“Enemy vessels have left the protection of the prismatic-crystal field,” a Highborn officer said.
“Begin firing,” Cassius ordered.
The lasers of the battlewagon Fidel Castro speared into the starry darkness. Nearby sister-ships did likewise. From farther away, missile-ships launched anti-missiles. Mars was behind them. A vast prismatic-crystal field like a nebula cloud-system glittered strangely in the vacuum blackness closer to them, but still to their rear.
The commander of the Fidel Castro felt naked and alone out here. His battleship was the oldest in the fleet, but it was still a deadly vessel. The 600-meter thick particle-shields were in place. And the battleship changed positions constantly, jinking, engaging engines, shutting them down and swerving to a different heading. They did all that to avoid the heavy lasers of the Doom Stars one-million kilometers away. All the while, the battleship’s lasers burned the incoming missiles and drones.
Then, out of the voids, incredibly huge lasers stabbed with hellish fury. Those heavy lasers were three times the diameter of the Fidel Castro’s lasers. In them had been pumped five times the killing power. Because the Doom Stars possessed such massive fusion engines, they could afford to pay the energy costs to fuel these lasers.
Nine giant lasers hit the Fidel Castro in unison. It was a display of incredible targeting skill. Three Doom Stars from nearly one-million kilometers away sent nine beams into the SU battleship’s guts. They sliced off huge chunks of the particle-shield. Then the Fidel Castro, which was always moving, changed heading enough that the nine beams stabbed around it. The commander and crew hoped they had time to escape. The Highborn probability computers or maybe the genetically enhanced gunners guessed right again. Six beams chewed off more of the particle-shield. For eight minutes and twenty seconds, the uneven game played out. Then the heavy lasers struck past the ruined particle-shields and slammed into the battleship’s hull.
Titanium and steel burned in nanoseconds. Clouds of heated gas and molten droplets shed from the hull. In another minute, it was over, as the Fidel Castro floated in space, a dead and irradiated hulk.
The forty-year-old battleship had tried to defend the prismatic-crystal field and destroy enough of the incoming missiles. The question was, had it been enough?
Eighty percent of the Thutmosis III’s stealth-missiles and drones perished under a flurry of SU laser beams and anti-missile missiles. They were winks of bright light in the darkness, sometimes a red glow that died like a shooting star.
Twenty percent of the missiles in layered waves hit the prismatic-crystal field. The nuclear explosions blew vast holes in the field. They opened it up and exposed a portion of the SU Battlefleet behind it. They exposed SU ships to the heavy lasers of the Julius Caesar, the Hannibal Barca and the Napoleon Bonaparte.
The attacked showed to great effect the deadliness of long-rage beams. Blackstone shouted himself hoarse. Ships churned out more prismatic-crystals. But many ships perished under the Doom Star lasers.
“Head behind Mars!” Blackstone shouted. “Hide behind Deimos!”
All around him, battleships, missile-ships, ECM vessels and minelayers engaged their engines and slammed their crews with six Gs of acceleration. Like terrible searchlights, the giant lasers stabbed and killed. They moved so much faster than the sluggish spacecraft. Sometimes they seared chunks of particle-shields off huge battleships. More often, the lasers struck thinner-skinned vessels, cutting some in half so living beings tumbled like space-scum into the black vacuum.
Commodore Blackstone’s plan to absorb energy by taking days of heavy laser fire was destroyed. Yet by sending the Fidel Castro and other ships to their deaths to kill the majority of the enemy missiles, he had saved the majority of the SU Battlefleet. At least, he’d saved it from annihilation here at the opening of the battle.
Like thieves frightened by policemen, the SU Battlefleet scattered for safety. All the while, the terrible beams from the voids fired. The untouchable Doom Stars lived up to their names. The master plan to envelop the Doom Stars had fallen apart days before it could be implemented.
Commodore Blackstone gripped the map-module as he listened to the list of ships destroyed and those that had taken heavy damage. The Fidel Castro and two other battleships were gone, along with two missile-ships. Those were appalling losses when he had absolutely nothing to show for it.
“We have eight battleships left,” Blackstone said tonelessly, “and seven missile-ships. That’s unspeakable. We didn’t even touch them.”
General Fromm looked up from the map-module. He had never changed expression throughout the disaster. “You are incorrect in saying we have achieved nothing.”
Blackstone stared open-mouthed at the stout Earth General. He finally managed to ask, “What are you talking about?”
“The Highborn have played one of their surprises,” Fromm said in his maddeningly calm voice. “We still have our surprises.”
“But three priceless battleships—”
Fromm shook his round head. “The Highborn have a limited number of surprises. Now they approach Mars where our surprises wait. They have damaged us, but we still possess a Battlefleet.” Fromm’s fat fingers indicated the list of other destroyed vessels displayed on the holographic module. “Twenty other vessels destroyed. The greater majority of these are the decoy ships.”
“Which were still full of personnel,” Blackstone half sobbed.
“Battle entails losses, Commodore,” Fromm said without any change of inflection. “The decoy vessels have served a useful purpose. They fulfilled two purposes, in fact. They perished so battle-worthy craft could live to fight again. And they have no doubt given the Highborn a higher sense of accomplishment than they should have. That will heighten one of their greatest weaknesses.”
“Highborn don’t have weaknesses,” Blackstone said. “This attack should have proved that to you.”
“They are arrogant,” General Fromm said. “They are insufferably arrogant. That, in the end, shall be their undoing.”
Commodore Blackstone glanced at Commissar Kursk. She stared at the list of destroyed ships. The Vladimir Lenin along with most of the Battlefleet was now behind Mars in relation to the oncoming Doom Stars. Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s grand plan—Blackstone sneered. They should have kept the fleet in small pieces between the Inner Planets, harrying the Highborn where they were weakest. To try to match the nine-foot super-soldiers in a head-on battle, it was suicide for Social Unity.
Vaguely, Blackstone wondered why Toll Seven wasn’t here aboard the Vladimir Lenin. He could have used the cyborg’s advice. He wondered what the strange cyborg thought about the disaster. The cyborg surprise would be all-important now. Without those stealth capsules…
-10-
Toll Seven sat alone in his command pod with Web-Mind all around him.
Web-Mind was the greatest technological marvel in the Solar System. It was a mass bio-computer merged with metric tons of neural processors. Hundreds of bio-forms had died to supply Web-Mind with the needed brain mass. Each kilo of brain tissue had been personality scrubbed and carefully rearranged on wafer-thin sheets and surrounded by computing gel. Other machinery kept the temperature at a perfect 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Tubes fed the tissues the needed nutrients. Sensors monitored bio-health. Sub-computers did a hundred other necessary chores to keep Web-Mind functioning perfectly. The bio-brain-mass could outthink any known entity and track many thousands of enslaved bio-forms. The Web-Mind on the Neptune Habitat was supreme, but the one in Toll Seven’s command pod had been given override authority here. That meant it could adjust the master plan to suit emergency needs. It had more than enough brain mass to engineer victory at Mars System. Its future function would be to act as syndic for all Inner Planets.