Star Fortress

The last two bored-in, however, and now they jumped to an even higher acceleration.

Danger, danger, the Sigma warned. Alert Seven. Initiate full defensive code.

The monitor program fell silent as it acquiesced to the emergency.

The M Lurker shuddered as anti-missiles were expelled out of the tubes. Five seconds later, they ignited, burning for the big Highborn missiles.

At that moment, a coil in the laser-firing system overheated. It was a coolant rupture. Inserted programs initiated an immediate shutdown of the beam.

No! the Sigma pulsed. Give me full laser wattage now.

There was no override this time. Instead, repair functions were accelerated.

For the moment, it was a war of missiles, electronics and velocities. The Highborn missiles were bigger, faster and triggered to explode if anti-weapons reached within one thousand kilometers.

The targeting system in the HB missiles was complex and state-of-the-art. It tracked the cyborg rockets, using their hot exhausts.

The two missiles closed fast, increasing velocity. The nearer HB missile exploded. It was non-nuclear, and created a dense field of shrapnel. Two point three-five minutes later, a penny-sized piece of shrapnel struck a cyborg rocket, disabling it.

At the same time, the M Lurker’s laser came back online. It shot through the void and struck the last missile’s armored cone.

Now, however, the missile had entered the outer range of its target. Onboard AI calculated the odds and concluded immediately that it would not survive much longer—less than six seconds, in fact.

As per the AI’s instructions, the missile’s armored cone blew away. Targeting rods sprouted from the new cone revealed underneath. Several rods melted in the laser’s heat. The missile—an Exo Ten Thousand—was thermonuclear. Its bomb exploded, pumping x-rays and gamma rays. They traveled to the rods and used them, moving nanoseconds ahead of the blast. As the Exo Ten Thousand disappeared, the x-ray and gamma rays traveled at the speed of light toward the M Lurker.

The Sigma had already computed the possibility of such a weapon, as it had carefully researched library files on previous Highborn weaponry. It debated moving, weighing the usefulness of a changed heading against the danger of revealing its position through engine exhaust.

As it ran through various probabilities and possibilities, the deadly gamma rays struck the Lurker.

The hull was composed of special polymers, highly useful for stealth movement. Compared to Highborn collapsium or Social Unity particle-shielding, however, the polymer hull was like paper. The gamma rays easily penetrated the outer hull and the empty cyborg-cells in the ship.

The inner, armored core where the Web-Mind resided was different. Ablative mass protected the compartment. It absorbed much of the punishing radiation, but not all. Heavy doses of gamma rays struck the brain domes. The x-rays were worse, but not enough to kill or burn any major systems.

Unfortunately for the Sigma, the gamma and x-rays had a deleterious effect upon its logic-centers. While the Lurker remained intact, surviving the long-distance strike, the Sigma acted as if it had ingested a heavy dose of hallucinogens. It ran an analysis and wrongly concluded the Highborn were on the hull, ready to invade its sanctuary and capture a Web-Mind.

Dreading enslavement to the enemy, the Web-Mind initiated an auto-destruct sequence. In the last three seconds of its existence, the Sigma realized its cognitive functions were faulty. It attempted to run a check program, but initiated a systems-wide scan instead.

In panic, it broadcast: Rescind the order! Rescind the order! But it never gave the needed code sequence of the order it wished to rescind.

On the third signal-pulse, the Master Lurker exploded three of its nuclear warheads—to ensure no one captured a Web-Mind. The Sigma died in the blast, and the polymers of the ship disintegrated in the atomic fireball.

-10-

In the Neptune System, tensions ran high on the Vladimir Lenin.

On the red-lit bridge, officers warily watched their monitors, rechecking patterns or running yet another diagnostic check. Every anomaly received excessive scans. Each radio wave or burst of radiation from Neptune turned spines rigid and palms sweaty with fear.

So far, events had been too easy for too many monotonous hours. The whispers said it all. They were invading cyborg space, cyborg space! Nothing ever went easily against them. Hawthorne had run the tally. The Alliance Fleet had destroyed over three thousand laser-turrets on the moons Nereid and Proteus, the system’s second largest moon.

Two things troubled Hawthorne about that. The first was the excessive number of turrets, even though analysis showed they were the most easily built type of lasers. He could only imagine that running Doom Star heavy beams for as long as they had to destroy the turrets had depleted energy reserves and worn down certain critical components. Until those components were replaced, the three heavy lasers were that much nearer breakdown due to maintenance problems. That was dangerous—or Hawthorne felt in his gut it was— because of the second difficulty the three thousand turrets represented. Unless the cyborgs had built many dummy lasers, three thousand represented a vast investment of labor, time and resources.

The cyborgs deliberately let us destroy the turrets. The implication—it seems they have military hardware to spare.

Three thousand laser-turrets on two secondary moons. Hawthorne shook his head as he floated out of the bridge-chamber. The short flight through the corridor brought him to an exercise room. He used a closest, changed into a jumpsuit and climbed into an exercise unit. After strapping himself in, Hawthorne gripped two plastic handles. With a grunt, he began a triceps exercise.

In time, he found himself on a treadmill, with sweat prickling his skin as he panted. The heavily defended moons fell easily to the Doom Stars because the heavy lasers so greatly outranged the defenses. If the SU battleships had gone in, they would have destroyed a hundred or several hundred turrets perhaps, and lost every battleship doing it.

The cyborgs should have built longer-ranged lasers.

Heavy beam projectors were harder to make and harder to maintain. The benefit, however, was obvious.

Hawthorne used a shower-pod, a privilege of rank, and toweled off afterward. He donned his uniform and floated back to the bridge. His hair was still wet as he ran a comb through it. He frowned because of a stray thought, pocketed the comb and took out a small monitor.

Activating it, he made several adjustments. Neptune appeared on the screen. He made further adjustments. Three pinpricks appeared in the dark void. The Doom Stars moved toward Triton’s orbital path. Hawthorne highlighted a number, nodding as he read it. The big moon was over 350,000 kilometers from Neptune, making it closer to the ice planet than Luna was to Earth.

Hawthorne ran more numbers. Triton’s orbital period was five point eight-seven-seven days, or almost six days to move in a full retrograde orbit around the planet. As Luna did to Earth, Triton always kept the same face toward Neptune.

Hawthorne sighed as he hooked the small monitor to his belt. In Neptune System terms, the Doom Stars had moved far away from Nereid as they readied themselves to greet Triton. When the moon finally swung around the ice planet’s rim—relative to the Highborn—the Genghis Khan would be nine hundred thousand kilometers away. So far, that had proved the perfect distance.

The SU battleships had closed the gap with the big vessels, and were presently fifty thousand kilometers from them, well within the range of the SU lasers.

Hawthorne grabbed a float-rail, propelling himself toward the bridge. The fleet moved slowly and carefully through the system, keeping well away from any asteroid or planetoid. The rule was simple: stay away from any