Doom Star: Book 06 - Star Fortress (2 page)

Ricardo heard the hisses of other APEX-rounds firing into the storm and whooshing past his head. Unfortunately, the rounds went in a variety of directions, blown off-course by the violent wind.

“Cease fire!” Ricardo shouted. “We’ll never hit it at a distance. We have to get close.”

At that moment, the cyborg rose up before him. It wore a metallic-fiber suit, and it seemed unaffected by the wind. With its mechanical-melded parts, it must weigh enough to ignore the lifting power of the storm.

Ricardo froze. He might have stayed frozen longer, but he had trained endless hours since Marten Kluge taught Martians how to fight. A portion of his training had been in acting fast and then faster yet, to increase his reaction time when surprised.

Ricardo frantically rolled left as the cyborg kicked a spiked boot at his head. He saved himself, as the cyborg bounded at someone else. It sounded like Bandores screaming over the comlink. Using his booted toes, Ricardo swiveled on his belly. Then he raised his head.

The thing’s arm was a blur of motion as it hurled a rock, smashing Rodriguez’s helmet. Ricardo swore. The cyborg was too fast for them, especially in this environment. Had it lost its weapons? Is that why it used primitive means to fight?

“Kill it!” Ricardo shouted, as he surged to his feet. A rocket-shell whooshed past him, a blur of darkness and an orange contrail. It missed his head by centimeters. He couldn’t worry about that now.

The cyborg reached Max. Something dark moved in its hand as the hand made contact with Max. The third Commando crumpled onto the rocky soil.

Hatred boiled in Ricardo as he leaped at the thing. The wind lifted him, shoving him fast at the cyborg. Ricardo landed, and he staggered, almost slamming down onto his belly. Like a dancer, Ricardo moved his feet, maintaining balance as the wind blew him.

The cyborg whirled around.

In a microsecond of time, Ricardo saw the inhuman eyes, the plasti-flesh face. The cyborg held a dark blade, a wet one—bloody! Without thinking and as he moved into close range, Ricardo shoved the muzzle of the gyroc against the cyborg’s stomach. As soon as he felt the pressure of contact, he pulled the trigger. Just as fast, a knife swiped at him. Ricardo shouted and he twisted. The tip of the blade slashed open his environmental suit. At the same time, the APEX shell in the cyborg’s combat-armor exploded. That knocked the abomination off its feet.

Ricardo landed on his side, but he scrambled up faster than the injured monster. At the same time, the auto-sealants fixed the breach in his environmental suit. Somehow, Ricardo had kept hold of his gyroc. He shot the cyborg at pointblank range. The shell broke into the cyborg’s helmet. A half-second later, another explosion occurred, ripping away the monster’s faceplate. The thing tumbled back and thudded onto the ground.

Ricardo tried to fire again, but the creature kicked its leg, smashing the rifle. Then the cyborg attempted to rise.

By fallen Phobos, I have to kill it before it kills me!

As the wind howled and threatened to lift Ricardo airborne once again, he drew a bayonet. As the cyborg climbed to its feet, Ricardo lunged and thrust the bayonet into the thing from Neptune. He stabbed it seventeen times before it died squirming on the sands of Mars. Seventeen times before a red light vanished somewhere behind its eyes.

Only then did Captain Ricardo Sandoval think about hunting for the surviving member of his squad.

In Far Mars Orbit, a cyborg
Lurker
-class Assault-ship—L7R325—stopped receiving signals from the surface. The large vessel was composed of black, radar-resistant polymers, built at odd curves, angles and planes to lessen sensor identification. It was not technically a warship, although it possessed a load of stealth-drones.

It drifted at far orbit, having sailed through the void on built-up velocity and braking with low-signature thrusters. Its design and tactical application was predicated on proven cyborg superiority. It was a troop ship: stealthily approaching the target in order to insert cyborgs and capture it. The Web-Mind in charge of operations presently ran through options as it computed known data on the Red Planet.

The missile launched from Station Santa Anna told it much about the defensive satellites ringing Mars. It was surprised the stealth-capsule had reached the surface at all. Martian defenses were much weaker than it had anticipated. Yes, the Web-Mind now knew how the Homo sapiens communicated with each other, how they reacted to an insertion invasion and the location of their primary defensive stations. Conquest of Mars…there was a sixty-two percent probability of victory.

Eighteen minutes after the analysis, the Web-Mind pulsed orders:
Load five stealth-capsules with soldiers and the sixth with a converter unit
. Once launched, it would fire three black-ice pods, one for each of the key satellites. It would hold five other stealth-capsules in reserve and the second converter as it continued its cloaked orbit.

The Mars Assault would be run along different parameters than any of the former campaigns. That would confuse the Homo sapiens, who reacted predictably and would expect similar moves from their opponent.

As the Web-Mind reconfigured the optimal strategy, the Lurker’s rail-gun ejected the first stealth-capsule at the distant Red Planet. It would take the capsules eight weeks to reach an insertion orbit. By then, the Homo sapiens would begin to relax, expecting that the worst was over.

Three days after killing the cyborg, Captain Sandoval hung onto the insides of a shaking Comet 9 strike-jet. After the sandstorm fight, he had been badly injured and was now on a ton of painkillers and half out of his mind.

The strike-jet was an old military plane, a two-seater, having survived countless hits and patch-jobs. Ricardo had already endured hours in it and now found himself on the other side of Mars.

Below, red dust-clouds billowed across the surface. It was a global storm, covering most of the planet. Although Mars was smaller than Earth, its landmass was a little more than all Earth’s continents combined. The surface of Mars consisted of a worldwide desert. As dust entered the atmosphere, sunlight heated it, increasing the temperature, sometimes as much as thirty degrees Centigrade. That caused winds to rush to colder areas, picking up yet more dust and adding to the situation. On Earth, water vapor was the main heating agent instead of dust. And on Earth, deserts were limited in area and therefore unable to feed a global storm. Dust clouds often grew in the Gobi desert of Mongolia Sector, for instance, but when they blew over the Pacific Ocean, the storm soon died from the lack of new fueling dust.

Looking down through the billowing iron-oxide particles, Ricardo spied volcanoes and deep valleys.

“Hang on,” the pilot said. “It will get rough for a few minutes.”

As the plane blanked, it shivered hard into the wind. Something metal dislodged from the console in front of Ricardo. The part struck his foot, and sparks shot from the console.

“There’s an extinguisher to your left!” the pilot shouted.

“What?” Ricardo shouted back.

The sparks caught fire, and a burnt electrical smell assaulted Ricardo’s nose. The flames before him flickered with bitter purpose. To add injury to the emergency, the rattling and shaking around him increased.

“Put out the fire, amigo!” the pilot shouted. “Do it before it shorts something important and we crash.”

The words finally penetrated Ricardo’s hazy thoughts. He spotted the extinguisher, tore it from the holder and studied it for a half-second. The burnt electrical smell was worse now and the flames bigger. He aimed the nozzle at the flames and pressed the switch. Foam hissed, coating the console. Some of it sprayed back onto Ricardo. A fleck landed on his lips. It tasted awful. He leaned forward in his seat, pulling against the restraints and pressed the button again, putting out the electrical fire.

By this time, the jet plunged out of the bottom of the dust storm and entered one of the long Martian valleys that crisscrossed the planet. The shaking and rattling quit. Now Ricardo heard the laboring jet engine. At the same time, he noticed the sharp decrease of illumination. They were at the bottom of the dust cloud and had huge canyon walls on either side of them. He glanced right and left, and estimated each wall as about a kilometer away.

“Where are we?” Ricardo shouted.

“We’re nearing Salvador Dome, amigo.”

Ricardo blinked several times, until he grew aware of the extinguisher in his hands. He shoved it back into its holder so it the locks snapped.

Like this jet, just about everything was old and aging on Mars. Ricardo wouldn’t have been surprised if the extinguisher had lacked foam. Salvador Dome was a grim reminder of the luck and disrepair here.

After the Third Battle for Mars, everyone had died in the dome. Against odds, a boulder-sized piece of Phobos had flashed into the valley, streaked the half kilometer to the bottom and shattered the main structure. The moon-meteor had proceeded to smash through every level of Salvador Dome. No one survived the impact. To save time and effort—critical commodities on Mars—workers had dumped the corpses down the meteor-made hole. It was a sealed mass grave now and a ghost-haunted dome.

Why take me halfway across the planet to bring me here?
It made no sense in terms of jet-fuel and use of the aging Comet 9.

The pilot’s radio crackled into life. “You have ten seconds to identify yourself,” a female operator told them.

Ricardo frowned. Ten seconds? That would imply a military capacity to do something about non-compliance. That made even less sense. Large-scale defensive equipment was among the rarest of commodities on Mars. Why station anti-air missiles down here at a dead dome?

A constant whine sounded from the pilot’s console.

“Ground control has lock-on,” the pilot informed Ricardo. “I guess I’d better answer.” The pilot clicked a switch, saying, “This is an Omi Operational flight.”

Omi?
That was the name of Marten Kluge’s best friend. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

“I’m bringing Captain Ricardo Sandoval to the site,” the pilot said. “Those are per the orders of Secretary-General Gomez.”

Ricardo looked up in wonder. No one had said anything about the Secretary-General. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“You have permission to land,” the operator said. “But if you deviate from the flight corridor, you will be targeted and shot down.”

“They want us to feel welcome,” the pilot said over his shoulder.

“Salvador Dome is defended?” Ricardo asked.

The pilot laughed. “They’re targeting us with Veracruz SAMs.”

Ricardo knew those were the highest-grade Surface to Air Missiles the Mars Planetary Union possessed. What he couldn’t fathom is why they ringed Salvador Dome, a dead city.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Ricardo asked.

“Yes I do, amigo. The SAMs have lock-on and the operator means exactly what she says. We stay in the flight corridor all the way down. With your permission, Captain, I will concentrate on that.”

“Yes, please do,” Ricardo said. He leaned near the canopy as the jet banked slightly. Below was a great dome, with a jagged hole to the left of center. He spied the SAM sites flanking the dark dome. What did they guard down there? He supposed he would find out soon enough.

The rest of the flight proved uneventful. They soon taxied down a runaway, put on their masks, climbed out and entered an APC. The military vehicle took them to a large garage separate from the dome.

There Ricardo parted company from the pilot and soon found himself alone on a chair in an empty room. It was more of a large box with a metal floor and walls. There was a faint drone coming from somewhere and the slightest vibration against his feet. Ricardo was used to this: move here, go there, hurry up and wait. It surprised him High Command hadn’t kept him on the ground searching for more cyborgs. Had the generals decided the capsule was a first landing attempt?

Ricardo’s stomach growled, but then it often did. He was always hungry, even though he ate sumptuously according to Martian standards. Before it could growl again, one of the doors opened.

To his amazement, Secretary-General Gomez entered. He recognized her from the news blogs, particularly as she wore her customary green uniform. She was a tall woman with darker-than-average skin. She had tight curls, wore sunglasses and moved stiffly, using a cane as she dragged her left foot. Long ago, she had been a gunman in the Resistance. Nine, Political Harmony Corps guards had died on Martian streets due to Gomez’s firing. The tenth PHC guard had worn the latest body-armor and returned fire, sending three explosive slugs into Gomez’s frame. Reconstructive surgery had saved her life, but she lived with constant pain these days.

“Captain Sandoval,” she said in a strong voice.

Ricardo lurched to his feet at attention as he saluted crisply.

“You recognize me, do you?”

He nodded.

The faintest of smiles appeared on Gomez’s thin face. “You are Mars’s great Cyborg Slayer, are you not?”

“I killed one in a sandstorm.”

“And thereby saved one of your Commandos,” Gomez said. “I read the report. You bayoneted it to death. From what they tell me about cyborgs, that is most impressive.”