Planet Wrecker

-32-

The days passed in tedious scanning and studying the readouts aboard the Spartacus. Marten ordered Omi to intensify space marine training, to take the soldiers outside on the meteor-ship’s shell. Marten remained in the command center, using the main screen to help study the laboriously gathered data. Everyone in his or her cubicle helped, as did Osadar in the tank.

Marten sipped Jovian coffee as he leaned forward, staring thoughtfully. The ice-asteroid heading fast for the Inner Planets was too much like Carme. They had found little cyborg data in the ruined machines on the tiny Jovian moon, but the action had spoken loudly enough.

The problem finding more data now was that space was vast. It was hard for Marten to grasp the immensity of the Great Dark. AUs, light-years, those were just fancy terms. The human mind couldn’t really understand them.

Analogies helped. Take the Earth or Mars and make them the size of a period at the end of a sentence. Then hold the period up in a large room. At the closest approach, Earth and Mars would be four meters away. The tiny speck of Earth with its teeming billions and its clouds, oceans and breathable air orbited through billions of cubic kilometers of empty space. A Doom Star would be like a microbe in an ocean. How did you spot it if it was trying to hide?

Marten took another sip and rubbed his eyes. You found it like this: days and nights of observations. The computer searched for a small glitch against the empty void that would point to movement. That movement might be an enemy vessel or planetoid.

They used thermal scanners, broad-spectrum electromagnetic sensors, neutrino detectors and mass detectors. Hour after hour, they sliced through carefully selected sections of the Great Dark, looking for anomalies.

Normally, an enemy ship emitted radiation, especially if it used a fusion or ion engine. The Great Dark seethed with radiation, however. The radiation came from the Sun and from Jupiter and Saturn. If a black-ice asteroid moved from simple velocity—having gained it around Saturn—then it would emit no radiation and no heat signature.

The Earth’s death might have been launched months ago. It was their task to discover if there were more asteroids coming. The lone ice-asteroid suggested that there were more.

“Why would the cyborgs launch such a thing?” Nadia asked.

“They’re aliens,” Marten said. “They want to eradicate humanity and populate the Solar System with themselves.”

“But they originated from humans,” Nadia said.

“It’s probably what makes them so deadly. If they were just machines—” he shrugged.

“It’s so cold, so ruthless.”

“Tan should have sent more ships with us,” Marten said. He took another sip. “But she couldn’t. What if the cyborgs have already launched another attack at Jupiter? There are hardly enough warships left as it is.”

“Maybe the cyborgs launched the ice-asteroid to focus our attention on it.”

“For what reason?” Marten asked.

“You’re the military man,” she said. “You tell me what else the cyborgs could do.”

Marten frowned at the screen. “What would you say if I ordered the Spartacus to change heading?”

“To where?” she asked.

“Neptune.”

Everyone in the command center looked up.

Marten was too engrossed in the screen to notice. “What if we went to Neptune and searched for Osadar’s ice hauler there?”

“What ship was that?” Nadia asked quietly.

Marten told her about the experimental ship.

“That’s interesting,” said Nadia. “But wouldn’t the cyborgs already have confiscated it and made it part of their Neptune Fleet?”

“Possibly,” he said.

“We should run from the asteroid and flee out of the Solar System?” asked the sensor-officer.

“What?” Marten asked. He turned around, and he noticed everyone hanging on his words. He scowled, stared into his coffee cup and shook his head. “It’s a stupid idea. You’re right,” he told Nadia. “The cyborgs would have already converted the ice hauler to their own use. This is the battle, and we’ll choose our ground and fight now.”

“Where exactly?” asked Nadia.

Marten slotted the coffee cup into a holder on his chair. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” he said.