adjust as they targeted torpedoes. Each fired depleted uranium pellets. In the background, Marten saw the Zenos’ exhausts as the missiles sped at the torpedoes. Then a huge stabbing beam struck from a million-kilometers away. The beam hit a torpedo, destroying it.
“Highborn sensors must be better than ours,” Osadar said.
Marten tried to swallow in a dry throat. This was the worst part—the approach to landing. He wished he were anywhere but here. The cyborgs were living murder. The number of asteroids—there were seventeen of them if you counted the two debris fields as two loosely-packed asteroids. Seventeen objects, each large enough to bring extinction to Earth. How were they supposed to deflect them in time?
Another torpedo disintegrated in the beam of the Highborn laser. Then a smaller cyborg missile exploded, filling the vacuum with a powerful electromagnetic pulse.
“I’ve lost visual,” Omi said over the tight-link.
“I never should have brought you into this,” Marten told Nadia.
She was too busy with her board to respond. Now a second ultra-heavy laser flashed to their aid.
At that moment, a terrific jolt shook everyone in the patrol boat.
“What happened?” Omi asked over the tight-link.
“Here comes another torpedo,” Osadar said. “Prepare to detach.”
“It’s too soon,” Omi said.
Then Marten saw it on his screen. A black-as-sin torpedo sped at the
Outside, a jagged and growing crack splintered the meteor-ship’s shell. Oxygen sheeted upward as the inner ship spewed its precious air. A wobbling patrol boat fired thrusters, fighting to escape the
“Launch!” someone screamed.
In a daze, Marten saw Nadia. She slapped buttons. Then Gs thrust him lower into his crash-seat. They were lifting off the dying ship.
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It was a Hell-ride to the asteroid. The patrol boat’s auto-cannons fired constantly. Anti-missiles bloomed around them. And the lunar-like surface grew larger. Then a patrol boat to their left exploded.
Marten tried to open channels with the others. Because they’d lifted off the meteor-ship, he’d lost the tight- links and had to rely solely on radio transmissions. Harsh static played in his ears. With a shake of his head, Marten decided to ignore the others for now as he studied the growing asteroid. It had a crater-sized exhaust-port, which was a huge cavity making it like a massive cave. Near the port—
“Laser turret!” shouted Marten.
Whether the cyborgs had saved it as an ace card or maybe had made fast repairs was impossible to know. The critical thing was that a beam erupted from it, lancing straight at them.
Nadia yanked the controls. Gs forced everyone to the left as the patrol boat banked sharply. Decoy chaff spewed. The beam struck, and one of the stubby, wing-like projections disappeared in a slag of hot metal, taking two auto-cannons with it.
The beam lanced again, and now it cooked decoy chaff.
The last launch of a counter-missile made the patrol boat shudder. Blips on Marten’s screen showed that other patrol-boats had fired missiles. For a moment, he heard Osadar’s voice. The patrol boat banked hard in a different direction as Nadia ejected an electronic counter-measure pod. Its single purpose was to emit dummy patrol-boat signals.
The laser turret beamed again. The right side of their patrol boat turned red and some of that side melted away. Hot globs of metal cooked seven space marines in their armor.
Marten shouted obscenities as he struck his board in helpless rage.
Then a patrol-boat-launched missile exploded against the laser turret. The armored turret absorbed the effect as it lost mass. Two more hit as depleted uranium pellets hammered it, gouging and blowing away armor. As the beam stabbed again, taking out a counter-measure pod, a last missile destroyed the turret.
By now, the lunar-like surface filled half of Marten’s screen. “There,” he said, pointing at a computer-generated map with his stylus. “Is everyone seeing this?”
Like the others, Marten’s visor was down and his HUD on. There were domes on the surface, three of them in a cluster. There were also many burnt turrets, slagged point-defense cannons and empty torpedo bays. As Osadar had once predicted, a long rail system had been laid on the surface. Some of the rail-line was twisted and melted in places. A Doom Star laser must have done that.
“Can we land?” asked Marten.
Nadia’s gloved hands worked over the controls. “Maybe,” she said. “The enemy laser took out our—”
“Don’t give me excuses,” Marten snapped. “Just get us down.”
Nadia’s silver-colored visor turned sharply toward him.
“Get us down, honey,” he said. “But do it fast.”
She turned back to her controls as the space marines in their crash-seats watched the window or the laser- opened section of the boat.
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Marten used the last outer camera, turning it. Behind them, three patrol boats each burned a long exhaust plume. They each decelerated the last amount, which would hopefully allow them a soft landing.
“Nadia,” he said.
“I don’t dare push the engine any harder,” she said, as she pointed at her board.
Marten saw it. The coils were overheating and in the danger zone, far in the red. The patrol boat’s engine could easily explode. He computed their thrust and ran the probabilities of surviving a landing at this speed.
“You have to push it,” he told Nadia. “Otherwise, none of us will survive the crash landing.”
“I’ve spotted cyborgs,” Osadar said over the com-link. As she spoke, her patrol boat’s auto-cannons fired.
On the asteroid’s surface appeared tiny bright lights.
“What’s that?” Marten said.
Then his sensors picked up the objects. Shoulder-launched missiles zoomed at them.
Nadia punched a button. “That’s the last of the decoy chaff,” she said.
Marten couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen. The missiles—two veered toward the chaff. The last hit them, exploded and the patrol boat had another new hole, with three more deaths, this time from shrapnel.
“Push the engine to its limit!” Marten shouted. His eyes were glued to the screen, watching for more bright dots on the surface. Had Osadar’s auto-cannons killed those cyborgs?
The patrol boat began to vibrate, and the vibration increased steadily. So did the size of the asteroid, at least their view of it. The other asteroids were kilometers away now.
Then their ten-kilometer asteroid, the one designated as E, became their world. Marten viewed lunar-like hills, ancient impact craters and stardust. How long had this stellar object orbited Saturn before the cyborgs had ripped it out of orbit? The vibrating became unbearable, making it impossible to focus his eyes. Marten didn’t know it, but if there had been air in the main compartment, his eardrums would have burst from the sound. But because vacuum
