Marten whispered, “You’ll never leave me again.”
She tightened her grip, nodding.
“Nadia,” he said, and there was joy in his heart that was impossible to describe. He had found his Nadia. In an evil and harsh universe, he’d finally found an oasis of bliss.
-28-
Like a wave in a pond created by a dropped pebble, the Web-Mind’s radioed deletion-codes trickled outward from its last position. Many millions of kilometers away on Athena Station, a special receiving unit from Neptune intercepted the faint radio signal.
An emergency computer there ran probability scenarios, trying to decipher the need for the deletion codes. After three minutes, it sent a questing radio call for the Web-Mind. It continued to do this for seventy-one hours.
Seventy-one hours of silence indicated the Web-Mind’s deletion. The odds of this were beyond the ninety-ninth percentile. Another special program activated in response to the Web-Mind’s deletion, seeking out the chief cyborg unit in the Jovian System. Shortly, the emergency program caused a short-burst information packet to speed to Gharlane. It sent him the lightguide laser code to Neptune. It also activated an accounting program in him.
Thus, Gharlane soon found himself hooked to his warship’s primary com-station, sending pulse-packets to the lightguide laser. That tight-beam laser in turn sent a grim accounting to the Prime Web-Mind in the Neptune System.
CHIEF CYBORG UNIT: JUPITER ASSAULT
GHARLANE PRIME, BATTLE COMMANDER
LIGHTGUIDE LINK: JUPITER-NEPTUNE
STEALTH CAMPAIGN SUMMARY
Tenth Cycle, Rotation 24
Concluding battle report No. 7
The Ganymede-Europa Lunge
The clever enemy meteor-tactic absorbed approximately thirty-one percent of our laser strikes and twenty- seven percent of our missile launches. Given their local warship-tonnage superiority, I broke off the penetration raid on Ganymede, leaving a screen of damaged patrol boats. They had been preloaded with Onoshi decoy equipment and they drew fifty-eight percent of enemy fire before their destruction.
The meteor-tactic proved decisive and indicated a primary enemy commander of level two or three ability. The analyzers confirm the reunification of Jovian political and military authorities.
The Ganymede-Europa Lunge caused a sixty-seven percent loss of warship-tonnage that originated from the Athena Station start-point. Enemy losses were computed at thirty-one percent.
The battle maneuver and combat resulted in the destruction of Io, eighty percent of the processing stations on the inner moons and critical Jovian loss on Europa. Monitoring the enemy news sites has revealed five critical hits on the water moon and a seventeen percent surface covering of Io-spawned radioactives.
Current warship ratios mandate a defensive cyborg strategy based on Athena Station. Enemy manufacturing presently runs at twenty-two percent of pre-stealth campaign levels. The probability battle-computer estimates a two-year struggle before the Jovians can eradicate our presence here.
I await instructions and reinforcements, Gharlane Prime, reporting.
