Vaughn Heppner: Cyborg Assault

Then the cyborgs began to draw stubby tanglers. As fast as they were, Marten had time to think, Tanglers. They meant to capture us . Instead of curses, Marten pulled the trigger.

The heavy plasma cannon bucked as it spewed orange death. Marten had forgotten to set himself. The discharge applied Newton’s third law of motion. For every action, there was a reaction. The discharging cannon shoved Marten backward.

Omi clanged the hatch shut. Three splats against it told of tangle-balls hitting. Then the Mayflower shuddered gently.

Marten lifted the handscanner, staring at a fuzzy screen.

“Now what?” asked Omi.

“Cyborgs!” Marten hissed. “The cyborgs are in the Jupiter System.” His heart pounded with adrenalin. “All those months—”

“Cyborgs are in our ship,” Omi said, in his maddeningly calm way. “They’re beside us in a warship.”

Marten blinked rapidly as he clutched the plasma cannon. Cyborgs captured normal people and put them into horrible machines. That’s what Osadar had told them. They converted you into a cyborg. Death was preferable to capture.

“Marten?”

Marten kept blinking. Were the Jovians allied with the cyborgs?

“Marten?” Omi asked.

Marten quit blinking as he stared at Omi. “We have to kill the cyborgs in the pod,” he said. He was surprised at how calm he sounded.

“Any idea how?” asked Omi.

“Close the hatch behind us and then open this one,” Marten said, dipping the nozzle of the plasma cannon toward it.

“What if a cyborg survived?”

“Shut the hatch!” Marten hissed. “We don’t have time to jabber.”

Omi stared at Marten through his helmet’s faceplate and then he floated toward the rear hatch.

Marten raised the handscanner, using his thumb to click a keypad. “Osadar?” he said. “You’d better be ready.”

“I’m in the control room,” she said. They were using tight-link communications. “The Rousseau is hailing us, asking what happened.”

“You can’t answer because our communications are out,” Marten said. “Can you tell if the person hailing us is human or cyborg?”

“By the voice, human,” Osadar said.

“Ready,” Omi said beside Marten.

Marten took a deep breath. “Open it,” he whispered, “and then brace yourself for decompression.” Marten turned on his magnetic hooks, sealing his vacc-suit to the wall.

Omi opened the forward hatch. Escaping air smashed it open as the vacuum of space rushed in. In seconds, the air was gone from their chamber.

Marten shut off his hooks and drifted through the hatch. The wrecked airlock had a plasma hole in it straight through to space. Metal had melted and frozen in twisted globs. Three cyborgs drifted in the chamber. Two were missing part of their torsos and emitting blue sparks. The third lacked a head.

“The shuttle is secure,” Omi whispered over the tight-link.

“See if you can open the airlock,” Marten said.

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Listen to me,” Marten said. “Cyborgs do everything fast. We have no time to waste. Open the airlock now!”

Omi floated to the airlock as Marten checked the plasma cannon. This was bad. He only had two charges left. Then he’d have to hook it to a charging unit.

“The Rousseau has become insistent,” Osadar said over the tight-link.

“Keep them talking,” Marten said.

Omi cranked the damaged airlock wider, enough to allow a man to squeeze through.

Marten drifted nearer. They had to kill all the cyborgs in the pod. Their one stroke of good fortune was that the pod had maneuvered around the Mayflower , meaning that the airlock was aimed away from the Rousseau .

The long flex-tube detached from the Mayflower’s hull and retracted into the pod.

Cyborgs always move fast .

Marten clutched the heavy plasma cannon and eased into the airlock. While staying as far back as he could from the outer opening, he studied the tear-dropped-shaped pod. It was smooth, dark and had huge lettering on the side he couldn’t read. The black window by the front… was someone staring out of it and watching the airlock?

What should I do? If they send more cyborgs —

A hatch slid open on the pod. There was a flicker of movement. A humanoid shape jumped out of the hatch. Hydrogen spray trickled from its back. No, that was a thruster-pack. The cyborg might be cradling a weapon that Marten couldn’t see from here.

Marten swore softly as he knelt in the airlock. He brought up the plasma cannon. He knew he should wait until the cyborg was closer. But time was against them. He had to kill all the cyborgs in the pod… and on the Rousseau . Clearly, that was impossible. But if he wanted to keep on living as Marten Kluge, he was going to have to achieve the impossible.

Marten braced himself against a wall, targeted the bastard, and squeezed off two shots of roiling orange plasma. The first glob missed. The second orange blob consumed the cyborg’s midsection.

Marten made a strangled laugh. He hated cyborgs. He dreaded them. He watched the pod, waiting for some signal concerning its next move.

What are they thinking over there in the Rousseau?

“Marten,” Osadar said over the tight-link.

Here it comes , he thought.

“A cyborg is on the com-link,” she said. “It’s demanding to know what has occurred. Do you have any idea what I should say?”

“Can you mimic a controlled cyborg?”

“Not efficiently,” Osadar said. “There are too many variables that—”

“Open a channel and try to mimic a controlled cyborg the best you can. Tell them you have secured the ship. Then disconnect the com-unit. By then, I’ll be there with you.”

“They’ll destroy us,” Osadar said.

“We’re dead anyway. This way… this way we might be able to hurt them before we die.”

“I fail to—”

“Please, Osadar,” Marten said. His mouth felt bone dry. It was hard to talk. “Just do it while they’re still wondering what could have gone wrong.”

“Understood,” said Osadar. “I am complying.”

On his way to the shuttle’s control module, the answer came. Marten didn’t like it, but it seemed like the only way to survive the cyborgs. Either the melded creatures possessed a Jovian warship with a skeleton number of humans left, or the cyborgs were allied to the Jovians who controlled it. Those Jovians would all have to die if he, Omi and Osadar were to survive. That was a grim thing, but he wasn’t going to go soft now. He had clawed and fought his way out to Jupiter. He would claw and fight until he took his last breath, God willing.

Marten grimaced as he recalled his mother’s most quoted saying. She’d died in the Ring-Works Factory around Mercury. That seemed like a long time ago now. Political Harmony Corps had come for her then. As much as Marten hated PHC, it had still been composed of humans. The cyborgs—he was doing the humans aboard the Rousseau a favor killing them. If he could pull this off, that is.

Marten told the others his plan and they moved fast throughout the Mayflower . In six minutes, they met back at the airlock. Each of them had a hand-case and wore a vacc-suit with a helmet.

Osadar had already shrugged on a thruster-pack. Omi hooked tether lines between them.

“This will never work,” Osadar said over the tight-link. Her facial features were as much plastic as human, as much a mask as a face.

“I enjoy useless gestures,” Marten said.

Osadar stared at him.

“It’s a joke,” Marten said.

“Useless, yes,” Osadar said. She floated to the open airlock and pushed off toward the Rousseau’s drifting pod.