He spied a heavy door. A cyborg set up a plasma-cannon there. Other charging space marines shot madly, and the cyborg went down.
The vacc-suit’s functions were approaching critical. Marten blinked, and blinked again as sweat stung his eyes. He wasn’t sure what happened next. There were gaps in his consciousness. Then he loped over the dead cyborg and shoved his shoulder against the heavy door, slowly opening it to another compartment in the asteroid’s vast engine complex.
-73-
The coil chamber was murder, a gauntlet of death that halved the number of Jovian space marines. Marten and Omi dragged out heat-fatigued men from the hellhole. Then coils in the middle of the chamber began to explode.
“Shut the door,” said Osadar.
“Nadia!” cried Marten. “I haven’t seen Nadia.”
Osadar shoved Marten away as more coils erupted in the vast chamber. With cyborg strength and speed, she slammed the heavy door shut and engaged the locks.
Marten’s last vision was of a space marine on the floor, raising his arm for aid and the door closing on his last hope. Then explosions caused the hall to tremble, and the door buckled and seemed as if it would blow into them. But it held.
As if in a dream, Marten turned toward Osadar. He was aware of the rifle in his hands, and he contemplated aiming it at the cyborg.
“We would have all died if Osadar hadn’t done that,” Omi said.
Marten’s tongue was thick in his mouth. “Nadia,” he whispered. Had that been her raising her arm to plead with him to help her? He never should have brought her to this nightmare. He—
“Sound off,” Omi said through the headphones. “Let’s see who made it. First Platoon, begin.”
“Thebes here,” said the Group-Leader.
“Jason.”
“Cleon.”
“Marten, where are you?”
That was Nadia’s voice. Marten’s arms went limp as he looked around. “Nadia,” he said, using his override function. “Raise your arm.”
In the back of a group of space marines, Nadia raised her arm. Her vacc-suit was black and one of the lines had torn free. But she was alive.
As the others continued to sound off, Marten waded through a group of marines and clutched Nadia’s gloved hand.
“You’re alive,” he said.
She nodded her helmeted head.
“What do we do now?” A half moment later, someone strong turned Marten around. The armored speaker was tall. It was Osadar. “What do we do now?” she asked again.
Marten had to think about it. Nadia was alive. To keep her alive, he had to kill all the cyborgs. “Right,” he said. “We made it through the exhaust. Now its time to come out of here like the Japanese did to us. Do you remember?”
“Japan?” asked Osadar.
“That’s right,” Marten said. “You weren’t with us then. It was Stick and Turbo during the Japan Campaign.”
“What do we do here on Asteroid E?” asked Osadar.
“We make like rats,” Marten said. Nadia was alive. It was time to keep fighting. “Right,” Marten said. “Here’s the next step.”
-74-
Everyone checked his weapons, taking out damaged parts and fitting in replacement pieces. Then they reloaded as Omi paired depleted squads together. Sometimes only one member of a squad had survived. This was gruesome, bitter work.
“We’ve made it this far,” Marten told them. “And we’ve killed cyborgs. There can’t be that many left.”
He had no idea if that was true or not, but it was good for morale if the men believed it. They’d lost over half the space marines who had made it onto the asteroid. If you counted all the space marines and ship personnel who had made the journey from Jupiter, less than a third had survived this far.
They used stairwells, avoiding lifts, and climbed for the domes. These were the veterans from the cyborg assault in the Jovian System. They’d fought the melded machine-men before and survived, some of them more than once. They’d absorbed Marten’s refined tactics and had trained religiously before and during the trip here. Each knew what to do. Few panicked anymore, and each had his own method for dealing with the aliens from Neptune, in this instance from Saturn, too.
Marten signaled by pumping a gloved fist. He stood near the hatch that by the specs in his HUD said led into the first dome. Then he raised his index finger and made a circular motion. These were Highborn-taught signals that Marten had learned in his shock trooper days in the Sun-Works Factory.
Omi and three other space marines crouched nearby. Each gripped a grenade cluster.
Marten hardened his resolve, braced himself against Osadar and shoved open the hatch. Then Omi and the others lunged forward, hurling their grenade clusters into the room. Flashes occurred, one right after the other.
With a ragged cry, Marten sprang through, his gyroc firing. The room held screens, monitors and a vast computer array. There were clear bubbles with layered tissues of programmed brain-mass in them. Marten counted seven. All around were computer-banks, cryogenic-units and medical facilities. Tubes pulsed with red liquid. Green gels shifted in the bubbles and tiny rays beamed back and forth from odd antenna.
Marten’s trigger finger moved four times before his brain registered the thought:
It was a glorious moment, and it made Marten grin harshly. He grinned even as he realized that this moment had been dearly paid for in human blood and agony. He hoped the vile mass of brain-tissue felt pain. He hoped it hurt like hell.
-75-
Marten, Nadia and Omi sat in a control room in the third dome. Dead cyborgs lay scattered on the floor. A window showed the asteroid’s bleak surface of crater-plain and the star-field above. The room held breathable air.
With a hiss, Marten unsealed his helmet, rotated it off the locks and lifted it from his head. The room reeked of burnt electronics. But Marten didn’t care. He scratched his nose and rubbed tired eyes.
Nadia and Omi acted similarly. Nadia had dark circles around her eyes. A cut on Omi’s forehead dripped blood into one of his brows.
