headphones.
Carme’s surface was rocky, with sharp protrusions and plenty of stardust. Every step left a print. Sometimes dust puffed upward.
The stars shined above as nearer, flashing objects glowed and disappeared, some smashing into the moon. Otherwise, it was dark and eerie. Jupiter was the brightest ‘star’ by many magnitudes, brighter even than the Sun.
Marten yearned to reach the towers and domes, to get his men under cover. If an EMP blast went off nearby or a missile exploded, it could kill the lot of them. He also wanted to gather a large number of space marines in one place in order to defeat the enemy in detail, hitting small cyborg parties with as many men as possible. Unfortunately, it was impossible to call down other patrol boats, as the interference was too strong.
“There!” crackled Omi’s voice.
Marten swiveled his head to look back, to see what Omi pointed at. Something flashed at the corner of his eye. He turned forward again and saw an impossibly fast humanoid running toward them. The humanoid had a laser carbine, with a bulky pack on his back. He shot from the hip with flashes of light that stabbed at them, hitting his soldiers.
“Down!” shouted Marten. “Get onto your stomachs!”
“Pericles is hit!” a space marine shouted.
“Kallias—I need help! Kallias has lost his helmet!”
Marten threw himself onto his stomach, hitting rocky ground, making dust puff around him.
The charging cyborg was killing his space marines fast. It was extremely efficient when compared to mere humans.
Marten clawed the IML from his back. He targeted the cyborg even as the beam slashed into more of his space marines. In his HUD, Marten saw a green flash, meaning:
The thing was incredible. It threw itself down even as it aimed and fired at the incoming missile. The beam slashed a scant milli-fraction from the warhead because the Cognitive missile swerved then. It poured a final burst of thrust and slammed into the cyborg. There was an explosion and then showering shards of metal and hot plasti- flesh.
A ragged cheer battled the static in Marten’s ears.
“We’ll advance by over-watch teams!” Marten shouted. He wanted to stay calm. Yakov had known how to stay calm in a fight, but the silver-haired Force-Leader was dead. He hated this war. He hated cyborgs.
Marten reloaded the IML. The Cognitive missile tactic had worked. He’d killed a cyborg.
“Six men are dead,” Omi said on the command channel.
The headache that had begun with the crash-landing blossomed with renewed pain. Then something flashed overhead at the edge of Marten’s visor.
“Look,” someone said, “a patrol boat.”
An explosion of bright light ended the thought. Marten had no idea if depleted uranium shells, canisters, wide- area sand-shots or a tac-laser had killed the patrol boat. In the end, it didn’t matter what had killed it. All those reinforcements were dead.
“Here come more cyborgs,” Omi said. “I count seven of them.”
“Spread out!” Marten shouted. Then he remembered an old Highborn maxim:
The cyborgs carried lasers. Marten and his space marines used IMLs and Cognitive missiles, with Osadar firing a Gyroc rifle. In the end, they killed the deadly things with saturation fire, but lost half their number doing it.
Armored bodies lay everywhere, with neat little holes burnt through ceramic-metal plates.
“We’ll never win like this,” Tass said over the radio.
Panting, Marten lifted a loaded IML off a corpse. The space marine’s faceplate was slagged ballistic glass, the head inside a horrible glob of protoplasm.
“Wait here,” wheezed Marten. His conditioner-unit hummed, washing his sweaty skin with cool air.
“Sir?” a space marine asked.
“I’m going to scout ahead,” Marten said. “We need to group our forces, hit the cyborgs as one. Omi, Osadar… Tass, follow me.”
“What’s up?” Omi asked on the command channel.
“This looks like a safe spot to leave the others,” Marten said. “We’ll take the risks right now.”
Omi gave a noncommittal grunt.
The four of them advanced across rocky terrain, with someone always crouching behind a boulder, with an aimed missile ready to fly. The cluster of domes and towers slowly grew larger.
“Look,” Osadar said.
Marten glanced back where she pointed. Cyborgs climbed over rocks, heading toward the others.
“Damn,” Marten said. “Let’s go.” Then he tried to warn the others, but the static was too heavy.
The cyborgs moved with twitching, inhuman speed and fired with uncanny laser-accuracy—they were cyclones of death. Marten and others used their Cognitive missiles, hitting the enemy from behind. It killed the last cyborgs, but no space marine left behind survived the firefight.
Gasping for air, with sweat dripping down his chin, Marten knelt, and he shook his head.
That’s when the first piece of good luck occurred. Another boatload of space marines joined them. Well, half the patrol boat’s complement joined them, a squad’s worth. They marched from behind a low hill, waving IMLs to identify themselves. Once they were close, they were able to talk over the worsening static.
Together, they humped over the terrain, soon sliding down a hill as a tower rose before them. A broken dish rotated at the top. The nearest dome was cracked as something visible sheeted out of it.
“Look,” Osadar said.
She was the tallest among them and had stolen a bulky laser pack and carbine from a dead cyborg. Osadar pointed with the tip of her carbine.
Two shuttles glided low over a hill. They could have been twins to the
“Idiots,” Omi said.
Stubby barrels poked out of two low barracks. Marten wished he could radio the shuttles. The barrels were point-defense cannons. It surprised him the Highborn were so foolish as to try to land directly among the buildings. He could have used the reinforcements.
Then a huge missile flashed overhead, speeding ahead of Carme. The missile rotated. A beam lanced from the nosecone. The beam hit the first barracks. The point-defense cannons of the second barracks shot depleted uranium shells. Those shredded the lead shuttle. Metal rained onto the surface. Some chunks splattered against the hills like meteors. Then the missile’s beam hit again, and the second barracks was destroyed.
“The Highborn are using a Voltaire Missile,” Osadar said.
In his cooling helmet, Marten raised his eyebrows. The giant missile hung out there like some guardian angel, rotating, firing its engine to pull ahead and then rotating back to fire. No doubt, the Praetor or one of his Highborn lieutenants controlled the Voltaire. Marten recalled how he’d once controlled the
From where he stood on a hill’s slope, Marten watched the landing shuttle. He also saw the Voltaire’s beam slag cyborgs spilling out of a low dome.
That did something to Marten’s chest. It took him a moment to understand what. Then he did understand. He had hope again. Battleoid-armored Highborn had arrived, and they had an altered drone to provide covering fire. Maybe there was a way to win, or at least to disable this blasted planet-wrecker. Yakov’s sacrifice had achieved something.
Marten nodded, vowing that his friend’s death would count, even if he had to take some Highborn’s orders for the next hour, even the Praetor’s orders, to achieve it.
“All right,” he said. “We’re going to try to link up with them. But keep a close watch on your sensors. We don’t need any more nasty surprises.”
