Vaughn Heppner - Planet Wrecker

Junk drifted around Athena Station. Twisted girders, shell casings, asteroid rocks and dust, endless dust—it formed a black halo around the Jovian moon.

On the asteroid were shattered buildings, broken laser turrets and craters, many still hot and glowing red. In the tunnels, the underground storage facilities and now uninhabitable sleeping chambers were hundreds of Jovian corpses. Among them drifted cyborg bodies, most missing limbs or with smashed torsos. Deep in the station’s core were the radioactive ruins of the former cyborg conversion unit. Jovian space marines had attempted capturing it intact. They’d paid a bitter price in lost soldiers when the last cyborgs had detonated the nuclear device. That had ended the battle for Athena Station.

The final patrol boat still on the moon ignited thrusters. It lifted off and began to thread its way through the endless debris orbiting the tiny planetoid.

The mass of debris blown off Athena Station dwarfed that blown off Carme fifteen months ago. Cyborg Gharlane, the prime unit in the Jupiter Assault, had ordered the extensive detonations for a reason. He now lay dead in a box that floated four hundred kilometers from the asteroid’s surface. The box drifted among a field of rocks and fine particles of dust. Thick black-ice sheeted the box, which contained an AI, highly-advanced medical functions and battery power.

The box’s power expenditure was minimal. With the ice-coating, it was low enough to have evaded Jovian sensor sweeps—at least so far. Lasers stabbed in the darkness, obliterating objects. The AI had run probability checks and concluded the Jovians weren’t taking any chances. It appeared they were destroying anything with signs of life, anything with possible cyborg devices. It was only a matter a time before they beamed these rocks and ice as a precautionary measure.

Using a passive system, the AI monitored enemy communications. Then it used its intelligence to decipher the messages. One message met Gharlane’s preconditions by seventy-three percent, enough to activate resuscitation.

Heaters warmed the dead bio-portions as energized blood began to pump through Gharlane. Needles entered his brainpan, injecting crystal-7, beginning the cryogenic de-thawing of his frozen tissues.

Gharlane had miscalculated on the speed of the Jovian counter-attack. Instead of two years, it had only taken fifteen months for them to retake much of their system. During these final weeks, he’d credited the speed and success of the enemy to Chief Strategist Tan. Within his minimal personality a hatred had grown for Strategist Tan which had transformed into a desire for revenge. Combined with the total silence of the Prime Web-Mind of Neptune, Gharlane had decided on a deception option. He’d sacrificed the last cyborgs in the Jovian System to cover his insertion into orbit.

The black-ice-coated box drifted through space, surrounded by the debris of battle. Around Gharlane’s ‘corpse’, the medical devices began to hum at optimal levels.

In time, Gharlane opened his eyes: black plastic sockets with silver balls and red-lit pupils. His mouth twitched and he breathed shallowly, rapidly. Soon, the breathing deepened to a normal level.

He was cocooned and cushioned, with tubes sticking in his body. With an effort, he twisted his neck, moving his head until he faced a monitor. His titanium-reinforced fingers activated the box’s passive sensors.

It took time, but he discovered three meteor-ships around Athena Station. They were at equidistant points, each more than one-thousand kilometers away from the asteroid. The searching, obliterating lasers stabbed out from these platforms.

Gharlane frowned. The AI should have—

A binary blip of data played in his head. He heard the message the AI had used to approve his revival.

Gharlane made a croaking sound, his first attempt at speech. He’d been right after all. The probabilities combined with the Jovians’ noted parameters….

Powerful chemicals entered his bloodstream, cooling his elation. He would need cold calculation to achieve his last goal. The Chief Strategist had destroyed Athena Station, the last bastion of his life-function. Now he would exact a final penalty from her, and with it achieve a personal victory.

Gharlane turned his head the other way, and he began to issue directives. Stimulants granted him greater strength. New life surged with each additional dosage. He drained battery power into his booster-joints, magnifying his mechanical abilities.

Soon, the medical units whined as they began to retreat from him. Tubes popped out of his plasti-flesh. He slithered into a skintight garment and then crawled to a military vacc-suit. With painstaking care, he climbed into it and closed the seals. Then he attached primitive weapons to the belt. Enemy sensors would likely pick up higher-grade weaponry. Once finished, he uttered code words.

Darkness became complete as everything within the box shutdown. He waited.

…Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven—at zero, the locks snapped apart. The box split in two. That sent precise pressure against the outer ice. Cracks appeared in a zigzag line. From within the ruptured box, Gharlane exerted force. The lines in the ice crackled, and like a cocoon, the halves separated. The inner oxygen was a puff in the void. Then Gharlane appeared, climbing like a spiderling from its egg-sac.

The vacc-suit was black—coated with anti-radar. He crawled across the ice, and he pointed his helmet at the nearest meteor-ship. It would have been invisible to a human eye, but not to his enhanced orbs with teleoptic sight.

A patrol boat left the distant meteor-ship. The boat headed away from Athena Station. There was a high probability that the boat’s occupants would rendezvous with the last Jovian dreadnaught. The dreadnaught was two thousand kilometers away.

Gharlane gathered himself. He had the dreadnaught’s coordinates, even though he couldn’t see the vessel. He calculated its orbital drift. Mighty Jupiter hung in the darkness, but he ignored it and the giant storm known as the Red Spot. With cyborg precision, Gharlane leapt, propelling himself toward the dreadnaught’s future location.

He was presently beyond the hot zone of laser strikes. More chemicals entered his bloodstream. His brain shut down as his body entered into hibernation. He drifted through space, heading toward his final destination.

Marten Kluge let the hot spray of the shower massage his tired muscles. That felt so good.

He had a lean, hard frame, with too many scars, tissue lumps and a purple bruise along the left side of his ribcage. A cyborg had almost killed him yesterday, using the stock of its laser carbine to butt his ribs. If they’d been fighting under regular gravity, he’d be dead now. Instead, he’d flown backward, cracking his helmeted head against a stanchion. The cyborg had been fast—they all were. Luckily, Marten’s draw had been faster. As the cyborg had flown at him, he’d drawn his gyroc pistol, killing it before it had reached him.

The shower door opened then, causing the spray to cease automatically. Marten spun around, almost slipping on the wet tiles. A naked Nadia Pravda grinned at him. Then her eyes took in his purple bruise. She frowned.

“Marten—”

He grabbed a wrist and drew her into the tiny cubicle. He winced as she pressed against his ribs.

“I’m hurting you,” she whispered.

He kissed her, and the hot spray began to jet against the two of them….

Lying on the bed afterward, Marten felt guilty about what he’d done. They weren’t married yet. Nadia sat on the edge of the bed, combing her long hair. Her skin was so smooth, and her back—