Marten adjusted the controls of his screen. Their targeted asteroid was ten kilometers in diameter. It was deeper in the field and thus partly shielded by bigger asteroids. It still had lasers turrets and now several torpedoes lifted from it, accelerating for the Spartacus.
“Osadar!” Marten shouted, using a tight-link to a different patrol boat.
“I see them,” Osadar said. “And I’m launching.”
Even through the patrol boat, Marten felt the Spartacus shudder. It meant Zenos had blasted off the meteor-ship. The Spartacus decelerated, slowing its velocity as the asteroid loomed ever closer. The patrol boats still lacked enough thrust and fuel to decelerate hard enough to land. If the Spartacus died too soon….
“We should have decelerated before this,” Nadia whispered.
“Not a chance,” Marten said. “It would have left us exposed too long.”
Behind him in the patrol boat, space marines rustled as they adjusted their armored suits. Each vacc-suit was composed of articulated metal and ceramic-plate armor. A rigid, biphase carbide-ceramic corselet protected the torso, while articulated plates of BPC covered the arms and legs. Weapons clacked, boots shuffled and men breathed too heavily.
Through the tight-link, Osadar cursed.
Marten studied his board. Another flock of torpedoes zoomed toward them from deeper in the asteroids. How many cyborgs had toiled like ants to achieve those launches? In Marten’s opinion, there were simply too many asteroids to capture and redirect and too little time in which to do it.
“Light up the defenses,” said Marten.
Osadar in her patrol boat controlled some of the meteor-ship’s functions. Nadia controlled others and Omi the remaining aboard his patrol boat.
On his screen, Marten watched. The Spartacus’s point-defense cannons began to adjust as they targeted torpedoes. Each fired depleted uranium pellets. In the background, Marten saw the Zenos’ exhausts as the missiles sped at the torpedoes. Then a huge stabbing beam struck from a million-kilometers away. The beam hit a torpedo, destroying it.
“Highborn sensors must be better than ours,” Osadar said.
Marten tried to swallow in a dry throat. This was the worst part—the approach to landing. He wished he were anywhere but here. The cyborgs were living murder. The number of asteroids—there were seventeen of them if you counted the two debris fields as two loosely-packed asteroids. Seventeen objects, each large enough to bring extinction to Earth. How were they supposed to deflect them in time?
Another torpedo disintegrated in the beam of the Highborn laser. Then a smaller cyborg missile exploded, filling the vacuum with a powerful electromagnetic pulse.
“I’ve lost visual,” Omi said over the tight-link.
“I never should have brought you into this,” Marten told Nadia.
She was too busy with her board to respond. Now a second ultra-heavy laser flashed to their aid.
At that moment, a terrific jolt shook everyone in the patrol boat.
“What happened?” Omi asked over the tight-link.
“Here comes another torpedo,” Osadar said. “Prepare to detach.”
“It’s too soon,” Omi said.
Then Marten saw it on his screen. A black-as-sin torpedo sped at the Spartacus. A big laser flashed near the torpedo, missing it. Three point-defense pellets hit, tearing holes but failing to stop the monstrosity. Then the torpedo went nova. Through the patrol boat’s heavily-tinted window of ballistic glass, the intense flash hurt Marten’s eyeballs and put splotches in his vision. The terrific jolt of the shock-blast made Marten’s teeth rattle until he clamped them together. Twenty seconds later, a second explosion dwarfed the first. All around Marten, the boat’s bulkheads rattled uncontrollably and groaned in metallic complaint.
Outside, a jagged and growing crack splintered the meteor-ship’s shell. Oxygen sheeted upward as the inner ship spewed its precious air. A wobbling patrol boat fired thrusters, fighting to escape the Spartacus’s destruction.
“Launch!” someone screamed.
In a daze, Marten saw Nadia. She slapped buttons. Then Gs thrust him lower into his crash-seat. They were lifting off the dying ship.
-65-
It was a Hell-ride to the asteroid. The patrol boat’s auto-cannons fired constantly. Anti-missiles bloomed around them. And the lunar-like surface grew larger. Then a patrol boat to their left exploded.
Marten tried to open channels with the others. Because they’d lifted off the meteor-ship, he’d lost the tight-links and had to rely solely on radio transmissions. Harsh static played in his ears. With a shake of his head, Marten decided to ignore the others for now as he studied the growing asteroid. It had a crater-sized exhaust-port, which was a huge cavity making it like a massive cave. Near the port—
“Laser turret!” shouted Marten.
Whether the cyborgs had saved it as an ace card or maybe had made fast repairs was impossible to know. The critical thing was that a beam erupted from it, lancing straight at them.
Nadia yanked the controls. Gs forced everyone to the left as the patrol boat banked sharply. Decoy chaff spewed. The beam struck, and one of the stubby, wing-like projections disappeared in a slag of hot metal, taking two auto-cannons with it.
The beam lanced again, and now it cooked decoy chaff.
The last launch of a counter-missile made the patrol boat shudder. Blips on Marten’s screen showed that other patrol-boats had fired missiles. For a moment, he heard Osadar’s voice. The patrol boat banked hard in a different direction as Nadia ejected an electronic counter-measure pod. Its single purpose was to emit dummy patrol-boat signals.
The laser turret beamed again. The right side of their patrol boat turned red and some of that side melted away. Hot globs of metal cooked seven space marines in their armor.
Marten shouted obscenities as he struck his board in helpless rage.
Then a patrol-boat-launched missile exploded against the laser turret. The armored turret absorbed the effect as it lost mass. Two more hit as depleted uranium pellets hammered it, gouging and blowing away armor. As the beam stabbed again, taking out a counter-measure pod, a last missile destroyed the turret.
By now, the lunar-like surface filled half of Marten’s screen. “There,” he said, pointing at a computer-generated map with his stylus. “Is everyone seeing this?”
Like the others, Marten’s visor was down and his HUD on. There were domes on the surface, three of them in a cluster. There were also many burnt turrets, slagged point-defense cannons and empty torpedo bays. As Osadar had once predicted, a long rail system had been laid on the surface. Some of the rail-line was twisted and melted in places. A Doom Star laser must have done that.
“Can we land?” asked Marten.
Nadia’s gloved hands worked over the controls. “Maybe,” she said. “The enemy laser took out our—”
“Don’t give me excuses,” Marten snapped. “Just get us down.”
Nadia’s silver-colored visor turned sharply toward him.
“Get us down, honey,” he said. “But do it fast.”
She turned back to her controls as the space marines in their crash-seats watched the window or the laser-opened section of the boat.
-66-
Marten used the last outer camera, turning it. Behind them, three patrol boats each burned a long exhaust plume. They each decelerated the last amount, which would hopefully allow them a soft landing.
“Nadia,” he said.
“I don’t dare push the engine any harder,” she said, as she pointed at her board.