Planet Wrecker

-30-

Commodore Blackstone stood beside the map-module on the Vladimir Lenin. The Zhukov-class Battleship was one of four in the Mars System. There were a few other secondary vessels in his truncated fleet, but they were a pittance compared to the ships he’d possessed before facing the Doom Stars.

There was a red glow on the bridge. His officers were at their posts, diligently studying new data.

The hatch opened and Blackstone looked up. Commissar Kursk entered, and the briefest flicker of a smile played on his lips. Kursk was the only happiness he had in the certain knowledge that humanity was doomed.

They had beaten the Highborn. At least, they had made the super-soldiers retreat in their dreadful Doom Stars. For that, Blackstone knew he’d become a legend among the people of Earth. He’d even enjoyed the broadcasts the propagandists had beamed to Mars. It had revived him enough that he’d begun physical training and had regained some of his youthful stamina. Kursk had taken advantage of that in prolonged sexual encounters. That had lasted until news over a year ago had arrived from Jupiter. The story of the planet wrecker…what had that Jovian moon been called? Ah, right—Carme. The moon had changed Blackstone’s perceptions, so had the reports of the Highborn blockade tightening around Earth.

There never had been more battleships and no extra missile-ships joining his flotilla. The Supreme Commander had decided to keep a small fleet-in-being between Venus and Earth. From the rumors he’d heard, it was a deteriorating fleet. One battleship had headed out-system. Instead of stopping at Mars, it had long ago sped for the Saturn System. No one had heard anything from it for over a year.

Blackstone adjusted the map-module. He was a short man, with a newly bio-sculpted face, giving him a younger appearance. The best doctor in the Planetary Union had operated on him. The doctor had sharpened the nose and added authority to his chin. He’d even grafted new hair, which had taken well. Kursk had urged him to make these changes.

“You have news?” asked Kursk.

“It’s difficult to see,” Blackstone said.

Kursk moved beside him, bumping her hip against his. She was taller and more earnest than he was. He was the more imaginative.

“What am I looking at?” asked Kursk.

“The last readings from the Stalingrad-Seven,” he said.

“A probe?” she asked.

Blackstone nodded. The probe had been launched many, many months ago, and it had made a long and silent journey toward Saturn. Several days ago, it had become functional and begun broadcasting data.

“Is that a planet?” Kursk asked.

“For unknown reasons it’s blurry,” he said. “That’s Saturn at extreme magnification.”

“Where are its rings?”

Blackstone tapped the map-module, increasing computer magnification of the data. “Run a spectrum-analysis on the interference,” he said.

“I already have, sir,” said the sensor-officer.

“And?” asked Blackstone.

“A thin aerosol gel,” said the sensor-officer.

“Just like the cyborgs did before we attacked the Martian moons,” said Kursk.

Blackstone’s nostrils expanded. He remembered that tense time, the greatest battle of his life.

“It’s not the same,” he said. “The scale….”

That was part of his sense of doom, the sheer scale of this war. Mars only had one natural satellite now, one moon. Planet-busters had cracked Phobos and sent the pieces spinning toward the Red Planet. When the pieces had rained onto the surface, hundreds of thousands of Martians had died. Fierce storms still raged over the planet because of it and made landings and liftoffs difficult. What kind of war was it that changed the natural face of the Solar System? The cyborgs and Highborn had no sense of proportion, no propriety.

Blackstone realized that Kursk was staring at him.

“Do you realize how much gel it would take to block out the rings?” she asked.

Blackstone laughed sharply.

“Wait a minute,” said Kursk. “I see some ring there.” She pointed at the map-module. “They haven’t completely blocked them out. What does this mean?”

Blackstone tapped the map-module, switching the scene. Now the void showed, with a thousand stars in the background.

“Highlight in red,” whispered Blackstone.

A tiny object appeared on the module map.

“What is it?” asked Kursk.

“We’re still trying to discover that.”

“I don’t understand. That looks exactly like the object you sent in the file to Hawthorne.”

“Yes,” said Blackstone.

“How big is it?”

“Our best estimate: a kilometer.”

“Do you still think it’s made of ice?”

Without answering, Blackstone tapped the module, switching back to the first setting, showing a dim Saturn with wisps of rings.

A Martian-fired probe had discovered the ice-asteroid three days ago. Analysis suggested it had originated in the Saturn System. It presently headed toward the Sun.

A flash occurred on the map-module. Kursk gasped as she threw up her hands. Blackstone ignored her reaction as he glared at the map screen.

“Did you find it this time?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” said the sensor-officer, a tense woman, with quick, twitchy hands. Her fingers lacked rings and her name was Quo, Sensor-Officer Quo. “It was definitely an X-ray laser.”

“What does that mean?” asked Kursk. “What just occurred?”

“You just witnessed the deliberate destruction of the Stalingrad-Seven probe,” Blackstone said.

“From Saturn?” asked Kursk. “The X-ray laser originated from Saturn? I thought the probe was at extreme range.”

“Yes,” said Blackstone.

“You sent a signal to begin scanning earlier than projected, correct?” asked Kursk.

“I started early,” said Blackstone. He had because of the ice-asteroid.

“The distance the laser traveled is quite phenomenal then.”

“Not necessarily,” said Blackstone. “There could have been a nearby ship—”

“The coincidence of that renders the likelihood impossible.”

“Or those in Saturn found the probe some time ago and launched an X-ray laser missile,” said Blackstone.

“Again, the coincidence of the timing makes such a thing unlikely.”

“Unlikely or not,” said Blackstone, “our probe was destroyed.”

“We must discover how.”

Blackstone made a bleak sound as he glared at the map-module. Ever since he’d received the information about Carme, he’d begun intense scanning sweeps of the Saturn and Uranus Systems. So far, only the Saturn sweeps had brought returns, these meager images. It wasn’t always possible to scan Saturn directly, as Mars often passed onto the other side of the Sun as Saturn. Roughly, Mars orbited the Sun every two years. Saturn orbited the Sun about once every thirty years. That meant Mars orbited the Sun fifteen times for every time Saturn orbited it once.

He wouldn’t have found the ice-asteroid if the Jovians hadn’t initiated talks with Social Unity and the Planetary Union. Because they did, everyone shared data. It was incredibly difficult finding small, dark, cold objects in space. The Solar System was so vast that even Doom Stars were small in relation to the distances.

Searching for relatively small objects in space could be critical for survival. The idea of whipping an asteroid around a gas giant and flinging it at a planet had terrified Blackstone. He couldn’t understand why Hawthorne hadn’t ordered a greater amount of probes and sweeps of the now silent Outer Planets. Maybe the Supreme Commander had become too Earth-bound in his thinking. Blackstone had definite ideas about how to run a space campaign. He could do it better than Hawthorne was doing, of that he was certain.

“Do you think cyborgs burned the probe?” asked Kursk.

“No one has answered us from Saturn for over two years,” Blackstone said.

“That doesn’t prove the cyborgs conquered the system.”

“Given what else we know, yes is does,” said Blackstone. “Don’t forget about General Fromm.”

Kursk scowled. She had shot General Fromm, a cyborg-controlled individual. Fromm had tried to take control of the Vladimir Lenin in the most critical phase of the Third Battle for Mars. Learning that cyborgs could and had tampered with normal people…it had been a bitter lesson.

“Can a kilometer-sized ice-asteroid harm Mars?” asked Kursk.

Blackstone laughed sharply.

“What about Earth?” she asked, staring at him. She’d told him before that she hated it when he laughed at her, especially on the bridge. No doubt, he would hear about it tonight. Maybe he’d hear about it all night long.

“The ice-asteroid is extinction-sized,” he said. “If it hits the Earth, it means the death of everyone on the planet.”

“Bring it up on the module again,” she said.

Blackstone complied.

“I doubt the cyborgs would launch a single ice-asteroid at Mars or at the Earth,” Kursk said. “We could certainly destroy it before it hit.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Blackstone said, “I believe they’ve sent more.”

“So it must be something else,” she said.

Blackstone shook his head. There were other probes headed to Uranus and still more on the way to Saturn, but they wouldn’t reach their destinations for a long time.

“Why spray those gels around so much planetary area?” Kursk asked. “We’re talking about a gas giant, not just a tiny terrestrial planet.”

“The answer is simple,” said Blackstone. “To hide their launching of more planet killers.”

“If you’re right, they’ve given themselves away by deploying all those gels. We know how they operate. Surely, they must understand that we wouldn’t let ourselves be surprised.”

“Everything is a matter of time, distances and size,” Blackstone said. “We have spotted one ice-asteroid, and that was almost by chance. It is headed for the Sun, most likely for Earth or Mercury.”

“You explained that yesterday,” she said.

“We need more data,” Blackstone said as he gripped the map-module. “I should have sent more probes months ago.”

This informational war at such stellar distances presented difficult problems. One made a move and then waited months for the results. Did the cyborgs want him to rush out toward the approaching ice-asteroid with his fleet? He had no doubt whatsoever that the cyborgs had taken control of the Saturn System. After gleaning everything he could get his hands on about the cyborg assault on Jupiter, it was the obvious conclusion. If he attacked the ice-asteroid, journeying toward it, his battlewagons would be months away from returning to Mars. Was that asteroid a decoy meant to lure his warships out of Mars orbit? Did other hidden asteroids speed toward Mars, hoping to hit and obliterate human life on the Red Planet?

There was a worse possibility. The asteroid could be targeting Earth. Why hadn’t he sent more probes? Information was so critical. Unfortunately, the Mars Battlefleet had expended most of its Stalingrad-Seven probes during the fight against the Doom Stars. They only had a few left. With miserly feelings, he’d ordered each one launched. Soon, the Martians would begin construction of large-scale probes. But those would lack certain critical features of a Stalingrad-Seven.

“This means more sleepless nights,” said Kursk, sounding disappointed.

Blackstone hardly noticed. He was mentally computing vectors, fuel-rates and ship tonnages. Space warfare was in large measure a matter of finding the enemy before he struck unexpectedly. Or it was striking him, hoping the enemy hadn’t tricked you into a fatal move. The idea of a planet wrecker—it sickened Blackstone to the core of his being. The cyborgs sickened him. They had been like aliens from a different star. He hoped the man or woman or the team of scientists who had invented them roasted in an infernal afterlife. The idea of everyone uniting against them—mankind’s only hope was unity against the enemy. Better the Highborn than the cyborgs. It was a shame Social Unity and the Highborn had bled each other so badly. He wondered if the cyborgs had engineered that.

“Where are the other asteroids?” Blackstone muttered to himself. “I have to find them.” He knew they were out there. It was a knot in his gut that simply wouldn’t go away. The Jovian moon Carme pointed to it. That the cyborgs had tried to make a planet wrecker in the Jupiter System pointed to the possibility they would try that elsewhere. It was time to begin making plans based on that premise.