didn’t carry sound waves, those noises never affected him or any of the space marines.
The hills loomed bigger and they became more jagged. The patrol boat vibrated madly so Marten had to grip his seat. Then a single mountain became everything, and Nadia achieved the impossible. Instead of crashing against the hill, she landed their wounded boat and shut off the tortured engine. Stardust billowed upward, surrounding them, and then it slowly began to settle.
They’d reached Asteroid E. Now they had to kill the cyborgs, find the asteroid’s controls and engage its engines if they could.
-67-
Climbing down the hill was hard work in the negligible gravity. The hundreds of hours of practice on the
The space marines were tethered together in groups of three, the line attached to their belts. Nadia was tethered to Marten, and Kleon was attached to Nadia.
“You have one task,” Marten told Kleon, a space marine from Europa. “Keep Nadia alive.” She’d tried to complain, but Marten hadn’t listened.
Most of the space marines carried IMLs, the Infantry Missile Launcher. Each of those held a new and improved Cognitive missile. The rest carried gyroc rifles or lugged extra ammunition and missiles. The armored vacc-suits were just like those they’d used in the Jovian System. None of the suits had thruster-packs. The weight saved allowed each marine to carry more ammo.
The survivors reformed into three platoons and moved down the hill. They looked like big insects, an infestation of bipedal cockroaches with weapons ready and helmet sensors sweeping everywhere.
“Overhead,” said Nadia. She carried a bigger sensor-unit, one of Marten’s tactical improvements.
Marten looked where Nadia pointed. Three patrol boats zoomed surface-ward for a landing.
“They’re bunched too close together,” Marten said.
“No!” shouted Nadia.
From the other side of their hill, bright objects accelerated up at the patrol boats.
“Cyborgs!” a space marine shouted.
The bright objects were shoulder-launched missiles. A flock of them zoomed at the patrol boats. Dots of light appeared on the patrol boats, auto-cannons firing. Then the missile-flock struck the lead patrol boat. It quit decelerating as the thrusters abruptly stopped, and it seemed to leap ahead of the last two boats. Its heading would take it past the asteroid.
Marten closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “Up the hill and over. We have to take out the cyborgs.”
“I killed them,” Omi said from his patrol boat. He must have meant with auto-cannon fire.
Marten stared at the last two boats coming in. They floated now, it seemed, and they came toward him.
“Follow my signal down,” Nadia said, as she adjusted the controls on her box.
“Roger,” said Omi.
“Three boat-loads of space marines,” Marten said. “I hope it’s enough to conquer this asteroid.”
Then the last patrol boats off the Meteor-ship
-68-
The three domes were in the center of a shallow crater two kilometers in diameter. Marten had taken pictures of it during their descent. Ringing the crater were burnt-out laser turrets. The torpedo bays were between the turrets and domes.
Marten, Nadia and Kleon crawled up the outer slope of the crater. Above them shined the stars and the bleakness of the Great Dark. Marten fought the impulse to jump to the top of the slope. Instead, he continued to walk in the soft stardust. At each footstep, dust slowly puffed upward.
“We should have brought thruster-packs,” said Kleon.
“We have what we have,” Marten said. “Now lower your transmission strength. We don’t want the cyborgs monitoring us.”
Soon, Marten flattened himself on the slope. He eased up the final distance and peered over the crater. Ancient rocks, a few boulders and smaller pitted craters dotted the plain before them. Across the plain stood the three low domes. The domes were situated more on the Earth-facing side of Asteroid E. Therefore, they were out of the line-of-sight of the Doom Stars’ lasers.
Nadia crawled beside Marten as she set down her sensor box.
“Turn that on, and the cyborgs are going to know we’re here,” said Kleon, through the com-link.
“They already know,” said Marten. “Ping them,” he told Nadia. “And be ready to slide down the slope.”
First adjusting the sensor-box, Nadia flipped a switch. Then she crouched lower down the slope, with her arms reaching upward to the box.
Marten used his helmet’s zoom feature. The three domes seemed to leap forward. There were rotating antenna dishes on top of the domes. Now ports slid open on the sides. There were flashes from those ports.
“Slide down!” shouted Marten. He pushed himself and wriggled madly down the slope.
Nadia pulled the box toward her.
“Leave it!” Marten roared.
She obeyed, and the three of them crawled. Seconds later, the top of the slope exploded. Kleon flew backward, and the line tethered between him and Nadia snapped tight, jerking her off her feet after him. A second later, Marten tumbled after Nadia. Marten clawed the ground. He was terrified they’d all be knocked upward and that they’d drift into space. As the line jerked again, pulling him off the ground, Marten gripped the edge of a boulder. His hands tightened and he strained to keep his grip. It slipped. He bellowed and clawed for a purchase, barely finding one. With grim determination, he clung to the boulder. In a moment, the intense pressure pulling him spaceward ceased. He looked up. Kleon was obviously dead, his helmet shattered.
“Cut him loose,” Marten said.
Nadia floated above him, with Kleon’s corpse even higher than she was.
“Nadia,” Marten said as calmly as he could. “You have to cut him loose. Kleon is dead.”
With a groan, she drew a vibroblade from her belt and cut the tether.
“Good,” Marten said. He began to drag her down to the surface.
“We’ve got cyborgs coming!” shouted Omi.
-69-
“Stay here,” Marten told Nadia. He barely remembered to unhook his tether to her. Then he crawled up the slope.
On either side of his former position, space marines were crouched at the crater lip. Marten eased into position twenty meters from where the cyborg missile had struck. Using his helmet’s zoom, Marten scanned the domes and then the plain between them and him. His gut clenched as he saw twenty, no, twenty-three cyborgs charging toward them. The cyborgs used their trademark glide, moving four to five times faster in the nearly weightless
