“Did you try another signal?” Omi asked.
“I’m not pushing my luck more than I need to,” Marten said.
“Since when did you decide that?”
“—We can’t stay on Mars,” Marten said.
“Never said we should,” Omi replied. “I’m just saying that your supply of luck ran out a long time ago. You’re living on borrowed time.”
“That’s the trick.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Omi said.
“I’ve already borrowed more luck than I can ever hope to repay,” Marten said. “Knowing that, I’ve decided to push it and borrow even more. The bank is open as far as I’m concerned.”
“What’s a bank?” Omi asked.
“It’s like a loan shark.”
“Got it,” Omi said. “You’re not worried about an enforcer like me coming along and demanding repayment because you’re too high on DD.”
“What did Chavez want?” Marten asked.
“More diplomatic jargon,” Omi said. “None of it made any sense to me. I think what he really wants is the commandos back in New Tijuana.”
Marten turned toward Omi and stared at his friend’s visor. All he saw was a dark reflection of himself, with his own EVA helmet and suit.
“It’s time we moved closer to Olympus Mons,” Marten said.
“As he listened to Chavez over the radio, Major Diaz looked pretty thoughtful,” Omi said. “He might not agree with you.”
“Yeah,” Marten said. “We’ll see.” And he began trudging through the red sands back to camp.
-14-
“Help us!” a colonel screamed. “Can anybody hear me? They’re pounding us with missiles and beaming everywhere. Commodore Blackstone! Captain Vargas! Please, somebody answer. Somebody—”
A boom sounded over the com-link. There were the noises of things crashing and then came hissing static. It was a terrible and accusing sound.
“Shut it off,” Blackstone whispered.
Belatedly, the
Commodore Blackstone’s hands were greasy with sweat. His dry mouth tasted like bile. As if he went to a funeral, he wore his black uniform with its row of medals. He also wore his officer’s cap at its regulation angle. On the map-module where he rested his hands was the image of the great mass of Mars, the curvature of it. The flock of specks was the SU Battlefleet. For the past three days, the fleet had remained behind Mars in relation to the terrible Doom Stars. Now the Doom Stars had braked again, and they were in near orbit, hunting for the Battlefleet.
The grim silence on the bridge was like a psychic weight.
“There was nothing you could have done,” Commissar Kursk whispered.
Blackstone savagely wiped his eyes. This entire plan had been madness. Now he had let the personnel on Deimos die because otherwise his one chance to hurt the Highborn—
Blackstone’s head snapped up. Listening to those pleas had broken a dam in him. Maybe it had begun long ago when his ex-wife had first filed for divorce. He had bottled up so much pain and so much anguish. That anguish and pain now poured out in a torrent from his heart. He wanted to hurt somebody. He wanted to hurt them badly.
“It’s time to make them pay,” Blackstone said hoarsely.
Stout General Fromm watched him.
Blackstone made a sharp gesture. “The Highborn have come to step on our necks. It’s time to make them understand that we’re men. It’s time to bring them down by destroying the Doom Stars.”
The bridge’s officers had all turned to stare. Commissar Kursk nodded belated agreement.
The communications officer asked, “Do you think we can win, sir?”
“Yes!” Commodore Blackstone said, although he didn’t believe that. His crisp tone, however, caused several officers to straighten. What Blackstone did believe was that he was going to hurt them now. He was done with waiting. With the help of the cyborg stealth-attacks, the Highborn were going to know that they had been in a battle.
The communications officer turned toward her com-board. “What are your orders, sir?”
Commodore Blackstone studied the map-module. Then he began to issue curt commands.
-15-
The SU warships subtlety changed their dispositions. In his command pod and linked to the Battlefleet-net, Toll Seven heard Blackstone’s orders. Soon, Toll Seven began to issue his own commands, to mesh the cyborg plan with the reinvigorated bio-forms.
A thousand kilometers away in her stealth-capsule, LA31 opened her eyes. In other stealth-capsules scattered throughout the Mars System, other cyborgs readied themselves for the desperate battle to come.
A wait of three hours then occurred as the Doom Stars and the SU Battlefleet maneuvered for position. The super-ships were between the orbits of ruined Deimos and Phobos, which would soon appear from around Mars and face an obviously brutal strike from the enemy. Deimos orbited 23,500 kilometers away from the center of Mars. Phobos orbited 9,400 kilometers away. The three Doom Stars had reached a 17,000-kilometer distance from Mars.
To kill an enemy fleet that was determined to use a planet as a shield meant that the hunting ships had to come into close orbit. The reason was simple. The angles and distances were all on the side of the fleet closest to the planet. If the Doom Stars had stayed even 100,000 kilometers out, they would have had to travel a much greater distance to get onto the other side of the planet as compared to the fleet just above the planet’s atmosphere. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had understood that as he’d made his plans many months ago. His strategy had counted on it. Toll Seven and Web-Mind had concurred. For each side, this was the most dangerous phase of the battle. At these ranges, beams almost struck immediately and missiles streaked the distances in a matter of minutes.
The commander of Phobos sprayed a prismatic-crystal field before the moon. Then every laser-port, missile battery and point-defense systems went on high alert. Behind the moon as it moved in its orbit followed the bulk of the decoy fleet. Behind the decoy-vessels flew the SU orbitals, over five hundred fighters. They had little chance against massive lasers and point-defense systems. It was a suicide run and most of the pilots knew it. But here at this hour every piece of equipment would enter the cauldron of battle to try to eke out a few more percentage points for its side. The presence of the orbitals provided one other benefit, a hopeful overloading of the Highborn targeting computers.
The cyborg stealth-capsules waited for that time as they floated in the system like space debris.
As Commodore Blackstone gave the orders, relayed by the
