Star Fortress

“We’re on an intercept course,” Marten said.

No one else spoke, not even the space marines in back. They were heading for a showdown against Highborn. Had the enemy seen the brief flares of ion engines?

Marten glanced at Osadar. The cyborg watched the sensors. She must not see anything unusual yet, or she would have said something.

“I hate the waiting,” Marten whispered.

The waiting continued for another forty-seven hours.

The decoy was in the lead. It ran silent like the other boats. At the end of the forty-seven hours, the S-80 drone drifted away from the second patrol boat.

The situation over there had become much clearer. The missile-ship was the Mao Zedong. The spaceship had thick particle-shields, except for the obliterated one. The jaggedness of the edges of the other shields beside the demolished one indicated missiles had repeatedly blasted through the mass. The lettering on some of the visible hull had given them the ship’s name.

Highborn occasionally used thruster-packs to flit from a shuttle to the missile-ship or vice versa. Once, three Highborn in vacc-suits maneuvered a big piece of equipment onto the Mao Zedong.

“Are they repairing it?” Nadia asked.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Marten said.

The hours passed and now the patrol boats coasted to within one thousand kilometers of the missile-ship.

Marten began to slither into his equipment. The combat-vacc-suit used articulated metal and ceramic-plate armor. A rigid, biphase carbide-ceramic corselet protected the torso, while articulated plates of BPC covered the arms and legs. He had an IML: Infantry Missile Launcher. It fired the trusty Cognitive missiles. He would also bring a gyroc rifle with extra ammo. Unlike the assault onto the planet-wrecker, each space marine would have a thruster- pack. Hopefully, they would be alive long enough to use it.

Waiting to don his helmet, Marten floated behind Nadia. She wore a silver vacc-suit minus the helmet as she sat at the weapons chair.

“This is it,” he said.

Nadia turned around and pushed up to him. Gripping him fiercely, she kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” he said.

She touched his cheek. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Marten Kluge.”

He nodded grimly. The idea the Highborn might destroy the patrol boats in the next few minutes, killing his wife… “Let’s get started,” he said gruffly.

She kissed him again, hard. Then Nadia let go and climbed back into her seat. She took a deep breath. “I’ll need the decoy’s radar for this.”

“I know,” he said.

“Osadar?” asked Nadia.

“Ready,” the cyborg said. She ran the decoy.

“Now,” Nadia whispered.

Osadar turned on the decoy’s radar. It pulsed, waiting to acquire precision targeting data. In moments, the data flowed into the William Tell’s computer.

Nadia fired the point-defense cannons. Each shot used depleted uranium pellets as ammunition. The cannons were primarily meant to intercept incoming missiles, drones or torpedoes. Today, Nadia targeted two of the shuttles. The other patrol boat fired at the other two HB shuttles.

Time crawled with agonizing slowness as the pellets zoomed toward target.

Then Osadar said, “One of the shuttles is starting its engine.”

“They’ve seen us,” Marten said. “Use the drone.”

Seconds later, the S-80 burned hot. It accelerated toward the enemy, rapidly gaining velocity.

“Another shuttle has started its engine,” Osadar said. Her fingers moved across the sensor equipment.

Ahead of them and visible through the ballistic glass an ion engine burned. It was the decoy. It turned away from the missile-ship, heading out as if fleeing.

On Osadar’s screen, two shuttles began to move.

“No,” Marten whispered.

“A hit!” Nadia shouted. “The cannons hit one of the shuttles.”

A beep sounded on Osadar’s equipment.

“What’s that?” Marten asked.

Osadar studied the readings. “Sand-blaster,” she said.

Marten nodded. He’d heard of that, sand shot in a cloud. The idea was that a particle of sand would hit shrapnel or a cannon pellet and deflect the incoming object just enough to miss the ship.

Then the S-80 drone exploded. It was a shape-charged nuclear drone. The blast, heat and radiation would primarily go forward in a ninety-degree arc at the enemy.

Everyone in the William Tell donned his or her helmet.

“We surprised them,” Osadar said.

Even as she spoke, enemy missiles accelerated at them from one of the supposedly destroyed shuttles.

A painful knot tightened Marten’s stomach. Shuttles and patrol boats lacked the size for big engines. Therefore, they lacked lasers or particle beam weapons. For them, it was missiles, anti-missiles and cannons. It meant you could kill your enemy and from the grave, as it were, your enemy’s pre-launched weapons could still come and destroy you.

“Ready the cannons,” Marten said.

Nadia nodded.

An object brighter than a star appeared outside the window. Marten knew he witnessed one of the missile’s exhaust plumes. Then a second and third “bright star” appeared, rushing toward them and quickly growing bigger.

“The first missile is headed for the decoy,” Nadia said.

Marten clutched his IML. He began shaking his head, as if by his thoughts he could deflect the missile from their boat.

“The second missile is also headed for the decoy,” Nadia said. “Oh no,” she whispered. “The last one is heading here.”

Twenty second later, a bloom of brightness showed the HB missile destroying the decoy. As the flare of it died down, they saw the last “bright star” headed toward them.

The point-defense cannons began to chug from both patrol boats.

Fourteen seconds later, Nadia said, “I think we disabled it.”

She was wrong, or wrong enough that it didn’t matter. A pellet hit the missile. Then the missile exploded. Thankfully, it did not explode with a nuclear detonation. At extreme velocities, shrapnel spread in a small cloud. Although the William Tell was in the lead, none of the enemy shrapnel hit it.

Four pieces, however, pierced the skin of the second patrol boat. One of the pieces cut an ion coil, letting coolant spread in a vapor. The same piece of shrapnel the size of a pinky-fingernail sliced through a heating unit. When the vapor touched the hot surface of the unit, an explosion occurred because of the oxygen seeping in from the living quarters. The explosion caused an overload in the remixing core, and it ignited, obliterating the Jovian craft in an impressive detonation. Forty-two space marines died, most of them cooked in their combat-suits. The others died as debris smashed through their faceplates.

On the William Tell, Marten closed his eyes. His marines’ death numbed a little more of his heart. The war was so unrelenting: modern battle so unbelievably deadly.

“A Centurion Titus is hailing us,” Osadar said.

“We didn’t kill all the shuttles?” Marten asked, his voice betraying his bitterness.

“The jamming has stopped,” Osadar said. “I don’t detect any more missile launches.” She turned around. “The signal is coming from the Mao Zedong.”

“Let’s hear it,” Marten said.

Osadar put in on the boat’s speakers.

Marten opened his helmet’s visor. The deepness and arrogance of the voice told him a Highborn spoke.