The tall cyborg took her time answering. Finally, her voice crackled over his headphones. “Lead the way, Marten Kluge.”
Gripping his gyroc rifle, Marten began the descent into the massive exhaust-port.
-71-
It was dark inside the long exhaust tunnel that extended deep into the asteroid. Space marines used infrared to see where they were going. The sides of the rocky surfaces were coated with high-grade photon-fiber.
“I don’t like this,” Omi said.
The photon-fiber produced an odd
“If you feel a thrum,” Osadar said, “it will mean that death is seconds away.”
“Thank you for the update,” Marten said. “Now let’s move, people. Since we don’t have to worry about flying off the asteroid anymore, I want all of you to run. Watch your heads, though. I don’t want any of you to crack your helmet.
Suiting words to action, Marten began to take long, loping leaps. He glanced back, and saw the many red forms that indicated space marines. Then he concentrated on what he was doing. The exhaust tunnel was huge, like an immense cavern. When the mighty fusion engine had been going, it must have sent an exhaust plume an easy one hundred kilometers behind the asteroid.
“What was that?” Omi asked.
Marten had felt the sudden vibration too. Did that mean the cyborgs had turned on the fusion core?
“Faster,” he said. And now Marten moved. He’d spacewalked early as a lad on the Sun-Works Factory. It was something that felt natural. Osadar kept up with him and so did Omi and a few other space marines. The others fell back, as they weren’t as good at this.
Back in the Jovian System fifteen months ago, he’d studied Carme Moon for weeks. Marten recalled its exhaust-port and tube. There had been repair hatches in that asteroid’s exhaust-port. He was hoping for the same thing in this one, as his plan was predicated upon it.
The vibration in the tunnel grew.
“They must be starting up the fusion core,” Osadar said.
“We know they can’t start it right away,” Marten said. “And it’s likely been off for a long time. I’m counting on that.”
“Hope is futile once they turn on the core,” Osadar said.
The exhaust-tube changed now. It was no longer simply bored-out asteroid with photon-fiber coating. The chamber possessed the same polymer as one used in a warship’s exhaust-tubes.
“What if the repair hatches are locked?” asked Osadar.
“Keep a sharp lookout,” Marten said. He’d been using his HUD and reading a Carme Moon file.
“There!” Omi shouted. “I see a hatch.”
The growing vibration made Marten leap harder. If the fusion core started while Nadia and the slower space marines were still in the tube….
Osadar landed near the repair hatch. She walked to and tried it, but the hatch remained closed.
A space marine cursed profusely. “There’s no way she’s strong enough to force that hatch. The thing was made to take the pressure of—”
“I didn’t see this,” Osadar said. She turned something in the hatch.
On Marten’s infrared HUD, the hatch opened into blazing red heat.
“We have to pass the coils,” Osadar told them. “They’re on and it’s hot in there.”
“Don’t talk,” Marten said. “Go, go, go!”
-72-
“Cyborgs!” a space marine shouted.
Marten threw himself onto the floor amid the huge coils that glowed red with energy. There were rows upon rows of the giant coils. Each stood six meters high and was thirteen meters across. They pulsed with power and emitted intense heat.
Sweat trickled down Marten’s neck as his air-conditioning unit thrummed overtime. There was screaming in his headphones, and coils blew apart.
Marten crawled as sweat slid from his back and across his ribs. He fired his weapon. So did space marines near him. The flashing gyroc rounds blew apart cyborgs, smashed coils and spilled laser-fluid from the bulky packs on the enemies’ backs. Electrical discharges made it nearly impossible to see and jammed the helmet’s sensors. In this vast coil-chamber, the Cognitive missiles were useless. It was head-to-head fighting with gyroc rifles, vibroblades and shock grenades.
Using his elbows and knees, Marten kept crawling across the floor. Communications were jammed in this chamber. It was just training, warrior-instinct and fighting skills.
A cyborg stood up and aimed its laser at Marten. As the cyborg did, a jagged piece of shrapnel cut into its chest-plate. The titanium-reinforced arms and legs went rigid. The carbine slowly dropped to the floor.
From his prone position, Marten pumped three APEX rounds into the cyborg, blowing it backward each time. Then he crawled to the fused machine-man and felt his nape hairs stand on end as the thing’s head turned toward him. Marten shoved his rifle barrel against the head and blew it to pieces.
This was a horrible place to fight. A cyborg could be hiding behind any of a hundred giant coils. The baking heat, the lack of sensor-data and the frightening bolts writhing everywhere, even into the ceiling so tiles and chunks of plasti-steel rained down, made this a nightmare. Snatches of words or phrases occasionally broke through the static in his headphones.
“Advance!” shouted Marten.
There wasn’t anything refined or clever about the tactics. It was like two wrestlers grunting on the floor, trying to choke the other one to death using brute strength.
A cyborg jumped before Marten. Its laser-beam burned a good meter above his prone body. There was a scream in Marten’s headphones. He had no idea what had just happened. He didn’t really care. He just lifted his gyroc and fired. But the cyborg jumped fast behind a coil. The gyroc round whooshed past the thing’s former position and exploded against a coil farther back. The coil emitted bolts like sparks, and Marten rolled wildly out of the way, barely avoiding the energy-bolts as they hit the floor like lightening from some god’s hand.
Gripping his rifle with manic strength, Marten cursed and jumped to his feet. Always do the unexpected with cyborgs. It was something he’d learned the hard way. They were logic wizards, and had incredible computing ability. Marten leaped at the coil the cyborg had used. The cyborg took that moment to roll around the edge, aim its carbine at the floor where Marten would have been, and adjusted with insect-like speed as it spotted Marten coming down from a high leap.
Three APEX (Armor-Piercing EXplosive) shells spewed from the rifle. They penetrated the cyborg’s armor and blasted the thing apart. As it tumbled backward, Marten landed, pumping three more rounds into it. Through bitter lessons, Marten had learned to make triple-certain a cyborg was in pieces before he declared it dead.
Terrible explosions began to occur throughout the coil chamber. There didn’t seem to be any rationality as to why one area blew and another didn’t. Space marines were fried. Cyborgs melted.
“Get out here!” Marten shouted. “Get outside!”
He had no idea if anyone heard him. As his suit’s air-conditioner unit thrummed, as the chamber became an intense red wall of heat and flame, Marten loped in almost zero gravity. The sweat poured down his body now, and the air burned down his throat, almost too hot to breathe.
