Doom Star: Book 06 - Star Fortress (20 page)

“You’re hijacking the launch vehicle?” Nadia asked.

“Only temporarily,” Marten said, as he grabbed a seat and propelled himself toward the pilot’s cabin.

After persuading the pilot, the hours ticked away until Luna crept over the horizon and then passed behind Earth, shielding them from the Doom Stars. As Osadar piloted them, she maneuvered to the patrol boats. Inflatable skins hid each boat. Techs had used the skins so they could work on them without suits in a regular atmosphere.

Normally, a patrol boat had a crew of five. In the Jupiter System where the patrol boats had been designed and built, they often went on a yearlong cruise and were therefore a relatively spacious craft. The vessel contained a control chamber, living quarters, a galley, gym and engine room.

During the boat’s stay in Earth orbit, however, changes had occurred. On Hawthorne’s orders, techs had begun its transformation into a cloaked ship.

“The Highborn control the space of Inner Planets,” Hawthorne told Marten when he’d first landed on Earth. “Therefore, I’ve issued a directive on new ship construction. We’re taking a leaf out of the cyborg’s strategic book—stealth-craft. We might as well begin with your vessels.”

Marten didn’t know of any new SU stealth-craft, although the Jovian boats had benefited from the change. During his stay on Earth, the technicians had added troop-pods. That greatly increased each vessel’s carrying capacity. Then the techs had fitted special “dark” polymers over every inch of hull. It wasn’t up to the standards of cyborg stealth-technology, but it changed the nature of the boats, making them difficult to find when they were running cold. Lastly, the techs had torn out the old fusion engine, installing an ion one. It was very fuel-efficient and long-endurance, but had low acceleration compared to the old engine. The exhaust reached three hundred degrees Centigrade now at its hottest, which made it thousands of degrees cooler than its former exhaust and thus harder to detect while accelerating.

The troop-pods added space, but it would still be a tight fit. The boats used to be rakish in appearance, now they were ungainly-looking vessels. Lacking heavy armor or even thick hulls, they relied on cloaking, anti-missile pods and point-defense canons for protection.

Docking beside an airlock, they began transferring people and supplies to the two vessels. Everyone was tense—the interceptors showed that anything could happen. The surface proton-beams were linked to the cities that energized them with deep-core power. It meant Director Backus had several under his control. If he desired, he could shoot them out of orbit.

Marten and Osadar debated in the control cabin of the first patrol boat. He wanted to name it the
Spartacus II
, but the space marines were too superstitious. They vetoed the idea because the first
Spartacus
had been destroyed. Therefore, Marten christened the boat the
William Tell,
the name of another of his childhood heroes.

In olden times, William Tell had been a Swiss patriot who fought against an Austrian tyrant named Gessler. The Austrian overlord had nailed his hat to a post in the village square, decreeing that everyone passing the hat must bow down to it. William Tell came to the village with his son and strode past the hat. Gessler saw that and in anger, he sent his men after Tell. Knowing that William Tell was a master crossbowman, the Austrian said Tell would enter the dungeons unless he shot an apple off his son’s head. They paced off a good distance, set his son against a tree and put an apple on the boy’s head. Grimly, Tell took out two bolts. He loaded the first, aimed carefully and split the apple in two.

Gessler applauded the feat. But he seemed troubled. Leaning down from his saddle, he said, “Well done, man. One thing troubles me, however. Why did you take out two bolts instead of just the one you needed?”

“If I’d killed my son,” Tell said, “the next bolt would have been for you.”

Furious with the answer, Gessler made William Tell his prisoner, and they rowed to his island fortress. A storm arose on the way. Because Tell was a strong man, they cut him loose and made him steer the boat, which he did. But he escaped onto the rocks near shore. Tell roused the people, according to legend, and he killed Gessler while the people defeated his Austrian knights. Ever since, William Tell had stood as a symbol: a man who loved freedom and refused to bow down to tyranny.

“We don’t have much time until Luna reappears,” Osadar said. “I think we should wait until it disappears again behind the Earth.”

“Let’s risk leaving now,” Marten said.

“Our burn won’t take us far enough out of orbit. We’ll still be in range of the Doom Stars.”

“First, we blast our way to the other side of the Earth so they can’t directly target us,” Marten said.

“That will give Earth Defense time to pinpoint us,” Osadar said.

“Backus and the directors hate aliens, hate anyone foreign to Social Unity. I doubt they’re allied with the Highborn.”

“Sulla is an Ultraist and he accepted premen help,” Osadar said. “Why can’t Backus act similarly and accept Highborn help?”

“Sulla is a Highborn and they bend their own rules more easily
if
it helps them gain their objectives,” Marten said. “Backus is a fanatic, with all that implies. There’s no way I want to spend an entire day in range of the Doom Stars. We move now while we can.”

“I do not approve.”

“It would have surprised me if you did.”

“Is my opinion so meaningless?” Osadar asked.

“On the contrary,” Marten said. “Your previous suggestion is the reason I want to leave now. Time has become critical and our journey is going to be a long one. The sooner we start, the better I’ll feel.”

Fifteen minutes later, air expelled into space as the inflatable skin ruptured and collapsed.

“We’ll use minimal thrust,” Marten said, who sat in the
William Tell’s
pilot seat.

The patrol boat’s ion engines burned hot for fifteen minutes. It built up velocity as they curved around the planet. Five minutes later, they changed heading for the Sun. Then they cut the ion engines. The two patrol boats slowly drifted away from Earth, cold targets now.

For the next day, they continued to drift away from the planet. Only as Luna passed behind the Earth again in relation to them, did they engage the engines for a longer burn.

Then eight massive blips appeared on the sensor screen. Three of the blips were much bigger and hotter than the others.

“The Alliance Fleet has begun acceleration for Neptune,” Nadia said.

Three Doom Stars, four SU battleships and one missile-ship accelerated away from Luna orbit. They were big warships, the last fighting fleet of Inner Planets, and possibly humanity’s last chance to defeat the cyborgs.

“Godspeed,” Marten said, as a sense of awe swept through him. Here it was. They were finally hitting back. What would the soldiers find in the Neptune System?

“How long will it take them to get there?” Xenophon asked, as he floated near.

“That depends,” Marten said.

“What’s the shortest possible travel time?”

“Osadar?” asked Marten.

“That also depends,” she said. “Given human endurance limitations—”

“I know the answer,” Nadia said. “I read some specs on the expected journey a few days before we left New Baghdad. It was something on the order of eight months, give or take several weeks.”

“I remember our acceleration as we left Jupiter,” Xenophon said. “I do not envy them.”

As he watched the blips, Marten did envy them. He wanted to kill cyborgs. Instead, he had a different mission.

Far away from Earth and Marten Kluge, the Chief Strategist of the Jupiter System landed on Ganymede, taking up quarters in a deep bunker. Three weeks had passed since the discovery of the moon-wreckers and her meeting with Sub-Strategist Circe. The Guardian Fleet was still accelerating at the enemy.

Tan’s headquarters contained a huge holo-screen. There, she watched the unfolding drama with the eight moon-wreckers of Uranus, keeping in direct link with the Advisor of Europa. He continued to conduct governmental business from Europa’s capital city. The two of them had come to an understanding. Now that she considered it, Tan realized what had happened. The entire Jovian System was in shock. People watched in disbelief as the moon-wreckers approached. The Advisor was no different from the masses. He wanted to end his life well. At this point, he probably still hoped for the impossible and wanted to maintain face and keep his position as a courageous war-leader.

Tan found sleep difficult in the sterile facilities. The majority of her time was spent before the large holo-screen with her primary archons in attendance, including Euthyphro the Advocate. From time to time, they attempted to engage her in debate on some arcane topic. She tried to humor them, but found herself staring at the screen, watching the Jovian defensive moves unfold with agonizingly slow motion.

The two Jovian asteroids broke out of Jupiter’s orbit, heading toward the wreckers aimed at Ganymede’s projected position in two weeks’ time. A monstrous plasma tail lengthened behind each of the two asteroids. On either side and behind the kilometers-huge objects followed the Guardian Fleet, also building up velocity. With the eight warships came nine helium-3 tankers and four Jovian space-liners. They were big spacecraft, and each was part of Europa’s defensive strategy.

With hands clasped behind her back, the Chief Strategist often spoke to Circe. The Sub-Strategist advised the three Force-Leaders of her meteor-ships. Circe maintained her quarters aboard the
Erasmus
, no doubt spending many hours starting at the pictures of Marten Kluge taped to the walls.

“It is unusual for a governor to actually
ride
into battle with her ships,” Euthyphro said of Circe.

Tan nodded absently as she studied the holo-screen. The eight moon-wreckers were visible. With giant interferometers, Carpo’s astronomers mapped the enemy structures. Tall towers with focusing mirrors were laser turrets. There were one hundred and twenty lasers and sixty launch-sites on the eight projectiles. It was an overwhelming number, too much for the Guardian Fleet. From time to time, there was movement behind the projectiles. It proved that warships—or cyborg spacecraft of some kind—followed close behind the moon-wreckers.

The hours passed in tedium and growing despair. The pictures were highly classified. Tan and her archons agreed that broadcasting the precise information would create system-wide panic. For the benefit of humanity, however, the detailed images were beamed to Mars and Earth.

The hours grew into days and the days became a week. Battle drew near and Tan paced endlessly before the holo-screen.

Then one moment among the tedium brought everything home. The holo-screen wavered and Sub-Strategist Circe’s face appeared where a second earlier it had shown the eight wreckers.

“We will commence the attack,” Circe said, speaking through tight-beam communication. “We will launch our decoy drones first. Let the record show, we cheerfully defended our system and entered battle with high resolve. Sub-Strategist Circe reporting.”

The image disappeared and the eight wreckers resumed their place on the holo-screen.

Soon, sixteen decoy drones detached from the vessels of the Guardian Fleet. Their utility was predicated on a different type of battle. The decoys were meant to mimic a meteor-ship, its mass, radiation and radio-signals. The hope was enemy missiles would target the drone instead of the real vessel.

Now the sixteen drones accelerated, passing the two Jovian asteroids and heading for the eight moon-wreckers. Fifteen minutes passed. Then large Zeno Drones detached from the meteor-ships. The new Jovian drones or missiles also accelerated. They were ship-killers, one of the primary weapons of the fleet. They too, sped at the enemy.

A day passed as the two “fleets” closed toward one another. Then the cyborg laser turrets targeted the approaching decoys and Zeon Drones, destroying one hundred percent of the Jovian projectiles.

Sixteen hours later, the lasers began chewing into the two Jovian asteroids, which had finally come into destruction range.

“Begin pumping the prismatic clouds,” Circe ordered the crews on the asteroids.

Because of the time lag, Chief Strategist Tan heard the order four minutes after it was given. The battle took a predicable course after that.

The lasers burned into the tiny reflective particles sprayed out of the Jovian asteroids. The asteroids no longer accelerated, but drifted toward the enemy. Giant pumps on the asteroids’ surface sprayed the cloud before them, the prismatic crystals reflecting the laser light and dissipating their strength. The laser heat slagged the crystals as a “burn through” took place. The situation was a mathematical formula of prismatic-mass versus laser-fuel and overheating.

By the time the asteroids ran out of P-clouds, sixteen cyborg lasers had stopped beaming. The remaining lasers now began to chew on the asteroids, heating the base material. If given enough time, mass would burn and boil away, and pieces would fracture and possibly drift apart.

As they continued to beam, the cyborgs launched several hundred missiles at the two asteroids.

“They mean to blow our two wreckers apart,” Circe radioed headquarters. So far, the Guardian Fleet and the accompanying spaceships hid behind the two asteroids, using them as shields.