like a bullet fired from an inter-solar rifle. The crew would die hundreds maybe even a thousand AUs out of the Solar System of old age, starvation or asphyxiation.

The Praetor had taken their one chance, repairing the damaged engines enough to dare nudge the ship in a path toward distant Uranus. During the journey there, they had labored around the clock, taking stims to keep alert. Using the distant gas giant’s gravity-well as a pivoting post and engaging the engines for a greater length of time, the Praetor had redirected the ship at an angle toward Jupiter. He had also managed to decelerate the vessel slightly.

The vast orbital paths of the Outer Planets gas giants and the extreme distances between them meant that a shallow curve could achieve this last hope.

Now the ship sped toward the largest planet in the Solar System. Unlike the Mayflower that had headed from the Inner Planets outward, the Thutmosis III headed from the Outer Planets inward. It was the reason why the much slower Mayflower had reached Jupiter before the much faster moving Thutmosis III.

The Praetor sat in his command chair on the bridge. It was one of the least damaged sections of the ship. The Praetor had become gaunt this last year. He had washed-out pink eyes, a wide face and a strange demeanor, which had been made stranger by a long and steady diet of stims. There was the tiniest tic now under his left eye.

The modules around him were empty and the bridge lights were dim. A constant whine sounded in the background. It came from deep inside the ship, from its tortured fusion engines. At times, the whine climbed an octave. Whenever that occurred, the tic under his left eye became more pronounced.

The Praetor pushed his big head against the rest of his command chair. Jupiter neared. Soon now, he would retire to the acceleration couches. He would strap in. They would engage the engines and hope the repairs held. If they didn’t—

The Praetor shuddered and closed his eyes. That made the tic under his left eye more visible as it jerked the loose skin there. The Praetor had lost weight as concern had stolen his appetite. He would face anyone or anything man-to-man or chest-to-chest. Nothing in the universe frightened him physically. Give him a foe to battle—

His eyes snapped open. Anger filled his face. Grand Admiral Cassius had given him this command post.

The Praetor’s nostrils flared. “I won the Third Battle for Mars,” he whispered. “It was my missiles that opened up the enemy to the Doom Star lasers.”

His upper lip curled, and he gazed into some unseen distance. “You shall not steal my victory from me, Cassius. I’m coming back. You can count on that.”

A strange laugh bubbled from his throat. He shivered, and he was unaware that he did so. When the Thutmosis III had hurdled out of the Solar System—

The Praetor closed his eyes again. He had never understood loneliness until then. The idea of his ship rocketing outside of the Solar System and into the emptiness of space—the void was a thing, a beast that had spread in his soul. It had smothered courage, smothered daring and intellect alike. Shooting outside the Solar System, alone, with no hope of seeing Earth again, with—

“Enough,” the Praetor whispered.

He moistened his mouth and forced himself to study the faint holoimage before him. His great enemy was velocity, speed. He had built up great speed while circling the Sun. Now he needed to shed that speed. A small part of him was tempted to aim directly at Jupiter and crash into it. That would end the agony. That would end the loneliness that he’d felt while hurtling toward Uranus, unsure whether the barely-repaired engines could slow them enough as they whipped past the gas giant.

If this didn’t work—

“It will work,” he rumbled. He lifted a fist and hit the arm of his command chair. In the past, he would have struck hard and forcefully. Now, it was a feeble gesture. The loneliness, the emptiness of deep space—

Why did such loneliness exist?

“Are you afraid?” he whispered at himself. “Are you a coward, Praetor? Or will you survive so you can spit in Grand Admiral Cassius’s face?”

That was the antidote to his worries—anger, injustice and revenge. He must cling to them. No, he must gird himself with anger, with the sense of injustice committed against him and with thoughts of vengeance. He must buckle them like armor against the awfulness that lurked out there in the empty void of space.

Soon, he must engage the engines. He would have to time it right, letting Jupiter’s vast gravity-well help slow them. The engines and gravity-well needed to slow the ship to less than Jupiter’s escape velocity.

Could they do it? Could the badly damaged ship stand the strain? And if they did it, what awaited him in the Jupiter System?

That was the least of the Praetor’s worries. He was Highborn. The pathetic Social Unity humans had joined with cyborgs. Those cyborgs had proven deadly. A Doom Star had died. But neither cyborgs nor Homo sapiens had proven tough enough to face the Highborn and survive.

The Praetor laughed as he pushed out of the command chair. If he could halt the Thutmosis III, he knew what he’d do in the Jupiter System. He would conquer it for the Highborn. He would show the ranking warriors of the Master Race that he was greater than Grand Admiral Cassius. With a crippled ship, he would conquer a planetary system. What Highborn had ever achieved that?

The facial tic quivered as the background engine whine rose an octave. First, he needed to shed the ship’s velocity. Soon, the survivors would strap onto the acceleration couches as they made their last attempt to survive in the Solar System.

If the engines failed, or if it looked as if they might fail, then he would aim the Thutmosis III at Jupiter. Or he would crash the ship into a human vessel or into an orbiting habitat. If he was about to die, he would try to kill as much of the universe as he could. Why he felt this way, he had no idea. He just knew it would make him feel better killing others if he himself wasn’t going to be allowed to live.

-3-

When the Mayflower exploded, Marten, Omi and Osadar had already been moving away from it in the stolen pod.

With their head start and by accelerating at full thrust, they outran any appreciable heat damage. Heat from a nuclear explosion in space had the shortest kill-radius of the three dangers. It also helped that the pod’s exhaust nozzle was aimed at the blast. A heat shield between the exhaust and the inhabitable quarters of the pod dampened what might have otherwise proven fatal.

The EMP blast washed over the pod’s electronics and fused several key functions, including life-support. It also knocked out engine control, which didn’t really matter as the most critical damage came from a piece of shrapnel. The size of an Old Earth penny, the jagged shrapnel sliced through the pod’s exhaust. Then it sliced through the