Doom Star: Book 05 - Planet Wrecker Read Online Free PDF Page A

wail.

-6-

    Gharlane withdrew his blade from the warm carcass. It collapsed in a seemingly boneless fashion at his feet. Kneeling, Gharlane plucked the hammer-gun from the corpse’s belt. He searched and found extra ammo magazines.
    Gharlane had drifted through space for endless hours, submerged in a coma. His life-readings had been underneath the threshold of any sensors that had scanned his region of space. After a precise length of time, an internal chronometer had clicked and he’d been injected with vigorous stims. Upon waking, he’d discovered that his calculations had been off by point zero-zero-two percent. As he’d floated in space, he’d fired a spring-loaded spear gun. It had shot a barb with monofilament fiber over a kilometer, attaching to the dreadnaught’s particle-shield. Gharlane had reeled himself to the dreadnaught, crawled between two particle-shields and gained entry into the ship.
     “Override,” he now whispered in the ship, adding a sequence of binary numbers. He overrode the calming chemicals in his bloodstream and gave himself combat-enhancing injections. His existence would end during the next few minutes. The achievement of his goal—that was primary.
    The ship corridor was narrow, and there was a trace of oil in the atmosphere indicating working mechanisms and recycled air. The nearly imperceptibly-vibrating deckplates showed that the fusion engine was online.
    Gharlane surged forward, colliding into a bio-form that came fast around the corner. Over three times its weight, Gharlane knocked the bio-form backward and off its feet. Its head snapped back hard against a deckplate, almost rendering the female unconscious. A precise kick of his vacc-suited foot against the female’s head killed it. A quick inspection of its torso added another hammer-gun to his growing collection.
    Klaxons wailed as Gharlane trotted down the corridors—the ship was under centrifugal-gravity. He repeatedly emptied his hammer-guns, killing over two dozen humans, the last group obviously sent to intercept him. These were inferior specimens compared to the space marines that had stormed onto Athena Station. For a moment, he wondered if he could reach the fusion core and blow the entire ship.
    No. The core would be protected. Every human captain had learned to guard it after the destruction of a Doom Star during the Martian Campaign. None of that mattered now, however.
    Gharlane slammed a magazine into one of the hammer-guns. The other had malfunctioned. He’d sacrificed his last cyborgs so he could achieve this location. Chief Strategist Tan—she was a first level intellect that had used the Jovian military with canny ability. Web-Mind analysis of the Homo sapiens indicated the rarity of such unmodified first-level intellects. As primary targets, such rare individuals were to be expunged with extreme prejudice.
    I will cease to exist soon. But I will take the first level intellect into the darkness with me .
    The death of such a militarily important target was, according to a Web-Mind’s parameters, worth the deletion of a planetary system’s controlling cyborg.
    Gharlane jumped around a corner into a fusillade of shots. They’d been waiting for him. A hammer-bolt smashed against his chest-plate. Another caromed off his titanium-reinforced skull. Instead of falling onto his back, Gharlane bent onto one knee. Smoothly, he snapped off three shots before another hammer-bolt clipped his hip, spinning him.
    Painkillers already flooded his bodily system. Boosters accelerated his reactions. From his kneeling position, he leaped at the nexus-node, firing with cyborg precision.
    A blue-uniformed woman tumbled back, her forehead a gory ruin. Three other ship-guardians were already twisted into bleeding heaps, their weapons clattering across the deckplates.
    “Die, you freak!” a guardian shouted. He had a pulse rifle poked around a corner. A red pulse ejected from the tube. It missed by a fraction, blowing a hole