Planet Wrecker

-54-

Marten sat in his badly shaking command chair. Around him, metal screeched in complaint and loud groans occurred that sounded like wounded whales. The vibration of the fusion core became so horrible that his head felt like it was coming part. He sank into the cushions of his chair, forced there by the heavy Gs.

Mars filled the main screen. It had begun as a dot and grown with incredible speed.

No one tried talking, or if he or she did, no one else could hear. Marten endured. Likely, so did everyone else. He didn’t even try to turn his head to see how Nadia fared.

The Red Planet filled and then vanished from the screen. He thought about Diaz. He thought about floaters and fighting in the deep valleys of Mars. Most of all, he thought about the nearly hopeless fight inside Mons Olympia. Cyborgs were terrible foes. Diaz had died while fighting them. Omi and he would have become cyborgs except that Osadar had broken her programming.

What chance did they really have on the asteroids? Little to none was the real answer. In the Jovian System, they’d had numbers on their side. How many cyborgs were on the asteroids?

At that moment, the shaking ceased. So did the terrible groaning of the metal of the ship’s struts. The vibrations from the fusion core lessened. His head hurt, but he could hear voices again.

“…Marten?”

“I’m here,” he said, swiveling his chair.

Nadia stared at him from her cubicle. Pasty-colored, she looked frightened. Everyone in the command center did. He needed to calm them.

“We passed the ordeal,” Marten said. “Now let’s recheck our equipment. I don’t want anything to malfunction so we fail to kick these cyborgs’ butts.”

One man managed a sickly grin. The others grew more frightened.

Marten swiveled back toward the main screen. He was the Force-Leader, and he was taking them to their deaths. Too bad Yakov wasn’t here. He’d know what to say.

Marten tapped an armrest with his fist. Then he surged to his feet. “This is why we came,” he said. He turned toward them. “We have allies, the Highborn in case any of you have forgotten. The Praetor helped us defeat the cyborgs on Carme. Now other Highborn will help us kill these cyborgs.”

“Do we have a chance?” asked an officer.

“The living always have a chance,” Marten said. He wanted to believe that, he really did. But ever since he’d gone over the data from the Mars Battlefleet….

He looked back up at the screen. They’d made it past Mars. Now it was simply a matter of catching up with the cyborg asteroids, landing and fighting for their lives.