Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

“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.

Tan stood transfixed before the holo-screen deep in Ganymede. The time lag was minimal and soon forgotten. The Chief Strategist’s stomach clenched as she watched the seven meteor-ships and the lone dreadnaught maneuver out from behind the shielding asteroids so they could fire directly at the enemy’s missiles.

Lasers beamed from the Jovian warships, striking cyborg missiles, destroying many. Jovian defensive missiles burned long contrails as they launched and accelerated into the void, maxing out at one hundred and twelve Gs. Cyborg lasers now began to target the prone meteor-ships. The minutes passed as hellish rays burned into armored nosecones or boiled away meteor shielding.

Tan heard Circe’s orders. They were recording everything, beaming the information to the Inner Planets. One-by-one, as their mass disintegrated and threatened to splinter into sections, the meteor-ships moved back behind the Jovian asteroids, once again using them as defensive shields.

Now the remaining cyborg lasers targeted the Jovian rockets, destroying eighty-eight percent of them. The few to survive the attack reached the nearest cyborg missiles. The rockets exploded like grenades, creating masses of shrapnel that moved at hypervelocity at the cyborg missiles.

Forty-eight enemy missiles disintegrated or were otherwise destroyed by the shrapnel. Combined with those destroyed by Jovian lasers, one hundred and fifty-nine cyborg missiles were still intact, heading for the twin asteroids.