underneath. Once through that, the coherent-light struck highly-polished reflex plating. The initial bounce off the reflex gave the
Then the impossible occurred.
“Your Excellency,” Sulla told Cassius. “There’s damage to the forward coil-banks. I’m also reporting strikes in the number five shuttle-bay.”
Cassius absorbed the message as he glared at the holoimages before him. Those images swirled in a kaleidoscope of movement. It seemed as if space between the Doom Stars and the asteroids was alive with life, with mechanical corpuscles, many containing a deadly virus of gun-toting death. There were beams, torpedoes, counter-missiles, point-defense-shot depleted-uranium pellets, energized sand clouds, hot plasma globules and cyborg troop-pods.
“Enemy pods are gaining on our five asteroids!” Sulla shouted.
Images and words washed over Cassius’s senses, and they would have surely swamped a lesser personage. A ruthless adherence to his victory conditions guided Cassius and helped him see the correct solution in moments of crisis.
“I see the troop-pods,” Cassius said, speaking in a calm voice. It was one of his powers to be able to do so at a time like this. “Continue with the laser-turret destruction.”
The
“The enemy lasers are retargeting, Your Excellency!”
Cassius shifted in his shell. He’d hoped the cyborgs weren’t that smart or quick. All he needed was another ten minutes to slag every enemy turret in sight. He’d deal later with the asteroids hiding behind the debris-cluster. The
Tilting his head, studying the data, Cassius knew that this was the moment of decision. This is what made a commander into a legend or turned him into a loser. The weight of the decision pressed upon Cassius as the squeeze to his heart made his wide face pale. Forty-three percent of the enemy laser-turrets had already been destroyed. Did he gamble with the heart of Highborn power? Every second he hesitated was fraught with risk. He parted his lips to issue the order to spray the protective clouds.
“No,” he whispered.
This was the fatal moment of time, of the Solar System. The asteroids represented Earth’s death. Earth was the great industrial basin. With it and the Sun-Works Factory, the Highborn could out-produce the cyborgs. Without Earth, it became a grim possibility that the cyborgs would out-build them. The cyborgs would then likely send a vast stream of material in a deadly war of attrition the Highborn couldn’t win.
The decision tested him. Cassius knew that. Bold words were meaningless now. It was just his naked soul riding on the outcome of battle.
With effort, he tore his mind from the possibilities and forced himself to take a deep breath. Then he exhaled as hard as he could, expelling the air from his lungs. This time, he sucked air so oxygen seeped to the farthest reaches of his tissues, and he held his breath.
“I am Grand Admiral Cassius of the Highborn,” he whispered, letting the breath go. Color returned to his cheeks. Once more, he studied the holoimages, wondering what the next few minutes would bring.
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“Here they come!” shouted Nadia.
Marten stood behind her. He wore his armored vacc-suit. Behind him, the dome was packed with space marines in theirs suits gripping weaponry.
The mass-meter of Nadia’s board indicated shuttle-sized vessels. Five had made it through the blizzard of spewing lasers and radioactive death to reach Asteroid E. Five cyborg troop-pods!
“They’re heading straight for us,” Nadia said.
Marten saw them on her board, oval-shaped vessels coming nearer and nearer.
Nadia twisted around and looked up at Marten. “If those five troop-pods are full of cyborgs, we’re badly outnumbered.”
“I know,” Marten whispered, as he hefted his gyroc rifle. They were going to face more cyborgs. There was no way, by no stretch of the imagination and hard fighting, that his space marines could defeat five troop-pods of cyborgs. The trick, he’d learned long ago, was to change the rules. A barehanded man facing a cyborg had no chance. A man toting a gun versus a carbine-carrying cyborg would lose almost every time, but there was a possibility of winning. A man encased in a tank against a tank-driving cyborg would up his odds tenfold.
“Now,” Marten whispered. “Send it now.”
On the board, the five troop-pods began their approach to landing. They drifted over the crater and neared the three domes. All the asteroid’s laser-turrets were destroyed. Marten might have sent out men with Cognitive missiles, but the troop-pods had weaponry to take out such a force.
Nadia pressed a switch on her board. It sent a weak signal, a three-sequence pulse.
Marten turned to the space marines. “This is it, boys. It is do or die time again.” He raised the gyroc rifle over his head. “Death to the cyborgs.”
Metallic sounds were made as the space marines raised their gyrocs and IMLs. Then they roared as one,” Death to the cyborgs!” Afterward, visors clicked shut and armored suits clanged as the men headed for the airlocks.
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Osadar Di received the three-pulse signal. She sat at the controls of the least damaged patrol boat. The Jovian spacecraft had never been designed as a space-marine shuttle. That was a secondary purpose. The patrol boats were space-attack craft. Jovian military theory called for them to fight in three-boat formations.
When Nadia had first picked up the approaching troop-pods on her sensors, Marten had made a quick decision. Osadar and a few others had re-crossed the crater-plain and returned to the patrol boats. The men had scourged the more damaged boats for the remaining cannon shells and missiles. These they’d loaded into the good boat.
“Strap in,” Osadar said. Long ago, in her days as a human, she’d trained as a Jovian fighter pilot. Now she was a fighter pilot again, ready to fly her most important mission.
“Ready?” she asked the men.
They gave her the thumbs-up sign, one instituted by Marten Kluge.
Osadar flipped switches. The engine roared into life. She revved it, and with a lurch, she lifted off the lunar-like surface.
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