“Launch Operation Trojan Hearse,” Grand Admiral Cassius thundered.
In seconds, three huge missiles launched from each of the three Doom Stars. Every weapon aboard the Hannibal Barca, the Napoleon Bonaparte and the Julius Caesar was now dedicated toward destroying whatever tried to hinder the flight of these nine asteroid-busters. The spaceship-sized missiles accelerated hard for Phobos, flashing through a maelstrom of lasers, shells, anti-missiles and the final wisps of the prismatic-crystal field.
Six of the nine giant missiles died before reaching the moon. An orbital fighter rammed one, the pilot thinking it a new Highborn spacecraft. The nuclear explosion sent X-rays and EMP blasts through the vacuum. Most of the SU vessels washed by the X-rays were hardened against that, although twenty orbital fighters perished in a wave of EMP. Then the moon’s point-defense cannons smashed through the seventh missile’s hull and made a clean kill, this time without igniting the gargantuan warhead.
The eighth and ninth mega-missiles, however, slammed into the moon in an interesting manner. Seconds before impact, a heavy plasma cannon in the missile’s nose sent a gout of super-heated plasma ahead of itself. That plasma ate dust and moon-rock, and the missile slammed deeper and bored in an incredible distance. Everyone on Phobos felt the impact like a quake. Then only did the nova-warhead explode. It was like a miniature sun and caused a cataclysmic reaction. Gigantic cracks like the end of the world splintered through the entire moon, tearing buildings apart and destroying merculite-missile launch-sites and point-defense emplacements. Then the second asteroid-buster exploded.
The Gotterdammerung moment came for the Martian moon. The nova-warhead lived up to its name as Phobos blew apart into fourteen large chunks and millions of tiny particles of rock and dust. Several of the larger chunks tumbled toward the Red Planet. In a matter of days, several of those would slam against the planet and create unbelievable misery for hundreds of millions of unsuspecting Martians waiting unsuspectingly below.
From the safety of the cyborg command-pod, Toll Seven and Web-Mind observed this incredible display of military might. This was more than they had anticipated. The genetic super-soldiers had amassed fierce weaponry in the Doom Stars and its newest ordnance created on the Sun-Works Factory.
Yet the moon’s destruction played to their secret plan. It filled space with matter, with dust, rocks and chunks. The SU Battlefleet, under the terse orders of Commodore Blackstone, roared through the debris like army ants yearning for vengeance. Missiles, lasers, sabot-rounds and orbital cannons blazed at the three super-ships in the distance.
Like ancient gods, the Doom Stars hung in the heavens and beamed with abandon, killing the last hope of Social Unity.
At the same time, the countless asteroid-appearing capsules scattered throughout the Mars System split open. Out of them like space-insects appeared vacc-suited humanoids. These vacc-suited cyborgs leaped from their capsules and engaged their hydrogen-thruster packs. They jetted for the Doom Stars. Each individually was an insignificant particle as compared to the orbitals, missiles and laser-beaming battleships. Time would tell if united on the skin of a Doom Star whether they could prove a battle-winning tactic or not.
-17-
On Mars, it was early morning as Marten Kluge and his Martian commandos skimmed fast over the red dunes. The volcanic base of Olympus Mons was before them. In the high altitudes near the peak where ice-crystal clouds drifted, several more orbitals boomed as they broke the sound barrier and screamed toward space to join the fight. Perhaps even more ominous, a heavy whine emanated from the volcano.
“The proton beam is online,” Omi crackled over the headphones.
“That’s the injured dynamos revving with power,” Marten said. He sat in front beside Osadar. The cyborg was the best pilot among them and the best driver, and thus she drove the skimmer.
As if she knew Marten was thinking about her, Osadar swiveled her helmet toward him.
“Over there!” Marten pointed. About five kilometers away, the blast doors were shut. He had studied those doors before, and for days, he’d studied the specs of Olympus Mons that Chavez had emailed him from New Tijuana.
Marten’s stomach churned. The skimmers were frail craft. As everyone had been telling him lately, this was a matter of luck. He shook his head. It was more than luck. This was the hour of decision. Logically, eyes were on the main event in space. When your enemy was distracted, that was the time to strike.
“Check your rifles,” he said over the com-unit. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Marten turned back to Omi.
Instead of saying anything, Omi patted his shoulder a second time. Then his best friend returned to his portable plasma cannon. It was a dirty job and a risky task, but Marten couldn’t trust anyone else to do it right. Omi and he had survived many battles together. Dear God, let his good friend survive this battle, too.
-18-
In the middle of a deadly space battle where bright beams lased, huge ships passed like mini-planets and missiles zoomed and exploded with dazzling pyrotechnics, the creature formerly know as Lisa Aster rotated her cyborg body. A Doom Star with its pitted particle-shield was her entire world. She applied thrust from her nearly empty hydrogen-pack, braking. At the last moment, she rotated back and readied her legs. The asteroid-like particle-shield rushed at her. Then she crashed against a Doom Star, smashing her head against rock.
She awoke seconds or minutes later. She was never sure afterward. She clung tenaciously like a mechanical spider to the pitted surface. The surface shook and trembled constantly as beams, missiles and cannon-rounds struck it. It was badly chewed up and had craters and deep laser holes, although it was still intact. Dust, rocks and boulder-sized chunks floated before the immensely thick shield.
LA31 cocked her dented helmet with its short antenna. The radio-pulse was low-key and garbled. Radiation, EMP blasts, jamming waves: the vacuum here was thick with invisibly harmful elements. LA31 felt sick and wanted to vomit. Worse, she felt weak. Programming kept her going, and enhancement drugs surged through her system like blood. She began to crawl like an insect across the pitted surface.
If there had been an independent observer between the two fleets, between the flashing lasers and streaking missiles, they might have seen hundreds of shifting motes on the particle-shields of the Hannibal Barca. Like a broken nest of spider bantlings, the mechanical-seeming motes crawled fast and headed for the seams between the giant blocks of particle-shielding. Lasers indifferently burned many of them into blackened crisps. Missiles blew off even more along with asteroid-chunks and dust from the abused particle-shield. Yet for every three killed, one made it between the seams and crawled quickly for the hull below.
It was a cyborg infestation. LA31 was one of the lucky ones. She no longer felt lucky, as she had already vomited a black bile. She felt sicker than ever. Drugs, Web-Mind-programming and cyborg enhancements barely kept her functioning. She wanted to curl up and die. Instead, with fifty-three other cyborgs, she used magnetic clamps and clanged along the hull and to a main heavy laser-port.
There, with breach bombs, the cyborgs gained entrance to the Doom Star. Like cockroaches, they scurried into the hull, behind the walls and corridors that made up the vast spacecraft. They had the super-ship’s specs imprinted in their memories. They had one goal, one destination—the giant fusion engines in the center of the unbeatable vessel.