They crept from behind a large boulder. The dome was silvery in the starlight, and its destruction was more apparent, with gouges everywhere, shell craters. Three metallic lumps showed were laser-turrets had stood and melted. Debris littered the valley floor, a junkyard of slagged metal, old weapons and corpses from the fight two years ago.
“What a horrible time,” Marten said, thinking about the battle onto their planet-wrecker. Was this the same one? He didn’t know and had forgotten to ask Felix.
Omi grunted over the headphones as he followed Felix toward the dome.
“What’s wrong?” Marten radioed.
“I’ve a bad feeling about this,” Omi said.
“Ambush?” asked Marten.
“Maybe,” the Korean said.
Marten rechecked his weapon, sliding it open to study the shell. He motioned the others to follow, and signaled: be careful.
He stepped over slagged metal the size of a helmet and avoided an old missile casing. His boots put prints in the dust. All the while, he checked his suit’s sensors and watched the ground for telltale signs of booby-traps.
With a pounding heart, Marten squeezed through an opening into the dome. He flicked on his helmet-lamp. The beam played over fused machines and endless debris on the floor. Ahead, Omi’s group and Felix moved from place to place, with weapons ready.
Giant Felix pointed ahead to a door. Omi nodded and signaled Marten. Unlatching his tether, Marten shoved off and drifted toward them, with the gyroc aimed at the hatch. Something felt wrong, bad wrong.
Felix readied his hand-cannon as he reached for the handle.
Marten wanted to shout a warning.
The door opened and Felix’s lamp-beam stabbed into the darkness. The Highborn moved in. Marten followed and grunted in shock.
Dead Highborn in breached combat-armor lay on the floor. Most had smashed helmets. All gripped weapons. He counted seven. Some of the equipment around them was smashed. The rest looked useable.
“What happened?” Omi radioed.
Marten glanced at Felix. The Highborn stood very still, his lamp-beam centered on one dead Highborn in particular.
“Look at this,” Nadia said. She picked up a wrist with a hand attached. It was skeletal, with titanium-reinforcement showing in places.
Felix’s lamp-beam swiveled around, spotlighting Nadia’s find. “Cyborg,” the Highborn growled. “The cyborgs were here.”
Marten turned fast, kneeling, raising his rifle at the door. He feared to see cyborgs pour in.
The others didn’t seem as worried. “It looks like the cyborgs landed and killed your men,” Omi was saying.
“Observe their glory,” Felix said proudly. “They died fighting and they took some of the enemy with them. What more can a man ask of the universe than to live as he desires? Come, we must continue searching.”
“Are the cyborgs still here?” Marten asked.
“If they were,” Felix said, “they would have attacked by now.”
Marten wasn’t so certain.
They searched the rest of the dome and then continued outside. The planet-wrecker had taken greater damage than the one Marten had conquered nearly two years ago. Most of the domes were thoroughly smashed inside and the giant engine within the asteroid was a slagged heap. Osadar believed an Ultra-laser had beamed directly through the massive port. Most of the defensive laser-turrets were molten lumps.
“I wonder how near the Sun it orbited,” Nadia said later. “That might explain the uniformly melted state of the turrets.”
They found another eleven dead Highborn in the tunnel systems. Apparently, the cyborgs had scoured the asteroid, hunting Felix’s fellow Ultraists.
Later, they found the shuttles in a hidden hanger. Cyborgs had gutted both spaceships.
In his armor, Felix turned toward a nearby tunnel wall. He stared fixedly at it as if he’d been turned to stone.
“He morns his comrades,” Marten radioed Nadia. “Back away from him. They don’t like anyone seeing them like this.
“Felix,” Marten radioed. “I will be in the command chamber of the first dome. When you’re ready, I ask that you join us there.”
There was no response. They left Felix of the Ninth Iron Cohort to his grief.
Marten, Omi and Osadar walked to the ruined dome. They began repairs in the chamber with the seven Highborn dead. More of the equipment was workable than they’d first believed. Soon, several of the systems came online.
“These tachyon receivers are more sophisticated than ours,” Marten said. “The cyborgs don’t like being surprised.”
From Osadar’s comments, it had become clear this was old cyborg equipment.
“These thermal sensors,” Omi said, “I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Omi sat at a screen, adjusting the sensor sets so they worked in unison. After Omi flipped an activation switch, a light began blinking on a screen. Marten hurried near.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I think it’s inert, a rock or another asteroid.”
Marten sat down on the second chair. “I’m surprised the sensors even showed it. Look, the albedo is two percent.”
“I’ve never heard of an albedo so low,” Omi said.
That struck a chord in Marten. “That must be the cyborg craft.”
Omi squinted through his visor. “The thing is drifting toward the Sun.”
“Compute the drift,” Marten said.
Omi did. “It’s going to pass near the Sun Station.” He turned to Marten. “Do you think the cyborgs tortured the Highborn, learning about it from them?”
“The cyborgs have altered agents everywhere,” Felix said, entering the chamber. “They are even on Earth. We must take it as a given the cyborgs know about the Sun Station and will attempt its capture.”
“We must alert the Highborn there,” Omi said.
“Agreed,” Marten said.
“No,” Felix said. “If we do, Maximus wins, because we will have given away our position. We will never sneak aboard the Sun Station then.”
“We’ll use a communications drone to send the message,” Marten said, “catapulting it from the surface. We’ll do that on the other side of the asteroid as the cyborg ship.”
“That gives the cyborgs more time to do whatever it is they’re doing than if we broadcast the message now,” Omi said.
“That’s a problem,” Marten agreed. “So we’d better get the drone on its way as soon as possible.”
They monitored the stealth-ship until it disappeared from their dome’s screen. Just before that occurred, Ah Chen detected something else.
She brought the file to the patrol boat, where Marten, Felix and Osadar studied it.
“Notice this dark piece of mass leaving the main ship,” Osadar said.
“What is its composition?” Felix asked.
“Unknown,” Osadar said.
“The cyborgs used ice-pods against the Highborn during the Third Battle for Mars,” Marten said.
“This mass is not ice,” Osadar said. “Otherwise, this near the Sun, it would act like a comet and produce a visible tail.”
“Whatever it is,” Marten said, “it is low albedo stealth-material. We have to include that in our data packet.” They had catapulted a drone and waited for it to reach a good distance before they sent the information.
“When are we beaming the data?” Osadar asked.
“Twenty hours,” Marten said.
Osadar shook her head. “The Highborn need to know now in order to prepare.”
Marten pushed up from his chair, floating across the cabin. He reached a wall and pushed back the other way. As he floated, Marten shook his head. “This is all about timing, right?”
“It’s about defeating the cyborgs,” Osadar said.
“No,” Felix rumbled. “This is about victory. Make your broadcast in a day. Then we must use your boat and attack the enemy’s stealth-ship.”
“Attack?” asked Marten.
“Haven’t you studied the enemy’s methods?” Felix asked. “They use their ships like a machine gun, firing stealth-capsules at critical objectives. How many cyborgs will they use to capture the Sun Station? Logic dictates all of them, or nearly all. Very well, because they’ve emptied their ship, we will now storm and capture it for ourselves. Your Jovian boat lacks shielding to move near the Sun. The stealth-ship must surely be better shielded. With it, we will attack and storm the station.”