Planetary Assault (Star Force Series) Read online

  Taking another careful sip of his remaining water, Mule ate a concentrate. He was tired. Despite all the practice on the gravity-wheels and in the gunner tank aboard Slovakia, he didn’t have the same stamina he’d had on Earth. Floating in space for three years had taken its toll.

  He pushed himself, wanting to get back with Chen and Bogdan. It was so lonely by himself on this planetoid of brain-stealing cyborgs. Did the men see him coming on their sonars? Or had they turned theirs off? If they’d used sonar earlier, Chen would have tried to catch him. He’d moved steadily throughout the magma-chamber, however. Likely, he’d given them a hard chase before Chen would have written him off.

  It seemed to take forever, but Mule finally reached the wall the others were climbing. He began to climb, too. It was the only way out; either that, or he’d have to break through the wall between chambers, and flow out with the magma as it entered the empty places.

  He’d didn’t have much air left. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to employ careful tactics. He’d have to charge straight at the cyborg structure, hoping it possessed more air.

  Using his exoskeleton-reinforced strength, he dug his fingers into rock and kicked his booted toes in for purchase. He climbed. Once, a current caught him. He felt the sluggish magma move all around him, trying to drag him off the wall. Was there an eruption coming?

  The gloved fingers of his left hand slipped out of the rock. No! I can’t afford this! Mule silently howled in his mind. He shoved the hand back, powering his armor to push.

  Meter by meter he crawled up, and slowly the current ebbed away. After hours of swimming, wading in the cryomagma netherworld, Mule crawled onto a shelf of sorts and squeezed his battlesuit out of a geyser vent.

  He flopped onto surface ice and looked up. The stars were glorious. He laughed, the sounds echoing in his helmet. When he stopped, he crawled onto rocky ground and lay there panting.

  A warning beep told him that another hour of air had been used up. That sobered him. He brought up his gyroc rifle and tried to clean it. He didn’t know if it would work. If it didn’t, that would leave him with pulse grenades and a vibrio-knife for hand-to-hand combat.

  I have to be the reinforcement for Chen and Bogdan.

  Mule spotted the two crawling toward low domed buildings. One dome was cracked and dark. Another had completely crumpled inward.

  We must have done that; Captain Han’s missiles hurt them.

  It was good to know they’d damaged the cyborgs at least a little bit. One dome looked intact. Is that where the cyborgs had played their demonic games on the captured Marines?

  Mule debated options. By their crawling speed, it seemed as if the two would have taken fifteen minutes to reach their present positions near the dome. If he crawled, it would take him too long to catch up. Because of his lack of air, he needed to leap fast. Did the cyborgs have motion sensors around here? If he began leaping, he might give the two Marines away.

  Mule took out his rifle, lay down on the ice and set his HUD at extreme magnification. He’d start moving once the two men reached the dome. If they had a chance of sneaking near undetected, he was going to give it to them.

  He realized this was the back side of the dome. At least, it was the back side in relation to their original vector against it. They had used the magma-chamber to go under the domes and come up on the other side. Was that an advantage?

  Mule studied the wrecked domes and the good one. He didn’t spy movement or sensors.

  Just as he was about to look away, he saw a cyborg. It moved from the crumpled dome to the intact one.

  He glanced at the two men. Their angle was wrong and they couldn’t see the meld. It would seem the meld couldn’t see them either because there was a cliff between it and the two Marines.

  Mule couldn’t warn them without giving away their positions. Instead, he aimed the rifle and rapid-fired. As the gyroc rockets ignited and began their flight at the enemy, Mule waited until they were halfway there. Then he got up and began to leap toward the vile cyborgs.

  Mule expected the meld to whirl around before darting out of sight. It didn’t. Instead, the meld dragged its left leg. It seemed sluggish and slow. At the last moment, it turned and must have registered the shells zooming at it, and then seen Mule. The thing lifted its laser pulse rifle.

  Mule sailed through Tyche’s weak atmosphere, willing himself to land and go to ground.

  The creature raised its weapon, tracked him—then the first gyroc shell slammed against the cyborg’s chest-plate. The second and third shells hit, exploding. The meld blew backward, its suit and body ruptured. Inner circuits began sparking.

  Something was definitely wrong with the cyborg. That wasn’t how they normally reacted. Usually they were much harder to kill.

  Chen and Bogdan finally saw Mule. They stared from their prone positions.

  Mule continued taking giant strides for the intact dome. As he neared, the two men climbed to their feet. Mule pointed at the dome. Because the cyborg had moved so slowly, he figured this must be their moment of opportunity. If something was wrong with the cyborgs, they needed to attack this instant. Mule swung his right arm and pointed, emphatically indicating the dome again.

  Chen and Bogdan jumped and joined him: three Marines out of two thousand. None of them could use the close-channel. Their link-lines must have been damaged down in the cryo-chamber just like his. There was comm cackle on the open Marine band. It meant others still fought, but far away from here. In their powered armor, the three Marines leaped toward what looked like an intact hatch leading into the one good dome.

  Mule’s oxygen levels would soon be in the red. The grueling wade in the cryomagma had eaten up more of his reserves than it should have. He could tear out the hatch or he could try to open it without damage. Would cyborgs be waiting inside for them? Could the melds pry him out of his tin suit, drug him or steal his brain?

  Chen landed beside him and put a gloved hand on Mule’s shoulder. The sergeant’s gorilla-suit gave him a nod. They were still maintaining comm silence.

  Mule opened the hatch.

  They stepped in, closed it and cycled air into the chamber.

  Mule’s guts crawled with anticipation. He gripped his gyroc.

  The other two clutched theirs. Bogdan opened the inner hatch and stepped in. Laser pulses washed the front of his suit. Bogdan staggered. More pulses struck.

  With a giant leap, Mule flew past the red-glowing armor and skidded on his chest-plate. He snapped off shots. The APEX rounds hardly ignited their rocket motors before slamming into cyborgs and exploding. Heat washed against Mule. Blisters rose on his skin and his air-conditioner hummed. He kept firing, as did the others.

  Abruptly it was over, with hazy smoke drifting in the large dome. Suddenly, the smoke swirled and headed toward a rupture in the dome. Klaxons blared. Mule could barely hear it in his helmet.

  Chen took several quick strides, picked up a metal plate and slapped it against the rupture, caused by a penetrator round ripping a hole through to Tyche’s paltry atmosphere.

  Climbing to his feet, Mule warily looked around. Three cyborgs lay in shattered pieces around them. It was amazing only one APEX round had ruptured the dome’s skin.

  The chamber was large with hatches leading to what seemed like other rooms or cubicles. There was crated equipment stacked everywhere, and a control panel. This looked like a storage chamber, or the cyborgs had used it as one.

  Chen hurried to Bogdan.

  Mule spun around to look. The sub-sergeant’s armor still glowed red and the Marine didn’t move, but lay face down.

  Chen’s visor cracked open. The growth of beard, haggard skin and bloodshot eyes made the sergeant looked old and worn.

  Mule did the same with his own faceplate. He wrinkled his nose at the burnt electric odors and other, more nauseating stenches. But he could breathe the stuff. He was alive and they’d found an air source.

  “Let’s get his helmet off,” Chen said. The sergeant
’s voice sounded subdued in this strange dome with the dead cyborgs.

  “I don’t get it,” Mule said, as he moved to Bogdan. “How did we outgun three cyborgs?”

  “How did you kill the one outside? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what I think.”

  Mule knelt beside Bogdan and unsnapped the emergency releases. With exoskeleton power, he popped off the helmet and wished he hadn’t. Bogdan smelled like charred meat, and his features were crispy and shriveled. The lasers must have shorted battlesuit circuits and cooked the Marine like a lobster in a pot. He’d never liked Bogdan, but the man had deserved better than this.

  “Damn,” Chen said. “We lost a good man.”

  “At least Bogdan won’t have to worry about them using his brain,” Mule said.

  Chen lifted his head as rage washed across his haggard features. “I want to kill them, Mule. I want to slaughter the lot of them.”

  “If the rest of the cyborgs fight as poorly as these three did,” Mule said, “maybe we have a chance.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Mule raised an eyebrow.

  “It was your stupid stunt that likely saved our lives,” Chen said.

  “You mean the magma-chamber?” Mule asked.

  “I know you noticed the destroyed domes,” Chen said. “Slovakia’s drones pumped gamma and X-rays at these places. Some of the radiation must have hit some of the cyborgs. They’re part machine and part man. I imagine the machine parts can take plenty of radiation, but not so much with the bio parts.”

  “You think radiation poisoning made them slow?” Mule asked.

  “I bet the dosages would have killed us even in our suits. I think the X-rays and gamma rays were killing these cyborgs, but it was taking time. By going down and taking a swim in ice lava and with your stunt of going off on your own… Where were you going, by the way? Why didn’t you stick with us?”

  “My sonar gear malfunctioned for a time. I think one of the laser burns did it.”

  Chen nodded. “I thought it was something like that.”

  “We’d better refill our air tanks and figure out our next step,” Mule said. “The Web-Mind must know we made it here. It might send healthy melds after us to finish the job.”

  “I’ll look for a compressor,” Chen said. “You get me a schematic of his base. I think you’re right about the Web-Mind’s plan. But I also suspect we have a few minutes grace. The trouble is, I’m beginning to believe we don’t have many Marines left. Maybe we’re all that’s left to defeat the Web-Mind and rescue our captured buddies.”

  Mule doubted any of the captured Marines were still alive. That wasn’t the point, though. He’d made it to an air source. Now he was going to practice genocide on the Web-Mind and figure out a way to destroy every cyborg on this icy planetoid. He wanted vengeance and he wanted it today.

  -9-

  The panel wasn’t complicated, and thirty minutes searching computer files brought up plenty of schematics and a layout of the situation. In fact, Mule believed he could piece out the situation both for the original, Neptunian plan and what the cyborgs, or the Web-Mind, intended on doing.

  As he read and looked at maps, Mule’s perception shifted. He quit thinking of the original scientists as Neptunians but as the Ice Hauler Cartel. That’s who had been out here: cartel people or cartel employees.

  He knew a little basic history. Rich individuals—cartel barons, for want of a better term—ran the icer organization. Correction, they had run the cartel. All those Neptunians, rich or poor, were either dead or converted into cyborgs now. Just like his wife and kids, and like all of Mars. Much of the Neptune system, or the people rather, had lived in ice-shielded habitats. Ice made an excellent insulator. The Neptunians had developed weird ice, a stronger form of ice for space construction.

  The Ice Cartel had been into more than just ice, but that had been its origin. According to what Mule read, it was clear to him his guess had been right earlier: Tyche was extremely rich in fissionable ores. It had been a bonanza except for one particular. The planetoid had been much too far away from Neptune. With slow ion drives and robotic systems, it might not have been a problem. Instead of doing it that way, though—with ion-drive ore haulers and automated mining systems—the cartel had decided to bring Tyche to Neptune. Mule bet there had been other reasons for doing that, but one key reason would have been to bring the world of fissionable ores to Neptune to protect it and to keep it close under cartel guns.

  The various schematics Mule brought up showed pre- and post-cyborg occupation construction. That answered one of Mule’s biggest questions. How had the cyborgs bought enough equipment to build world-moving engines? They hadn’t. The cartel had already shipped out those engines and had begun to install them.

  By the size of pre-cyborg mines—the various sites, domes, tunnels and weapon systems—it seemed some cartel people might also have considered leaving the Solar System. Not so long ago, it looked as if nothing was going to stop the melds from conquering and converting everyone in the Solar system. In that case, Tyche would have been a humanity-filled ark. Now it was the cyborgs’ turn to feel the squeeze of extinction and wish to get away. Either that or they would use the planetoid as a last ditch assault weapon against the sunbeam. The odds seemed too long to win against the sunbeam, though. It had already obliterated moons as big as this Oort Cloud planetoid.

  Tyche would have been more than an intergalactic ark in the making. The planetoid would have been a bonanza for the arriving cyborgs. With all the people here—it looked like several thousand had been living in pre-cyborg times—the melds could have harvested that many more meat-sacks for brains, spines and eggs and sperm. The Ice Hauler Cartel had paved the way for future cyborgs to haunt humanity into interstellar space.

  “What do you have for me, Mule?” Chen asked.

  They’d popped their shells. The battlesuits stood near outlets, soaking up juice and with refilled air tanks. The sergeant had been fixing faulty suit systems, at least those that he could.

  Mule looked up from the panel. “It looks like Captain Han hit them pretty good,” he said. “One of the X-ray missiles struck this place, which is a prime storage area. There are more storage areas below us in underground caverns. There’s also an access tunnel leading to the main engine tunnels deeper in the rock.”

  “How does that help us finish the mission?” Chen asked.

  “I found what must be a skimmer park,” Mule said. “It’s twenty kilometers from here.”

  “Skimmers will help us finish the Web-Mind and rescue our comrades?” Chen asked. “I don’t see how.”

  Mule shook his head. “I’d forget about rescues missions, Sarge. Those men are already dead or wish they were. The skimmers are what we need.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “Tyche’s gravity is pathetically low. We could rig a skimmer easily enough to fly out to Slovakia. Well, we could get an initial boost off-world and drift the rest of the way to the mothership.”

  Chen stared at him. “This is a suicide mission. So forget about getting home again. We’re here to kill the Web-Mind and nothing else.”

  “Exactly,” Mule said.

  Chen frowned. “So how come you’re talking about flying back to Slovakia?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. We don’t know where the Web-Mind is. But my guess is that it’s near the main engines. That strikes me as the safest place on or in the planetoid, and we know Web-Minds value personal safety above all else.”

  “Can we use the access tunnel to reach the engine area and reach the Web-Mind?”

  “It’s possible the access tunnel goes there,” Mule said, “but I doubt two lone Marines can fight past the defending cyborgs.”

  “Our battlesuits are charged and ready. We have plenty of air and maybe more of those cyborgs are sick from radiation poisoning.”

  “That’s too many ifs,” Mule said. “I’m not interested in heroics or tough-guy fighting, I’m interesting in winni
ng and defeating the enemy—killing them.”

  Chen blinked several times, and lines furrowed in his forehead. “I don’t see it that way.”

  “It’s because you’re too conditioned to think things through. You want to charge in a suicidal attack when there’s a better way to do this that brings us victory.”

  “Listen to me—”

  “No, you listen,” Mule said. “Two cyborgs wiped out eight Marines earlier. Who knows how many melds are left? Suppose one hundred melds are blocking our way. Can you honestly say that you can handle another hundred cyborgs?”

  Chen’s stubborn looked remained, but eventually he shook his head.

  “I know how to kill, annihilate and destroy the Web-Mind.”

  “Tell me,” Chen said in a ragged voice. “I’m listening.”

  Mule brought up a schematic. “Do you see the access tunnel’s connection to the main engine tunnels?”

  “Yeah,” Chen said, “so what?”

  “So we breach the magma-chamber.” Mule tapped the schematic. “The access tunnel here is well below the magma-chamber. That means cryomagma—liquid methane—will run down the tunnel and possibly fills the engine area.”

  “Possibly?” Chen asked.

  Mule silently berated himself for a bad choice of words.

  “I’m only interested in certainties,” Chen told him.

  “I’m ahead of you, Sergeant. The Web-Mind will know an emergency when it’s given one. I’m betting it summons all its cyborgs to stem the tide, so to speak, to stop the cryomagma flow from reaching the planetary engines.”

  “That saves the Web-Mind.” Chen shook his head. “I want to kill it.”

  “Like I said, after we breach the magma-chamber, we head twenty kilometers away to the skimmer park. We each take one, each of them loaded with missiles. We figure out how to get them into space, fly around to the exhaust port and launch every missile we have into it. Maybe the cyborgs even have a few nuclear-tipped missiles stored at the park. It seems a likely enough place to store a few. The nuclear missiles will wreck the engines.”