Vaughn Heppner: Cyborg Assault

Despite the victory, Marten’s chest felt heavy. Maybe Osadar had a point, at least about endless disappointment. Everywhere he went, people died, usually in great numbers. All the space marines he’d picked—all but seventeen of them were dead. Yakov was dead. Every person from the Descartes was dead, including Rhea. He should have gotten to know her.

He knew he should rejoice at their marvelous victory. Instead, he felt soiled, a killer who brought death and destruction wherever he went.

The large airlock hissed and rotated open. Omi stepped through, together with a person in a brown vacc-suit. Maybe it was one of the unmodified Jovians. Omi helped the Jovian, keeping a hand on his or her elbow.

Marten lifted a com-unit. “Is there trouble?”

Omi shook his helmeted head as he brought the Jovian closer.

The Jovian froze then. Omi released the elbow.

“Here is the screw-job,” Osadar said. “I can feel it.”

For some reason, that troubled Marten. He blinked, wondering what this feeling meant, if anything.

The brown-suited person unsealed the locks and then threw off the helmet. It banged on the floor and rolled. She had brown hair and pretty, familiar features. The brown-suited person staggered toward him.

“Marten,” she whispered.

Marten blinked again, and the terrible weight in his chest vanished as he recognized Nadia Pravda. Marten groaned as moisture welled in his eyes. This couldn’t be real.

“Nadia?” he whispered.

She reached him, staggering into his arms, bumping him so he took two steps back. They clutched each other. They hugged fiercely.

“Marten Kluge,” she said, as tears flowed from her eyes.

Marten held her face, and he stared into her eyes. “Is it really you?”

She nodded, and she was laughing and crying all at once.

Marten hugged her again, and then, as gently as he could, he pressed his lips against hers. Nadia Pravda was in his arms. She was his Nadia, and she tasted sweet.

She responded, and together, they kissed in the cyborg-built dome on Carme, the rogue moon, the ex-planet-wrecker.

Marten whispered, “You’ll never leave me again.”

She tightened her grip, nodding.

“Nadia,” he said, and there was joy in his heart that was impossible to describe. He had found his Nadia. In an evil and harsh universe, he’d finally found an oasis of bliss.

Like a wave in a pond created by a dropped pebble, the Web-Mind’s radioed deletion-codes trickled outward from its last position. Many millions of kilometers away on Athena Station, a special receiving unit from Neptune intercepted the faint radio signal.

An emergency computer there ran probability scenarios, trying to decipher the need for the deletion codes. After three minutes, it sent a questing radio call for the Web-Mind. It continued to do this for seventy-one hours.

Seventy-one hours of silence indicated the Web-Mind’s deletion. The odds of this were beyond the ninety-ninth percentile. Another special program activated in response to the Web-Mind’s deletion, seeking out the chief cyborg unit in the Jovian System. Shortly, the emergency program caused a short-burst information packet to speed to Gharlane. It sent him the lightguide laser code to Neptune. It also activated an accounting program in him.

Thus, Gharlane soon found himself hooked to his warship’s primary com-station, sending pulse-packets to the lightguide laser. That tight-beam laser in turn sent a grim accounting to the Prime Web-Mind in the Neptune System.

CHIEF CYBORG UNIT: JUPITER ASSAULT

GHARLANE PRIME, BATTLE COMMANDER

LIGHTGUIDE LINK: JUPITER-NEPTUNE

STEALTH CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

Tenth Cycle, Rotation 24

Concluding battle report No. 7

The Ganymede-Europa Lunge

The clever enemy meteor-tactic absorbed approximately thirty-one percent of our laser strikes and twenty-seven percent of our missile launches. Given their local warship-tonnage superiority, I broke off the penetration raid on Ganymede, leaving a screen of damaged patrol boats. They had been preloaded with Onoshi decoy equipment and they drew fifty-eight percent of enemy fire before their destruction.

The meteor-tactic proved decisive and indicated a primary enemy commander of level two or three ability. The analyzers confirm the reunification of Jovian political and military authorities.

The Ganymede-Europa Lunge caused a sixty-seven percent loss of warship-tonnage that originated from the Athena Station start-point. Enemy losses were computed at thirty-one percent.

The battle maneuver and combat resulted in the destruction of Io, eighty percent of the processing stations on the inner moons and critical Jovian loss on Europa. Monitoring the enemy news sites has revealed five critical hits on the water moon and a seventeen percent surface covering of Io-spawned radioactives.

Current warship ratios mandate a defensive cyborg strategy based on Athena Station. Enemy manufacturing presently runs at twenty-two percent of pre-stealth campaign levels. The probability battle-computer estimates a two-year struggle before the Jovians can eradicate our presence here.

I await instructions and reinforcements, Gharlane Prime, reporting.