Battle Pod

“You must join your commandos and head for New Tijuana,” Chavez said. “If the deep-core mine should erupt or the dynamos overheat, Olympus Mons could receive a new and impressive crater.”

“You’re going to beam the Battlefleet,” Marten said, finally understanding.

“For the future of the Planetary Union, we shall try,” Chavez said.

“When is zero-hour?” Marten asked.

A rail-thin officer looked up. “It’s as ready as its ever going to be, sir,” he told Chavez.

“You have a target?” Chavez asked. There was new life in his voice. He had apparently already forgotten about Marten and Omi.

“A battleship, sir.”

“Their flagship?” Chavez asked with savage hope.

“Can’t tell that, sir,” the officer answered. “But it is one of their heavies.”

Secretary-General Chavez removed the stub of the stimstick from his lips and flicked it into a corner. He took two steps closer to the monitor. At a word from the officer, others hurried out of the way. Chavez raised his hands. They were clenched tightly into fists. “Kill it!” he rasped. “Show them we still have teeth.”

A different officer seated at the other monitor began to enter the firing code.

“We must leave,” Omi whispered, tugging Marten’s arm.

Marten shook his head. He stepped closer to the monitor Chavez viewed. It showed a computer image of an SU battleship. It was near Phobos, which was a little more than 9,000 kilometers away.

A loud and fierce whine began from somewhere in the volcano. It was the dynamos as they converted the deep-core mine heat into proton-beam power. The whine increased as the dynamos pumped the power into the cannon poking out of the giant crater at the top of Olympus Mons. That crater was over 60 kilometers in diameter. The cannon targeted the SU battleship.

Twenty seconds after Secretary-General Chavez gave the order, a deadly-white beam of proton particles lanced upward into the reddish heavens.

-22-

Several SU warships circled Phobos.

The Kim Philby had already collected half the Rebel prisoners. Now that the battle was over, General Fromm planned to use the mine-ship as their supposed ‘interrogation center’. Toll Seven had exported enough equipment to it so three of Fromm’s fellow converts had set up a Web-link. If anybody should ask about the strange equipment, the answer would be that it was a new interrogation technique hot from Earth.

The Alger Hiss supply ship presently maneuvered for docking. In its cargo-holds were tons of laser coils, merculite missiles and other items meant to make the moon bristle with functioning weaponry. Now that Social Unity owned Phobos again, there was no time to waste to make it battle-ready for the Highborn.

The Battleship Ho Chi Minh protected the others. If the Planetary Union should foolishly attempt to send its last orbitals in a kamikaze raid, the Ho Chi Minh would obliterate every fighter. The Battleship’s captain, however, had not taken any undue chances. The heavy particle- shields were all in place. The shields were 600-meters of asteroid rock surrounding the war-vessel. Before any laser or projectile could touch the Battleship’s armored skin, it would first have to pierce the 600 meters of rock.

The proton beam from Olympus Mons stabbed into near orbit. The thin Martian atmosphere created some friction, but not enough to dissipate the beam’s awful power. The deep-core mine functioned. The Olympus Mons equipment and the jury-rigged emergency coils held for the moment.

The proton beam hit the number six particle-shield of the Ho Chi Minh. As amazing as it would seem, the attack caught the Battlefleet cold. They had destroyed all orbital defenses. They knew the proton beam was offline because of the damage it had sustained when the Highborn battleoids had stormed into it six months ago. SU officers also sneered at Martian technical ability, and they had been quite sure the Martians would have not been able to fix the deep-core link in time. Besides, if the proton beam had been online, it should have fired when the Battlefleet first matched orbits with the moons.

It fired now, however. The proton beam smashed into the particle shield, into the asteroid rock.

The proton beam operated differently than the conventional methods of smashing through particle shields. A heavy laser burned through, slagging rock as it chewed deeper and deeper. It also created clouds of dust and hot gas that slowly began dissipating a laser’s strength until the gas and dust ‘drifted’ elsewhere or settled. Nuclear- tipped missiles blasted their way in, but by necessity, most of the blast blew in other directions and thus wasted much of its potential. The proton beam worked on a different principle than a laser or a nuclear warhead.

A laser was focused light. The proton beam was made up of massed protons, elements of matter, in a deadly and coherent stream. It meant that a proton beam was slower than a laser, but not by much. And at this close of a range—around 9000 kilometers—that difference was negligible. Unlike a nuclear-tipped missile where much of the blast was wasted as it blew elsewhere, none of the beam striking the particle shield was wasted. The entire power of the beam smashed against the particle shield. It chewed through fast. Dust, gas, they made no difference. That deadly proton beam stabbed like a rapier.

At long ranges, a beam could only stay on target for a few seconds, usually less. That meant heavy lasers needed to burn away huge sections of a particle shield before those lasers could reach the actual ship underneath the rock. The same was true with nuclear-tipped missiles. The particle shield’s length became nearly as important as its depth.

The proton beam made a mockery of the particle shield’s length as it bored through the 600 meters of asteroid rock.

The Ho Chi Minh had only one true defense against the terrible proton beam, and that was aerosol gels with lead additives. Because the attack caught them cold, the aerosols did not begin spraying until the proton beam punched through the particle shield and smashed against the armored hull. By then it was far too late.

The proton beam cut through the layered hull and beamed through the battleship. It hit living quarters, food supplies, missed the bridge by fifty meters and cut into the coils that supplied power from the fusion core. Air pressure rushed out into the vacuum of space. Klaxons rang. Bulkheads crashed down to minimize damage. Battle-control teams raced to don equipment. Then explosions started. One of those explosions ruptured a coil. It built an overload in the fifth fusion reactor.

By that time, the proton beam chewed through the particle shield in another area. As the damage-control teams sealed their magnetic clamps on their exoskeleton-suits, the proton beam smashed through new living quarters, the food processors and a warhead storage area and then it hit the fusion core directly.

Several of the storage warheads exploded, pumping heat, radiation and x-rays into the guts of the ship. Ninety-five percent of ship personnel died then. The damage-control parties had greater protection in their suits. Unfortunately, for them, most already began to cook like meat in a pot. They died horribly, screaming in agony. A few managed to undo the magnetic clamps and die through vacuum exposure.

The Ho Chi Minh did not explode in a ball of fire. In space battles, few such mighty ships died like that. The proton beam had done its task, but the people in Olympus Mons didn’t know it yet. So the technicians continued to aim the deadly beam at the dead battleship, repeatedly punching proton holes through the particle shield and into the vessel.

* * *

Seven minutes after Secretary-General Chavez gave the order, the first sections of the enemy battleship began to break apart.

“We killed it, sir!” an officer shouted in glee.

There were wild cheers. Three officers tossed their caps, hitting the ceiling with them. Marten cheered as