Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod (21 page)

Could cyborgs know pride? “Very well,” Blackstone muttered. He spoke to the communications officer. “Order the initiation of Operation Icebreaker.”

Aboard the
Kim Philby
, its captain received Blackstone’s order. She sat at the edge of her chair, with her clenched fist near her chin. “Are the coordinates perfect?”

“The cyborgs seem to think so, sir,” the First Gunner answered.

“This will never work,” the captain said. She was a tall woman, known as a perfectionist. “Begin.”

“Fire one,” the First Gunner said.

The fusion engines kicked in as power flowed through the mass driver’s magnetic coils. The first steel-jacketed ice-chunk shot out of the cannon at almost two kilometers per second. It headed for a precise location at something near three times the speed of a fired bullet. After a mere two seconds or after traveling a little less than four kilometers, the steel jacket exploded off the ice like a saboted gyroc round. That accelerated the ice-coated pod, pushing it even closer to two kilometers per second.

One after another, the
Kim Philby
shot the steel-jacketed ice-pods. The steel was obviously needed for the magnetic coils to ‘grab’ the pod and give it velocity. But that was all the steel was needed for.

After a short travel time, the first ice-pod reached the limit of the Battlefleet’s farthest ship. The pod then sped through the screening aerosol mist. Some aerosol mist pitted some of the ice-pods, but not enough to deflect the trajectory or destroy the cyborgs embedded deep within.

Because no explosive power had been used to expel the ice-coated pods, Martian detection equipment had nothing to pick up. Steel bounced radar, so the steel jackets had been shed before the pods reached the aerosol screen. Radar had a much harder time detecting ice. Ice was cool, so there would be no heat signature to give the approaching pods away. Ice was also a common element found in space in the form of ice comets, ice asteroids and even ice rings and ice moons. Teleoptic scopes could pick up pods. Thus, the ice was black and it would not bounce light well. So teleoptic scopes would have a nearly impossible time sighting the chunks. Compared against the backdrop behind them—the vastness of space—the individual pods were less than pinpricks.

In other words, the ice-coated pods were part of an elaborate stealth attack. The first barrage targeted Phobos, the deadliest component of the Martian space defense. A second barrage would soon blast at Deimos. Given the speed of two kilometers per second and a distance of something over 350,000 kilometers, the pods would reach Phobos in 42.69 hours, almost two full Earth days.

Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s operational plan called for the quick capture of the two moons. He also wanted to capture them without paying a heavy price in SU warships. Social Unity needed those warships for the true fight, the Doom Stars that would surely come in time.

Toll Seven’s refinement was the ice-coated pods and the scanty numbers sent at each target. The slender number of cyborgs meant fewer pods. Fewer pods meant a greater chance of stealth success. Could, however, forty-five cyborgs capture heavily armored Phobos?

As Commodore Blackstone stared at the holographic map, watching the
Kim Philby
fire the barrage, he had his doubts. He had grave doubts. Blackstone had also come to believe that killing cyborgs might be more important than killing Highborn. He wondered about that, however. He had stopped taking Commissar Kursk’s drugs. It had lowered his rage. It had made him think more about his ex-wife. It had also made him many times more afraid of Toll Seven. And the worst thing about that was that the cyborg surely knew it.

The clone, Lisa Aster, sensed her opportunity two hours before the second barrage of cyborgs was fired at Deimos.

Through General Fromm’s manipulation, Lisa found herself working a lifter alone in the second ice-coating ship. She moved stiff cyborgs to the battlesuits.

Her plan was simplicity itself. So Lisa wondered why she felt so nervous. This would be safer than waiting on the ceiling for deceleration to begin, the little game she’d played with herself during the journey to Mars.

Lisa braked the lifter and jumped off. She hurried around the magnetic forks. The cyborgs lay in a line on her lift. They looked like mannequins. If one of them had twitched just then, Lisa would have screamed. Fortunately, they stayed as stiff, cold and still as the dead. She took a spy-monitor from her belt and hesitated. Lisa didn’t want to touch their dead flesh, or their cool metallic parts. These things couldn’t be alive.

Lisa swallowed hard and told herself she was the Blanche-Aster now. She was here because the cyborgs had destroyed one of her sisters. The cyborgs had likely caused Mother’s death.

Resolved, Lisa reached behind a cyborg’s head and attached the spy-monitor to the base of the neck. The monitor was made of chameleon-skin and it would look like just like the cyborg’s armored flesh. Lisa shivered as her fingers touched cyborg skin. It was warm, and that seemed horrible. She backed away, staring at the dead-seeming thing. It was warm. It was actually alive, if frozen now.

Feeling eyes on her, Lisa whirled around, and she yelped in fear.

Massive Toll Seven stared at her.

“What did you do?” Toll Seven asked in his strange voice.

“There… there was something on a cyborg’s face,” Lisa said. “I wiped it off.”

“Give the something to me,” Toll Seven said.

The clone Lisa Aster began to tremble. That made her angry. She had been the Madam Blanche-Aster’s bodyguard. The cyborgs had done something to Rita Tan. Rita had done something to Mother. So this cyborg here was part of the cabal that had slain Mother Blanche-Aster.

Lisa put her hand on the hilt of a hidden vibroblade. “I have to get these cyborgs to the battlesuits.”

“You will give me the thing you took off the cyborg.”

It dawned on Lisa that there was no way Toll Seven should be here. It meant that somehow her role had been compromised. The only one who knew her objective was General Fromm. Had the cyborg already gotten to Fromm? With a sick feeling, Lisa wondered if the cyborgs were superior to Highborn. If that was true, then the cyborgs should be able to outthink mere Homo sapiens.

“Show me this thing,” Toll Seven said ominously.

“Yes,” Lisa said. She meekly approached the big cyborg. He waited with his metal hand open. Lisa stepped closer yet. With her thumb, she switched on the vibroblade as she drew it.

The vibroblade was a deadly close-combat device. It vibrated a thousand times a second, making the motion invisible to the human eye. It allowed the blade to slice metal with ease. It should have the capacity to cut armored cyborg flesh.

Lisa slashed at the hand before her, sheering off three fingers as zapping-sounds and sparks emitted from the shorn digits. The sheered finger-parts hit the deck like lead shot. Lisa stabbed, and the tip sank into the armored body. Then Toll Seven chopped. Lisa moaned as her wrist snapped. She staggered away. The cyborg drew the knife from his chest, and he crushed the hilt so the blade quit vibrating.

“Stay away from me!” Lisa shouted. She groped left-handed for a communicator.

Toll Seven lifted his good hand and pointed a finger at her. Something flew out of the tip. Then something sharp hit Lisa in the chest. She stared down and saw it was a dart. She looked back up at Toll Seven. She wanted to ask what it had been. Then Lisa’s legs crumpled and she was falling. She opened her mouth as waves of nullity washed over her.

The last thing she remembered was Toll Seven lifting her and carrying her. She knew not where.

***

For five days, Marten and Omi had trained ten carefully selected security personnel.

In that gym five days ago, Marten had spoken with each assassin in turn, asking random questions. He’d stared into their eyes, searching for indefinable qualities. It had been more than a gut feeling. If anything, he’d searched for a core of stubbornness and a sense of calling, of duty, if you will. All the men had killed before. Some had shot PHC police in the back. Some had stepped up and stared PHC officers down as their needler sprayed its deadly slivers. Others had beaten traitors to death with their fists, held fast by other enforcers. None of the chosen team members was pleasant. With more than a few, Marten had Omi engage them in hand-to-hand combat. None of them could match the Korean’s skills or withstand his Earth-powered strength.

During those short bouts, Marten had searched each man’s reaction to his defeat. Only two security men had the fortitude to drag themselves back up each time. One had snarled and charged fiercely, only to land on his back a second, third and a fourth time. The other one had picked himself up slowly, glaring at Omi and then ploddingly circled the Korean yet again, trying to pierce Omi’s deadly martial arts. Those two, Gutierrez and Rojas, were now squad leaders.

Ten men, plus Omi and he, were enough to fill three skimmers. Three skimmers loaded with long-range gyroc rifles could hit hard and fast and do some real damage to the strike-craft parked on an airfield.

During these days, Marten used his Highborn training, speaking HB battle maxims and showing each man a critical trick. On the fourth day, he took out the open-topped skimmers and practiced raids. On the fifth day, they bounded out of the skimmers in their environmental suits and hit the red Martian sand. Each man fired his gyroc rifle at distant targets that Marten had set up on the previous day.

The gyroc rifle was an interesting weapon. It fired a .75 caliber spin-stabilized rocket shell. After leaving the rifle barrel, the rocket ignited, giving the bullet the majority of its speed. The rifle acted like a recoilless weapon, which meant that even though it fired high-caliber bullets, it was of light construction and didn’t slam the shooter each time and thus weary him out. The various rounds meant that gyrocs were highly versatile.

The Armor Piercing Explosive round (APEX) had a big motor and a heavy projectile. There were shrapnel rounds that acted like a line-of-sight mortar, a smart rocket that could fly around objects and sabot rounds where the outer shell burned off to add deadly velocity against hardened targets.

Marten watched the men, shouted corrections into their helmet’s headphones and cursed their stupidity. He raged at their Martian weakness and the impossibility of achieving anything with morons like them. He used the techniques used on him in the Free Earth Corps boot camp by the HB.

Later, back at the barracks at the base of Olympus Mons, Marten showered and played cards with Omi in their room. It was an old deck from Highborn days, the edges worn and frayed. They played at a small table, their equipment sprawled on their bunks.

“What do you think?” Marten asked Omi.

“Gutierrez is deranged.”

Five days ago, Gutierrez had charged Omi each time during the hand-to-hand testing. The big Martian still had bruises around his eyes from Omi’s blows.

“Gutierrez reminds me of the kamikaze troops we faced during the Japan Campaign,” Marten said.

“Seeing that PHC ran this planet for so long,” Omi said, “I’m surprised he’s still alive.”

Marten drew a card, examined his hand and slowly pulled another card. In disgust, he threw his hand down. “I’m over by one.”

Omi put the discards under the deck and flicked himself two cards from the top and Marten two.

“There will come a time when we need someone like Gutierrez,” Marten said as he examined his cards.

“You don’t care if he dies?”

“If he fights under my command,” Marten said, “I’m going to do my best to bring him back alive. I’m just saying that it’s good to have at least one madman along. That makes him a treasure compared to the rest, a treasure I plan to horde.”

“Gutierrez is a walking dead-man and he doesn’t even know it,” Omi said softly.

“I don’t agree. Sometimes it’s the madman who makes it through everything.”

“There’s only one Marten Kluge,” Omi said dryly.

“I’m nothing like Gutierrez.”

“No,” Omi said, “of course not.”

Marten scowled.

Omi drew a card and spread out his hand. “Twenty-one,” he said.

Marten’s scowl intensified. He grabbed the deck to reshuffle. Halfway through the shuffle, someone rapped against the door.

The two men exchanged glances. Marten reached to his bed and grabbed a gun. Omi stood up, moved onto his bed and sat down amidst his sprawled equipment.

The knock came again, harder.

“Enter,” Marten said as he shuffled cards.

The door opened as Major Diaz entered. Behind him followed Secretary-General Chavez.

“This is a surprise,” Marten said.

Diaz scowled, and he opened his mouth.

“No, no,” Chavez said. “Their customs are different than ours.”

Marten raised an eyebrow.

“Usually, people stand as a superior enters a room,” Chavez explained.

“Ah,” Marten said.

There was a pause.

“…may I?” Chavez asked as he touched Omi’s vacated chair.

Marten nodded, and he wondered how long Major Diaz would stand there, upset and glaring at him.

Chavez sank into the chair as if standing had wearied him. His eyes were haunted today and more red-rimmed than during their meeting five days ago. Marten was glad the Secretary-General didn’t pull out any stimsticks. He hated the mildly narcotic smoke.