Planet Wrecker

once for everyone to lie on the floor.

Hawthorne groped for his own sidearm. Was this a coup begun by a surprise flash on a TV screen? Why now and what was its purpose?

“Down, down!” shouted a burly man, motioning with his gun.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Hawthorne, as black-clad security people rushed to him and then spun around, facing outward. “Why have you drawn weapons?” Hawthorne said, grabbing a woman, spinning her around to face him.

“That flash on the screen—” she said, sounding frightened.

Hawthorne recognized then that the security people had overreacted. Mune and his men had never done so. The bionic soldiers had been the best guards a Supreme Commander had ever possessed. In their strength, the bionic men had known clam. He realized that he was dearly going to miss Mune.

“At ease!” shouted Hawthorne. “Lower your guns.”

The security people glanced uneasily at each other. Several glanced at Cone, who hurried into the large chamber as she tucked in her shirt.

“Stand down,” Cone said.

Only then did the security people begin to holster their weapons and back away into the shadows.

Hawthorne felt coldness stab his chest. The security people hadn’t listened to him, but they’d immediately obeyed Cone. She had just become his jailor. Whether the security specialist knew it or not was another matter. He’d have to replace Cone and her people. But with whom? Then he remembered the flash on the screen.

“What happened?” Hawthorne shouted, striding to the offending screen and its operator.

The woman looked up at him ashen-faced, with dark circles around her eyes.

“Speak,” said Hawthorne. On the screen, debris rained down from the clouds as smoke billowed upward.

“Orion-ship Avenger malfunctioned,” the operator whispered. “It exploded. They’re… they’re all dead, sir.”

A colonel on the other side of the operator’s chair was weeping silently, with his face pressed against his hands.

Hawthorne gazed at the screen again, understanding now what he saw. Dead, all those brave bionic soldiers vaporized into atoms. In the hurry and rush to get everything ready for zero hour, somebody had made one mistake too many. Now Earth’s chance for survival had dropped…by however many percentage points that ship represented.

Hawthorne rubbed his eyes. There were so many things to coordinate, to think about, it was breaking him down. It was breaking all of them.

“I wish I’d filled the Avenger with Highborn,” he said.

Several operators turned and stared at him in shock. One general nodded, however, and even managed a bleak grin.

“Carry on,” said Hawthorne. “We can’t stop for anyone now, not even for those brave soldiers.”

The heavy Orion-ships on screen continued to flash and zoom upward, already leaving the atmosphere as they entered outer space and near-Earth orbit.

-48-

As the Orion-ships blasted their way out of the atmosphere, the Highborn Luna Missile Complex fired its first salvo. These were titanic Cohort-7 Missiles, which fired x-rays in the proximity of their enemies. From the hundreds of launch-sites, the missiles rose like stellar sharks, quick, deadly and silent. As the fusion cores propelled the Cohort-7 projectiles, the blue flares appeared as dots against the darkness of space. Those dots accelerated with astonishing speed. Soon enough, they vanished, swallowed by the void.

Orders rang out as the Highborn Senior Tribune watched from his conning tower.

All around him on the moon, other giant HB missiles moved on tracks and onto the still glowing blast-pans. The Senior Tribune laughed as he waited high in the tower. The fatigue of the last several cycles ate at him. It had been so long since he’d laid down his head and closed his eyes. The Highborn leader shook his head now, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth.

“Next wave,” he said. “Launch, launch, launch.”

Sullen Highborn standing at their stations eyed him. None had slept for days and they were each dangerously exhausted. There was a Highborn term for it: explosive weariness. Many mulishly clicked their controls. One officer suddenly bellowed with rage, drew a gun and began firing into his panel. Plastic and acrylic pieces went flying as loud bangs rapidly followed one after another.

Three other Highborn reacted before the Senior Tribune was even aware of what occurred. One drew a vibroblade, clicked it so it hummed and hurled it at the berserk. Before the blade could hit the madman, two other Highborn drew their sidearms and emptied their clips into the berserk. He twisted around at the shots, glared at them for a second and then sank with a groan, his gun clattered on the floor.

The Senior Tribune began to tremble, not in fear, but in rage. How dare anyone mar an otherwise perfect liftoff? He was tempted to try resuscitation of the offender in order to use SU tortures on him as punishment.

Then he recalled his purpose. “Launch,” he said in a ragged voice.

As smoke drifted from hot gun-barrels, Highborn officers attended to their stations. The Senior Tribune checked his board.

The second salvo of modified missiles began launching. These had taken the most work, the most redesign and refit. Inside them was live ammunition: Highborn space commandoes. These missiles were almost as large as the Cohort-7s.

As the Senior Tribune double-checked the sensors aboard the missiles, a glaring error became obvious. The oxygen-valve settings on a dozen missiles—no, on twenty of them, weren’t calibrated for heavy thrust. It should have been a simple thing to check beforehand. But these many hectic days on stims and without sleep….

Bending over his com, the Senior Tribune shouted, “Emergency, emergency, the oxygen content will soon approach zero! Don emergency breathing gear and change the settings on the oxygen valves.” Then he realized he’d forgotten to turn on the com-system to the missiles. He did so now with a click and repeated his warning.

The commando missiles zoomed out of the Sea of Tranquility, accelerating hard for Venus. As the Senior Tribune checked the responses, he soon discovered that fifteen missiles were dead, or their occupants were. Fifteen missiles—because of a simple single error over a hundred commandoes were dead before the battle had even started. The Senior Tribune banged his forehead against his board until blood began to drip in the light Luna gravity. He badly needed sleep. Oh, he wanted to sleep almost more than he wanted to finish his task. He realized dully that he had to think of a way to hide this fifteen-missile loss from the Grand Admiral.

The Senior Tribune wiped blood from the board and made some quick calculations. No, this couldn’t be—oh, wait a minute. He rechecked missile manifests. As his shoulders sagged, he realized that Felix had survived the mishap. The Senior Tribune was aware of the Grand Admiral’s strange affinity for the soldier. He’d studied vid shots of the two and had discovered a disturbing likeness between them.

The Senior Tribune straightened. His head throbbed painfully, but that was good. The pain helped him concentrate. Maybe if he were lucky, Cassius would die in the coming battle. Yes, he would hope for luck and the Grand Admiral’s violent demise when his Doom Star engaged the cyborgs.

-49-

“Marten, are you sure this is a good idea?” Nadia asked.

The Spartacus accelerated at two-Gs as it traveled across the face of the burning