Star Fortress

“We’re hurting them,” Blackstone said.

Hawthorne laughed in a brittle manner. “Hurting what, drones?”

Several officers looked up, stricken.

“But it is something,” Hawthorne said, recognizing his mistake. As the Supreme Commander, he couldn’t afford the luxury of despair. “Yes!” he said. “We’re going to win this fight.”

Blackstone nodded in approval.

The next hour—it was among the greatest is Solar System history.

The cyborg drones reached the hot zone. The Julius Caesar, the Genghis Khan and the Napoleon Bonaparte opened up with their heavy lasers. Despite the nuclear blasts, the beams hit targeted drones. They missed too often, however, streaking past a projectile. Then the SU battleships began to beam. A mere twenty thousand kilometers separated the Doom Stars from the Zhukov-class battlewagons of Social Unity.

Aboard the Genghis Khan, Admiral Scipio rapped out orders. Decoys deployed, and packets of prismatic crystals clotted small areas of space. Mine were deployed and waited in the vacuum.

During that time, three heavy beams blazed and the battleships fired their weaponry.

Then a main laser-unit aboard the Julius Caesar ruptured. The heavy beam had been firing too long. Highborn damage-control parties raced to repair it.

The drones kept coming. Every sixteen seconds more kept exploding.

“Long live the Highborn!” Scipio shouted.

Nuclear bombs exploded. EMP washed hardened electronics on the Doom Star.

“Stop accelerating!” Scipio roared. The Genghis Khan stopped running. The distance between it and other two Doom Stars widened.

“What’s the plan, sir?” the weapon’s officer asked.

“Destruction,” Scipio said, “for as long as we can.”

The Genghis Khan beamed. Its point defense cannons fired. Enemy drones died, and others kept coming.

Then one of the giant missiles got within two hundred kilometers. It was an x-ray pumped missile. Fortunately, the collapsium stopped the x-rays cold.

Far away in space, a cyborg on a Lurker observed that. He communicated, and gave himself away.

The Lurker died to a laser, but the message got through to the Prime. It pulsed a change in tactics.

Soon, one of the big drones reached the Genghis Khan. A massive thermonuclear explosion ruptured the collapsium.

More drones swarmed toward the stricken ship. They came in bewildering numbers.

Scipio waited. Another drone slammed the ship, blowing away an eighth of the vessel. Without fanfare, Admiral Scipio stabbed a button that detonated the core. Four seconds later, a mammoth explosion occurred. It disintegrated the Doom Star, and it destroyed one thousand and nine of the cyborg drones.

Less than thirty-two percent of the drone swarm remained. Of those, fully one third now had faulty targeting systems.

The Lurkers in the system began to beam them coordinates as the battle entered its most savage phase.

Kursk monitored the occurrence and brought it to Hawthorne’s attention.

In seconds, Hawthorne raised Admiral Sulla. “Look at the evidence,” the Supreme Commander said quietly.

It broke through the hostility radiating from Sulla. “What do you expect, preman?”

“Beam the stealth-ships,” Hawthorne said, “and you’ll blind some of the drones.”

“I must kill the drones.”

“We’re doing that now,” Hawthorne said.

“How did you spot these stealth-ships and we did not?”

“Because we sent probes,” Hawthorne said. “If you want to survive, destroy the stealth-ships now.”

Sulla nodded slowly. “You need Doom Stars in order to reduce the various moons. You need the great range of our weapons. That’s why you’re trying to save us.”

“We’re allies,” Hawthorne said. “I want to defeat the cyborgs.”

Sulla laughed. Then the screen went blank. Moments later, the heavy beam reached out into the void, destroying the transmitting stealth-ships.

The Doom Stars had closed the gap with the SU battlewagons. Together, Highborn and Humans fought against the blizzard of cyborg drones.

The missile-ship was the first SU vessel to die under three terrific explosions. Each blasted away particle- shielding. Without its protection, neuron radiation killed the crew minutes before the last drone sent shielding, hull- plating and fleshy particles into the void.

“Sir!” Kursk said.

“I see it,” Hawthorne said wearily. The drones were finally getting through. There were simply too many of them.

The Julius Caesar’s heavy beam came online again. But it was too late. Cyborg drones died in masses trying to reach the giant vessel. Then one did, wounding the great ship. Others rushed near as thermonuclear explosions proved superior to collapsium. Then a great monster of a missile slid into the wreckage and detonated. The terror of the Inner Planets became slag, shrapnel and fiery debris, exploding outward like a nova. Coils, powered armored, soy nutrients from the food stores, it was all sent spinning away.

Soon, the Vice-Admiral’s flagship disintegrated under repeated strikes.

In Mandela’s room on the Vladimir Lenin where he watched, the Vice-Admiral wept.

The last Doom Star and the remaining battleships beamed and fired their point defense cannons. They had closed to within three hundred kilometers of each other. It was like an ancient battle where Celtic hordes roared their battle cries as they swarmed a lost cohort of desperate legionaries. Drones detonated, firing x and gamma rays. EMP blasts washed over the warships. Heat boiled away particle-shielding and shrapnel shredded entire areas.

The Vladimir Lenin’s sister ship stopped responding to calls.

“Are they dead?” Blackstone shouted to Kursk standing right beside him.

She kept trying to hail the warship.

“They’re not beaming anymore,” Hawthorne said from the acceleration couch. “I doubt anyone lives over there.”

Two drones reached that battleship at almost precisely the same instant. Their nuclear explosions ended the debate on the Vladimir Lenin as another SU ship perished.

The next few minutes were hell.

“Sir!” an officer reported. “The one through five PD cannons are out of shells.”

“Sir!” a different officer said. “Secondary laser number five has overheated. There’s a fire in the reactor chamber.”

Hawthorne gripped his screen. He found it difficult to breathe. Drones exploded everywhere. The cyborgs had made too many missiles and—

“Sir,” Kursk said, “the drones… I don’t see any heading toward us. There are drones, but they’re well past our ships and accelerating out-system.” She tapped her screen. “Over two thousand drones are heading away. There’s no indication they’re going to turn around, either.” Tears welled in her eyes as she stared across the bridge. “Supreme Commander Hawthorne, I wish to report that the last drone has detonated, been destroyed by our lasers or its targeting systems were likely damaged beyond recovery and are leaving us.”

With an effort, Hawthorne pried his fingers from the screen. It dawned on him that the last explosions had been the cyborgs’ final attack. He blinked at the screen, bewildered.

“Where are they going?” Blackstone said. He kept tapping his screen, no doubt switching camera feeds. “You’re right. Those missiles are heading away, accelerating away. I don’t see any missiles heading toward us. Have some gone invisible?”

Kursk was laughing as tears streamed down her cheeks. “No, Joseph. Don’t you understand? We did it. The ones leaving—all those nuclear blasts had to damage some of them.” She threw her arms around his neck. “We