Vaughn Heppner: Cyborg Assault

The Praetor shuddered and closed his eyes. That made the tic under his left eye more visible as it jerked the loose skin there. The Praetor had lost weight as concern had stolen his appetite. He would face anyone or anything man-to-man or chest-to-chest. Nothing in the universe frightened him physically. Give him a foe to battle—

His eyes snapped open. Anger filled his face. Grand Admiral Cassius had given him this command post.

The Praetor’s nostrils flared. “I won the Third Battle for Mars,” he whispered. “It was my missiles that opened up the enemy to the Doom Star lasers.”

His upper lip curled, and he gazed into some unseen distance. “You shall not steal my victory from me, Cassius. I’m coming back. You can count on that.”

A strange laugh bubbled from his throat. He shivered, and he was unaware that he did so. When the Thutmosis III had hurdled out of the Solar System—

The Praetor closed his eyes again. He had never understood loneliness until then. The idea of his ship rocketing outside of the Solar System and into the emptiness of space—the void was a thing , a beast that had spread in his soul. It had smothered courage, smothered daring and intellect alike. Shooting outside the Solar System, alone, with no hope of seeing Earth again, with—

“Enough,” the Praetor whispered.

He moistened his mouth and forced himself to study the faint holoimage before him. His great enemy was velocity, speed. He had built up great speed while circling the Sun. Now he needed to shed that speed. A small part of him was tempted to aim directly at Jupiter and crash into it. That would end the agony. That would end the loneliness that he’d felt while hurtling toward Uranus, unsure whether the barely-repaired engines could slow them enough as they whipped past the gas giant.

If this didn’t work—

“It will work,” he rumbled. He lifted a fist and hit the arm of his command chair. In the past, he would have struck hard and forcefully. Now, it was a feeble gesture. The loneliness, the emptiness of deep space—

Why did such loneliness exist?

“Are you afraid?” he whispered at himself. “Are you a coward, Praetor? Or will you survive so you can spit in Grand Admiral Cassius’s face?”

That was the antidote to his worries—anger, injustice and revenge. He must cling to them. No, he must gird himself with anger, with the sense of injustice committed against him and with thoughts of vengeance. He must buckle them like armor against the awfulness that lurked out there in the empty void of space.

Soon, he must engage the engines. He would have to time it right, letting Jupiter’s vast gravity-well help slow them. The engines and gravity-well needed to slow the ship to less than Jupiter’s escape velocity.

Could they do it? Could the badly damaged ship stand the strain? And if they did it, what awaited him in the Jupiter System?

That was the least of the Praetor’s worries. He was Highborn. The pathetic Social Unity humans had joined with cyborgs. Those cyborgs had proven deadly. A Doom Star had died. But neither cyborgs nor Homo sapiens had proven tough enough to face the Highborn and survive.

The Praetor laughed as he pushed out of the command chair. If he could halt the Thutmosis III , he knew what he’d do in the Jupiter System. He would conquer it for the Highborn. He would show the ranking warriors of the Master Race that he was greater than Grand Admiral Cassius. With a crippled ship, he would conquer a planetary system. What Highborn had ever achieved that?

The facial tic quivered as the background engine whine rose an octave. First, he needed to shed the ship’s velocity. Soon, the survivors would strap onto the acceleration couches as they made their last attempt to survive in the Solar System.

If the engines failed, or if it looked as if they might fail, then he would aim the Thutmosis III at Jupiter. Or he would crash the ship into a human vessel or into an orbiting habitat. If he was about to die, he would try to kill as much of the universe as he could. Why he felt this way, he had no idea. He just knew it would make him feel better killing others if he himself wasn’t going to be allowed to live.

When the Mayflower exploded, Marten, Omi and Osadar had already been moving away from it in the stolen pod.

With their head start and by accelerating at full thrust, they outran any appreciable heat damage. Heat from a nuclear explosion in space had the shortest kill-radius of the three dangers. It also helped that the pod’s exhaust nozzle was aimed at the blast. A heat shield between the exhaust and the inhabitable quarters of the pod dampened what might have otherwise proven fatal.

The EMP blast washed over the pod’s electronics and fused several key functions, including life-support. It also knocked out engine control, which didn’t really matter as the most critical damage came from a piece of shrapnel. The size of an Old Earth penny, the jagged shrapnel sliced through the pod’s exhaust. Then it sliced through the heat shield and the engine. Lastly, it ricocheted out of the pod, barely missing the command chamber.

The penny-sized piece of shrapnel damaged a heat coil, causing the engine overload. Luckily, although ship engine controls were fused, the emergency detachment sequence wasn’t. It activated and began the procedure. With a shudder, the engine-half of the pod separated from the forward compartments, but both halves still possessed the same heading and velocity. Fortunately, the pod designers had considered that possibility.

A red strobe-light washed the command chamber as a klaxon wailed.

“Hang on!” shouted Osadar.

All three of them had already sealed their vacc-suits. Thus, they spoke via radio.

The command chamber shook as a non-lethal blast violently separated the pod. Emergency hydrogen-thrust now accelerated them away from the engine compartment. Fifty seconds later and through the polarized window, Marten caught a glimpse of a white flash.

They waited. The explosion had obviously created shrapnel, shrapnel that could possibly destroy their compartment.

After two minutes had elapsed, Marten said over their helmet radios, “It looks like we made it.”

“Yes. Harmony has been achieved,” Osadar said from the pilot’s chair. “We are sealed in a speeding coffin, doomed to certain death.”

Marten made a harsh sound. “I’ve been in worse situations. We’re alive. We’ve escaped a wretched fate and now must rely on our wits to survive.”

“Fate haunts you,” Osadar said. “Whatever you do, you are doomed.”

“You’re wrong,” Marten said. “Political Harmony Corps, Highborn, cyborgs, everyone has had their shot at me. I’m still alive and now we’re in the Jupiter System, not lost between Mercury and Venus. We should be able to rig a distress beacon.”

“To call more cyborgs onto us,” Osadar said.

“Do cyborgs control the entire system?” Omi asked.

“You’d think we would have picked that up on our radio during the journey here,” Marten said. “There would have been fighting. But we’ve heard nothing about that.”

“Yet they are in the Jupiter System,” said Osadar. “They possess Jovian warships.”

“One less than before,” Marten said, with a curl to his lip.

“Never fear. More will come. It is inevitable.”

Marten squinted at Osadar. Listening to her, he hardened his resolve to do something. He began to examine the tiny command chamber. Soon, he’d torn off half the panels to see if he could fix something. They needed to recycle the air in their vacc-suits, to find a way to open the hatch—this crazy pod didn’t have manual override. What ship designer had left that out? What did that say about the Jovians? Had some of them really allied with cyborgs?