Planet Wrecker

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“Here they come!” shouted Nadia.

Marten stood behind her. He wore his armored vacc-suit. Behind him, the dome was packed with space marines in theirs suits gripping weaponry.

The mass-meter of Nadia’s board indicated shuttle-sized vessels. Five had made it through the blizzard of spewing lasers and radioactive death to reach Asteroid E. Five cyborg troop-pods!

“They’re heading straight for us,” Nadia said.

Marten saw them on her board, oval-shaped vessels coming nearer and nearer.

Nadia twisted around and looked up at Marten. “If those five troop-pods are full of cyborgs, we’re badly outnumbered.”

“I know,” Marten whispered, as he hefted his gyroc rifle. They were going to face more cyborgs. There was no way, by no stretch of the imagination and hard fighting, that his space marines could defeat five troop-pods of cyborgs. The trick, he’d learned long ago, was to change the rules. A barehanded man facing a cyborg had no chance. A man toting a gun versus a carbine-carrying cyborg would lose almost every time, but there was a possibility of winning. A man encased in a tank against a tank-driving cyborg would up his odds tenfold.

“Now,” Marten whispered. “Send it now.”

On the board, the five troop-pods began their approach to landing. They drifted over the crater and neared the three domes. All the asteroid’s laser-turrets were destroyed. Marten might have sent out men with Cognitive missiles, but the troop-pods had weaponry to take out such a force.

Nadia pressed a switch on her board. It sent a weak signal, a three-sequence pulse.

Marten turned to the space marines. “This is it, boys. It is do or die time again.” He raised the gyroc rifle over his head. “Death to the cyborgs.”

Metallic sounds were made as the space marines raised their gyrocs and IMLs. Then they roared as one,” Death to the cyborgs!” Afterward, visors clicked shut and armored suits clanged as the men headed for the airlocks.