Watching the battle unfold put a worm of doubt into Cassius’s stomach. Torpedoes in waves now accelerated out of the nearest debris-cluster. It meant the torpedoes had been carefully weaving their way through the debris-field. That implied individual cyborgs piloted the one-way craft. Those torpedoes burned hard for the
Gustavus Adolphus
many hundreds of kilometers beyond them.
“That’s it, Your Excellency,” Sulla said. “Except for the ones behind the debris-fields, we’ve silenced the enemy beams.”
Cassius hardly knew what he said in response. Destroying torpedoes, seeing them burn, absorbed his attention. More kept coming. How many torpedoes did these cyborgs have? Time, distance, velocity and power-levels—that’s all Cassius could compute now.
“The last Highborn shuttles have escaped the
Gustavus Adolphus
,” Sulla said some time later.
Prismatic crystals like wisps of cloud drifted before the mighty vessel. The warship’s great beam fired, highlighting a cyborg torpedo before disintegrating it. Point-defense cannons fired as the last missiles launched from torn ports.
From in his shell, Cassius swallowed uneasily. The
Gustavus Adolphus
was like a great wounded beast. It was too tired, too drained of blood to sidestep death barreling down at it. That death came as schools of cyborg torpedoes, missiles and point-defense-cannon-shells converged on the ship. The
Julius Caesar
and
Genghis Khan
were using every weapon they had, trying to defend the stricken Doom Star. But now it was too little, too late. The cyborgs simply had too much. They should have used this mass earlier. Why had they saved so much hardware? The mass of destructive weaponry was simply too heavy to completely halt.
“No,” Cassius whispered. He watched on a
zoomed
portion of his holoimages.
A huge torpedo smashed through the weakened composite armor and drilled its way deep into the Doom Star. It exploded with a nuclear fireball in the guts of the warship. Another torpedo struck as the electromagnetic pulse of the thermonuclear warhead washed outward. An emergency device caused the second torpedo to explode before the EMP blast disabled its systems.
Disbelieving, Cassius watched as a great section of armor blew away from the
Gustavus Adolphus
as blast holes appeared elsewhere. This part of the fight was over. The Doom Star was dead, as was every Highborn that had remained onboard to fire the ship’s weaponry to the end.
Chief Coordinator of Earth Defense Scipio read the news with alarm.
The tall Highborn with the prosthetic hand stood before a large screen. It took up an entire wall of the largest room in the former laser satellite. The satellite had once orbited Earth. It was torus-shaped. As the satellite traveled through built-up velocity, the torus rotated, creating centrifugal-gravity.
“There’s no more they can do.”
Scipio barely heard the words of the Social Unity Earthling beside him. To him, the woman was tiny, barely five and half feet tall. She’d coordinated the SU premen, the
Earthlings
as Scipio tried to call them in his mind. Those Earthlings from Eurasia and Africa had brought engine-machinery and helped install them. Tens of thousands of Earthlings had helped the Highborn repair the least-damaged habitats orbiting Earth. Once, those habitats had contained algae pools and bacteria tanks.
Instead of drifting uselessly in orbit, Scipio had coordinated the repairs and sent the habitats toward the asteroids. As slow as they were, they’d built-up speed. The critical aspect of each was its mass. As constructs, the habitats were huge, many greater in bulk than a Doom Star, although none had as much mass.
Scipio still couldn’t believe the
Gustavus Adolphus
had been destroyed. The Highborn were down to three Doom Stars, one at the Sun-Works Factory under repairs. Once, they had possessed five of the giant warships.
“The Grand Admiral can do no more,” the woman said.
“You are correct,” said Scipio.
On the wall, the asteroids less than three days away from impact against the Earth appeared as red images.
Cassius had sent the grim message. The Doom Stars had used every nuclear weapon in their cargo-holds. Scouring the captured asteroids—all fifteen of them—the Highborn had found more nukes and used them, too. Highborn had maneuvered some of those nuclear bombs deep into the debris-fields before detonating them. Most of the debris, the rocks, had blown outward, enough that eighty-seven percent of the mass no longer constituted a threat against Earth. That still left a critical thirteen percent of the debris-fields. Other nuclear explosions had deflected smaller asteroids. A few of the biggest nukes had been sunk into the center of the monster silicon-based rocks and detonated. Those asteroids had splintered and separated into pieces, a few of those pieces were still on a collision course for Earth. There were seven major objects left and the lesser remains of the former debris-fields and asteroid-smashed debris. One of the seven major objects was a giant, thirty-kilometers in diameter. The Doom Stars, Orion-ships, Highborn commandoes and SU warships had done all they could. Now it was Scipio’s turn.
“We needed to refit more habitats,” the SU woman said. “We simply didn’t have enough time.”
“We shall see,” Scipio said.
“Have you read the data?” she demanded.
Scipio frowned. The preman, the SU Earthling, acted too familiarly with him. Any other Highborn would have slapped her into obedience. It was such a trying task working with premen.
“Do not query me,” Scipio told her.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, as she cringed. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
Scipio squinted at the wall, at the red images representing the seven major objects and debris. Blue dots were the advancing habitats, eight of them.
Curtly, he nodded. It was time to put in the final coordinates and drive the habitats against the asteroids. The question that plagued him was this. How many should he send at each? Or should he send all of the habitats at the four biggest rocks and ignore the rest? Let the Earthlings use their merculite missiles and proton beams on the remainder. What was the best decision?
Scipio touched his prosthetic hand. It was better to be certain with a few. If the Earth were to survive, let its occupants defend it. Otherwise…maybe the planet and the premen weren’t worthy of life.
With iron control, Cassius held his brooding in check as he stood on the bridge of the
Julius Caesar
. Efficiently, his officers went about their tasks. Toggles clicked, uniforms rustled and images flickered on the screens.
Since the
Gustavus Adolphus’s
destruction, Cassius had grown weary of his holoimages. He presently watched over Sulla’s shoulder. The Ultraist’s screen showed a nearly futile picture. Two Doom Stars stayed ahead of the two biggest asteroids headed for Earth. The warships alternately beamed their heavy lasers at the largest object. They sliced off surface-areas one tiny section at a time. It was tedious work, and both lasers had entered the danger zone more than once before being shut down for cooling.
“We must save Earth,” Cassius declared.
None of the officers turned toward him.
Cassius straightened, and he held a retort in check. He’d said that too many times already. He knew it, but the words kept bubbling out of him. They had to save Earth, or the war against the cyborgs was lost.
Closing his eyes, Cassius witnessed the
Gustavus Adolphus’s
obliteration yet again in his memory. He’d risked, and he’d lost the gamble. Now he might lose Earth. He might lose the industrial capacity of billions of premen laboring for the New Order of Highborn supremacy.
“I refuse to despair,” Cassius whispered. He glanced at his officers. Their bearing told him he’d lost status in their eyes. Might he lose his rank, as well?
Moving deliberately, Cassius entered his shell. He must remain calm. He must act as he’d done hundreds of times before. Any deviation in his behavior could trigger their aggression against him. The battle wasn’t over and Earth might yet survive the attack. The asteroids rushed to meet the slow-moving but still accelerating habitats. Social Unity possessed proton beams and merculite missiles. There was still hope.
Turning on the holoimages, forcing himself to study them, Cassius saw the remaining shuttles collecting the surviving Highborn commandoes off the various asteroids. Many had died in the assaults. But more premen dead lay slain on the Saturn-launched planet wreckers. The Jovians—
“Marten Kluge,” Cassius whispered. He needed a diversion, something to do to take his mind off losing a Doom Star. He needed to relax in order to keep his mind sharp enough to keep his high command. The Jovian-captured asteroid continued to accelerate away from its former heading. Kluge had refused the order to space here in a patrol boat. Perhaps the subhuman understood all too well the punishments that awaited him here. But Kluge’s refusal wasn’t going to save him. Even now, three Highborn shuttles raced after the rogue asteroid. The Highborn commandoes had orders to capture Kluge and bring him to the
Julius Caesar
. Thinking about that helped divert Cassius. That in turn helped deflect his brooding.
This was the final round in the genocidal asteroid-strike. While he was alive, he would dominate the Highborn and through them the universe.
“We can’t pull the same trick against the Highborn,” Osadar said.
“So we accept defeat?” Omi asked.
“No,” said Marten. The three of them played cards in a storage locker. Boxes were stacked in the corners. Plastic barrels of water made a wall on one side. They’d taken down the top barrels and made the table with it. Smaller boxes were the chairs. The worn cards were from Mars, stored in Omi’s pocket.
“No,” Marten said. “You take off and leave the asteroid. It’s me they want.”
“They want all of us,” Omi said.
Marten grinned tiredly. “You saw a replay of the message. Cassius all but gloated about the things he was going to teach a mulish preman like me.”
“You have an odd ability,” Osadar said. “It is uncanny how easily you anger those in charge.”
“Yeah,” said Marten. “It’s because I like to be my own man. My mistake, I guess.”
“It is immaterial,” said Osadar. “With the successful strike against Earth, the cyborgs will have clinched victory.”
“Nothing’s clinched yet,” Marten said hotly.
Osadar glanced at Omi and shrugged. “He is incurable,” she said.
“I want you to leave,” Marten said, as he stared at his cards. He had two aces, a ten of clubs, a two of diamonds and a Joker. “Take Nadia with you.”
Omi laid his cards on the table—on the plastic water barrels. “No one is running out on you. One: the shuttles will overtake our patrol boats and we have no ammo left. Two: you’re our Force-Leader. We stand or die with you, Marten. Accept it.”
Marten looked away as his heart beat rapidly. He didn’t deserve friends like this. He was spent and it told on his emotions. He rubbed his eye as he thought about his friends staying to die with him. There was a speck in it, that’s all. He kept telling himself that until he stood up. “I’m not going to meekly surrender.”
“No one thought you were,” Omi said.
“Okay,” Marten said. “I just wanted to get that straight.”
Marten, Nadia and Omi were the only ones in the main room of the first dome. His wife sat at the sensor board.
Marten stared out of the big window. It showed the crater-plain and the stars overhead. If he looked hard enough, Earth was the biggest dot to his subjective left. How long ago had it been since he’d left Earth? Stick, Turbo…Hall-Leader Quirn…Molly, all old memories. He’d left as a slave of the Highborn, one of their decorated, chosen pets. Now he was a Force-Leader of free men. Now he had to keep his people free of the shackle-bearing, castrating Highborn.
Squinting, Marten studied the bright dot. The idea that he rode a world-killing asteroid seemed unbelievable. He had done his best to save Earth, deflecting one of seventeen planet wreckers. If more meteor-ships had joined him, he could have stopped more. He kept trying to think of something profound to say regarding billions of dead people. He shook his head, hating cyborgs and Highborn. Social Unity didn’t look so bad now in comparison. He still loathed the rampant, deadening socialism, but it wasn’t annihilation. If everyone on Earth died, if Social Unity perished as a force, it meant the supremacists and aliens would win. One represented eternal slavery for humanity. The other meant extinction.
“Two of the shuttles are braking, and they’re not going to land,” Nadia informed them.
Marten turned and studied his wife’s long dark hair. She’d tied it in a ponytail. He liked it that way. It let him kiss her neck more easily.
“The third shuttle is moving in,” Nadia said. “They’re hailing us.” She turned as a light on her board blinked yellow. Her eyes were red-rimmed with fear. “What should I do?”
“Open channels,” Marten said in a rough voice.
Nadia did, and an arrogant Highborn appeared on the screen. He had the signature wide face, the square chin and chiseled features, the stark-white coloring. Some of his dark, pelt-like hair had been shaved away. Worse, half of his face was covered in a more human tone of a plasti-flesh bandage. The rawness of his skin around the bandage showed that his face had taken bad burn damage or cyborg laser-fire. Marten supposed that was the same thing. The fierceness shining from the Highborn’s good eye showed that the soldier hadn’t taken any painkillers. They were all mad, all hyped-up on their quest as supermen.