Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

“Liftoff in ten seconds!” the com-officer shouted.

Ricardo turned on the facility’s outer cameras. Cyborgs bounded toward the launching point. There must be over one hundred of them. A last transport with smoke billowing from two of its engines still headed for them. The transport must have been well back from the others. Ricardo didn’t know if a SAM had hit it or if the plane had taken off with engine trouble.

“Five…four…three…two…one…zero.”

An intense sound punctuated the end of the countdown. A small vibration occurred and immediately increased until Ricardo clenched his teeth as his head vibrated wildly. The shaking intensified and then upward lift began.

“We’re taking off!” a woman shrieked.

On his screen, Ricardo watched as the underground bay door overhead dilated open. The Martian sky greeted them.

“Come on,” Ricardo whispered. “Get us out of here.”

The roar became thunder and the warship Pancho Villa moved toward the opening, toward freedom and life.

“I’m routing laser controls to me!” Ricardo shouted. Likely, no one heard him. It didn’t matter. He took over, and he switched on the warship’s outer cameras. They shook too hard for him to use. Thinking fast, Ricardo switched on the SAM site’s cameras.

The Pancho Villa slowly slid out of the ground. Three hundred meters away, cyborgs sped for them. The enemy wasn’t going to make it.

With the shaking, it was getting harder to keep his hands on the controls. Ricardo switched camera settings. The last enemy air transport with trailing smoke was almost over them.

They want to crash into us .

Ricardo activated the laser, and he tapped the auto-tracking and fire pad. To his vast relief, he saw the ship’s red beam stab the transport.

“We’ll beat you yet!” Ricardo shouted, as he shook his fist at the craft. Then, in horror, he saw cyborgs leap out of the bay doors. The transport was almost upon them, but breaking apart. Now jetpacks spewed thrust, and individual cyborgs dropped and thrust at the Pancho Villa .

Ricardo shook his head. As the warship slid toward the sky, visibly gaining speed, several of the creatures attached themselves to the ship’s skin. With fantastic strength, five cyborgs tore their way into the accelerating vessel.

An alarm sounded, barely audible over the roar and thunder of the engines pushing them toward space.

This can’t be happening .

Ricardo stared at his screen. No one could un-strap and face the cyborgs now. They were under too much G-force. If he shut off the engines, the Pancho Villa would not gain escape velocity and they would tumble back onto the planet. Either that or one of the captured satellites would fire lasers into them.

“You haven’t won!” Ricardo shouted. Straining to keep his hand up, he switched cameras. Cyborgs crawled through the accelerating ship. One of the creatures forced a hatch, drew a weapon and shot the ten humans strapped to their acceleration couches.

The next few minutes brought the horror home to Captain Ricardo Sandoval as the five cyborgs murdered fifty-seven humans.

They beat us. They captured Mars. Now they’re going to get our only warship .

“No,” Ricardo said. “No, they’re not.”

As the Pancho Villa exited the Martian atmosphere, Ricardo punched in his commander’s password.

As the destruct button appeared on his screen, the door to the chamber blew inward, and an upright cyborg stepped heavily into the command room. The cyborg swiveled its gun toward him. Before it could shoot, Ricardo touched the red destruct button.

The cyborg fired, and three steel needles entered Captain Sandoval’s chest. The pain was intense. Two seconds later, the Pancho Villa auto-destructed as the engine’s dampeners went offline. The warship fire-balled, ending the last fight in the successful cyborg assault of Mars.

Millions of kilometers in-system from Mars, Marten Kluge sat in his highly-modified patrol boat. He searched the void with improved sensors, using passive systems: teleoptic scopes, thermal scans, broad-spectrum electromagnetic sweeps, neutrino, and mass detection.

He sat behind and to the left of Osadar and Nadia in the sensor/communications seat. Respectively, they sat in the pilot and weapons officer’s chairs before a polarized window of ballistic glass. The boat was shaped much like his old shuttle, only bigger. It also had troop-pods attached, big round sections to add living space.

They had been in space for seven months. He recalled how only a few weeks out from Earth they had watched eight blips burn as the Alliance Fleet built up velocity for Neptune.

“We need to move like mice in a house full of cats,” Marten had told them then. “The Doom Stars and battleships are leaving Inner Planets, and even if they began deceleration now, it would take them weeks to return. But I’m betting the Highborn and Hawthorne kept something in reserve. They have to be thinking about what happens if and when they destroy the cyborgs.”

“Meaning what?” Nadia asked.

“That Highborn and SU warships are still in the Inner System,” Marten had said. “Given what happened to the Jupiter System, it’s likely the cyborgs already have stealth craft here. We have to move with extreme care.”

“What is our objective?” Osadar asked.

“Storming the Sun Station,” Marten said. “But for obvious reasons, we’re going to attempt it after the Alliance Fleet has engaged the cyborgs at Neptune.”

“Your reasoning is sound,” Osadar said, as she peered out of the polarized window. She spent more time than anyone else did staring at the stars. “We need the Highborn to defeat the cyborgs. The Highborn might turn on the accompanying battleships if we captured the Sun Station too soon. How many Highborn do you believe are stationed on our objective?”

“Since it’s a prime military target,” Marten said, “I’m guessing a lot.”

Osadar swiveled around to study him. “Your answer suggests that there are more Highborn on the station than our space marines can defeat.”

“That could be a problem,” Marten admitted.

“Can we approach the station undetected?” Osadar asked.

“We have several obstacles to overcome,” Marten said. “We have semi-cloaked vessels, but the Highborn have the giant interferometer. It seems unlikely we can remain hidden the entire time. The other problem involves the Sun’s heat and radiation. They become extreme the closer one approaches it. Our boats were never built to withstand that. Once we reach Mercury’s orbital path, we’ll have to live in our combat-suits.”

“Will that be enough protection?” Osadar asked.

“We’re going to find out.”

“Our victory could be short-lived,” Osadar said.

“A short-lived victory is better than none,” Marten said. “Besides, it might give other humans in better suits or spacecraft time to take over before other Highborn arrive.”

“Do you know of other such ships?” Osadar asked.

Marten hesitated before he nodded.

“This is news,” Osadar said.

“Social Unity has a hidden missile-ship out here,” Marten said. “Hawthorne told me about it once. It has been in space since the beginning of hostilities. The crew will certainly be weary, but they have weapons and a ship with heavy particle-shielding. It will be just what we need to get in close to the Sun Station.”

“You can find this missile-ship?”

“Hawthorne gave me the coordinates once. I’m not sure if it’s five-nine or nine-five. Maybe I’ll just flip a coin to decide.”

Osadar shook her head. “The odds are against events helping us, as the universe deplores such actions. I point to my own life as an example, a study in the universe’s ill humor.”