Planet Wrecker

-31-

The Spartacus hurtled through space, journeying the great distance between Jupiter and Mars. The meteor-ship had traveled for over a month now. And it had already gained its highest velocity for the trip. Soon, Marten would order them to begin deceleration.

The speeds gained in the meteor-ship were many times greater than what he’d achieved in the Mayflower. The shuttle had lacked fuel for such extended acceleration and deceleration. It was the difference of a warship over a vessel meant to ferry personnel between craft.

“There is a priority message from the Chief Strategist,” Nadia said.

Marten sat up, realizing that he’d been dozing. He straightened his uniform, coughed into his hand and nodded to Nadia. Afterward—after listening to Tan’s message—he stared at Nadia.

“It’s finally happening,” she said.

Marten pushed off his chair and floated for the hatch. “Tell Osadar to meet me in the tank,” he said.

“Yes Force-Leader,” said Nadia.

Despite the nature of Tan’s message, Marten grinned at his wife hunched there in her cubicle. She had such beautifully long legs, and the gracefulness of her neck…. He liked being married. He liked—loved—Nadia. Then he recalled Tan’s conversation again. The distance from Ganymede was already great enough so the light-speed messages experienced time delays, making normal conversations impossible. They had listened to Tan, begun to speak during some of her pauses, only to quit talking as she resumed her flow of information. A Saturn-originated ice-asteroid sped toward the Sun. It was quite possible that the ice-asteroid was just like Carme. The Saturn System possessed an abundance of moon-sized asteroids. Maybe there weren’t as many as in the Jupiter System, but there were enough for the cyborgs’ purposes. Had this ice-asteroid gained the needed velocity while circling Saturn many, many times?

Half an hour later, Marten and Osadar floated in the dark of the situation tank. It was a small chamber, formerly Circe’s quarters. All the statues and shackles had long ago been swept out of the chamber. In their place was high-tech features looted from the last supply-ship. Holoimages of stars appeared on the walls.

Marten and Osadar worked on the linkage with the patrol boats and downloaded the data sent by the laser-lightguide message by Tan. Two of the patrol boats had lifted off the meteor-ship and moved in opposite directions, until they’d reached exact locations. Big bay doors had opened, exposing delicate sensor equipment toward the Inner Planets. The equipment on the two patrol boats would help the Spartacus act as a giant interferometer. Likely, no one expected them to spot what more powerful and closer sensors could. Rather, it would help map the same areas from a different perspective and angle. That data they would beam to a relay Planetary Union satellite orbiting Mars. Something bad had obviously happened in the Saturn System. Something bad was likely going on now that the cyborgs wished hidden.

After the linkages were calibrated, Marten brought up strategic zoom. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth and the Sun appeared in scale. Saturn was on the other side of the Sun as Jupiter.

The situation placed Earth and Mars on the same side of the Sun as Saturn. It wasn’t a one hundred and eighty-degree difference between Jupiter and Saturn, but it meant the Spartacus would have to pass the Sun before it reached either Mars or Earth.

It meant their sensors couldn’t sweep certain areas, because they couldn’t scan through the Sun. Rather, the sweeps took place on either side of the Sun, and at the void behind that.

Marten made a few adjustments with a hand-unit. It awed him, really. The Outer Planets orbited so much more ponderously than the Inner Planets did. In relation to the Outer Planets, the Inner ones rotated around the Sun like tops, going round and round and round. The farther an Outer Planet was from the Sun, the longer its journey took for a complete orbit.

“If we’re going to win this war,” Marten said, “we need to go on the offensive.”

“Do you wish to travel to Saturn?” asked Osadar.

Marten shook his head. The distance was daunting. This journey from Jupiter to Mars was taking long enough. Viewing the planets in strategic zoom showed him something. The Inner Planets formed their own little core, almost their own system. The Outer Planets were each like an oasis in an ocean of vast, incredible nothingness. A journey between stars—it would be a yawning gulf that would take a man’s lifetime to cross.

“You can’t win a war just defending,” said Marten. “We’re always reacting to the enemy. We have to make the cyborgs react to us.”

“How do you propose to do this?”

“Partly by what we’re doing,” said Marten. “But more fully, by working together with the Martians and with Social Unity.”

“Then where is your complaint?” asked Osadar. “These things begin to occur.”

Marten shook his head. “It’s the time, I guess, the long stretches where nothing happens. During those times, we wait for the cyborgs to make their next move, their next assault.”

“Time has aided us,” said Osadar.

“Why do you say that?” asked Marten.

“The cyborgs have moved slowly because the distances are too great for them to move quickly. Each strategic endeavor—each taskforce used—first had to originate at a distant Outer Planet and then ferry over several billion kilometers. On their arrival at the destination, the cyborgs had to survive or die with their limited force, being unable to quickly re-supply it.”

“Yeah, that’s one way to view it,” said Marten.

“It is the correct way,” said Osadar. “As a human, I traveled from Jupiter to Saturn and then I journeyed even farther to distant Neptune. Did I ever tell you that I was supposed to pilot the first ice hauler to the Oort Cloud?”

“You might have said something about it once. It was an experimental ship, right?”

Osadar nodded.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Marten said. “I once traveled to a beamship, but that’s history.”

Osadar rose from where she worked on a holographic imaging unit. She set the sonic-screwdriver on it and stared at Marten.

“Is it broken?” he asked.

“I wonder sometimes,” said Osadar. “Maybe the correct action is to take our ship out to Neptune.”

“Maybe someday,” Marten said. “Yeah,” he said, grinning as he envisioned it. “We would go in a giant battle-group with Doom Stars, SU battleships, Martian orbitals and Jovian meteor-ships.”

Osadar made a lonely sound. “No. You do not understand. I do not envision fighting the cyborgs at Neptune. Rather, I would search for the old experimental ship, the one the cyborgs invaded. If I could find it, I would modify the ice hauler and turn it into a starship.”

“And do what?” asked Marten. “Head to Alpha Centauri?”

“Or go even farther,” said Osadar. “I wish to travel beyond the reach of man-made machines. I wish to travel to a place where it would be too far for them to follow. I doubt our ability to defeat the cyborgs. I would like to survive in a world without the constant threat of annihilation.”

Marten glanced at Osadar. There was a certain temptation in her idea. But how would they find the ice hauler? Where was it now? “No,” he said quietly. “Running isn’t the answer.”

“It is preferable to death or to the oblivion of being a mindless creature of the cyborgs. If anyone should know that, it is I.”

“Sometimes a man is meant to stand and fight. This is our Solar System.”

“Not for much longer,” Osadar said.

“Yeah? We’ll see about that.”