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  “Launch now, but only with enough of a burst to get us to the intercept in, say, fifteen minutes or so. I can clear the road by then.”

  To Pia’s amazement, Miller barely blinked an eye, “you heard him, let's go.”

  “Locking in,” Vineland said, and the pods began contracting around their occupants.

  Pia was startled as the viewplates closed to within six inches from her face. “My suit! I don't have my suit on,” she blurted out, trying to turn her head around enough to check the other pods, but no one else was visible.

  “No need for a EVA suit. Safer here than in your garden, pods will act as emergency life support in a pinch.” Hixley spoke quickly, but politely, wanting to refocus attention where it needed to be.

  Zee was working even harder than the pilots, and with twenty seconds to spare he ordered his own launch. “Road warriors away, the rest of my defenses will be programmed in time for intercept.”

  “Good job McKinnon,” Miller cut in, “let's get moving.”

  “T-minus ten seconds, nine…FULL BREACH! Shells are through the shield and on their way to us!” Barton exclaimed, then skipped the countdown and launched.

  A tremendous vibration shook the ship as the engines began a short burn. All of the crew pods sank in their netting to absorb the acceleration. Pia felt the slightest jolt, but mostly only knew the launch began from a rattle coming from all the surrounding desks.

  “We're away clean, hostile nanoshells falling far behind,” Vineland reported after the engines stopped, “sensors tracking upwards of two thousand drones fanning out at intercept. This is more than a rival, this has got to be an alliance strike.”

  Miller grunted haughtily. “They've all been working on a Ceres mission too. If they hadn't been so busy plotting to stab each other in the back, maybe they would've been further along. McKinnon,” he turned his wandering attention back to the approaching battle, “you anticipated this. You better have a damn good plan.”

  “Stages, sir. Yes, sir.” Zee’s fingers were a blur in his pod, reading long range reconnaissance reports on the upcoming drones and choosing matching countermeasures. He and the flight team were rapidly coordinating the needed maneuvers. “I didn't think they would have so many, but their tech just isn't good enough.”

  Pia had been happy to be ignorant of the circumstances surrounding the mission while she became accustomed to her forest home of the foreseeable future, but now that her future could possibly be less than ten minutes long, she used the time poring over cyber data on Natocorps’ rivals. If she was going to be killed, she for damn sure wanted to know who was doing the killing.

  A decade ago, advanced scouting CubeSats had brought news of the massive potential for profit on Ceres. All the remaining Multinats were planning similar Ceres ventures as their populations were crashing from malnutrition. Earth itself simply had nothing left to give.

  Untold fortunes and vast amounts of scarce resources were put into these missions, but losing this bet meant bankruptcy and hostile takeover. Even for Natocorps, failure would spell a complete reversal of their good fortune. It would likely result in the other Multinats regaining superiority and carving up Natocorps' vast empire. There would be only one survivor, and then a Globalcorp would finally be born. All that was left was figuring out whose CEO would end up on top.

  To a biologist like Pia it seemed like simple natural selection. Whose corporate structure was the most efficient, who had the most talented staff, and in the end whose corporate bylaws would get passed down to the next generation? There were no grand causes at play, no moral code. There was just kill or be killed, and right now Pia was a gazelle being surrounded by a pack of hyenas.

  Her internal searching was interrupted by Zee suddenly saying out loud, “turn us around!”

  Miller erupted immediately, “we are NOT going back, not now. You said you could handle this!”

  Zee was coming out of a daze of intense rapid fire planning and instructions and was annoyed at having to explain himself when time was limited. “No sir, not going back. Flip the ship around, we fire the engines at say ten or twenty percent power. It'll be weak enough not to slow us down considerably, but then we'll have a blowtorch to punch a hole through the drone net.”

  Vineland didn't wait for a response from Miller. “Beginning manual rotation now, we'll be encountering hostiles in under three minutes.”

  “Agreed,” Miller said pointlessly. Thirty seconds later the maneuver was complete and Zee began issuing fresh commands into his holocomp.

  “Nanobot chains are fully deployed. We have ten chains spiraling lengthwise along Cerex. Four main whipchains are extending a hundred meters out, two near the bow and two astern. Colonel, please give us a spin rate of ten RPM, but no more or else the chains may not be able to withstand impacts.”

  By now the signals from the drones were strong enough that all of the crew were able to make out their locations and sizes. Most were the size of small dogs, but there was a truly wide assortment, coming as they did from multiple sources. The smallest ones were the size of mice, most likely hull acid or nano, while the largest were satellite killers. Those shot out tiny metal pellets at high velocity, and Cerex would be in range of them any second.

  “Ok, let's see what you can do little fireflies. Activating countermeasures now.” All eyes braced for some sort of blinding laser array, but nothing happened. Pia checked the drone blockade and they all seemed to be in the same formation as they were previously. But then, the blockade slowly began to change shape. The satellite killers were drifting away from their former positions, along with several dozen other medium sized opponents. The rest of the armada was converging on their path in an attempt to intercept and latch on to Cerex.

  “Shock troops were effective, start the burn please Colonel.”

  “Ok kid, firing engines, ten percent power.”

  “Shock troops,” Miller interrupted, “I still count the same number of drones out there, what happened?”

  Zee didn't say a word, merely highlighted a series of reports streaming through their Datanet.

  Pia was starting to like the skinny tech more and more. He had some serious skills, and knew how to leverage them to his advantage of Miller.

  The reports showed a schematic of the shock troops, a name that turned out to be more than just macho war talk. The miniscule warriors were only a few inches long, but there were hundreds of them working together. They targeted the largest enemy drones, then burrowed towards any vital circuitry and started frying them with intense EM pulses. They’d be useless against a hulled ship, but drones weren't built for defense. Those satellite killers, along with some of the other projectile class drones, were all floating space junk now.

  The engine began throwing a jet of plasma that stretched a hundred meters in front of them, and any drones that had propellant left for maneuvering after racing to catch Cerex were scrambling to adjust their intercept arcs. Cerex began plowing through hundreds of helpless victims while barely slowing down from the weak reverse thrust.

  The whipchains held together as they sliced right through most of the remainder of what was quickly becoming a unimpressive defense. The nanochains ate their way like razorwire through drone after drone, and by the time Zee asked for the ship to be swung back around, no more than a dozen small bots had made it all the way to their hull. A few strategically placed deck guns swatted the last survivors away.

  “Alright, let's not stick around for round two. Prepping main mission burn, Commander,” Vineland said.

  “Make it happen, Colonel. And McKinnon, you're getting a damn raise.”

  Pia exhaled for what felt like the first time since hearing the emergency sirens. The full power of Cerex’s solid fuel engines was immense, and for twenty minutes the whole ship shook despite the best dampening systems available. When it finally stopped there was a brief period of true zero G before the ship began unlocking its launch preparations and spinning up its various sections to appropriate
levels. It would be nearly six months before they reached Ceres, and the crew split up into their respective sections to hunker down.

  And now for the next book in the Mission Cerex saga: Diamond Disaster!

  Diamond Disaster

  Mission Cerex: Book Two

  David Colello

  Chapter 1

  ‘It was all just business,’ Pia thought, shaking her head.

  Her life meant nothing to the Multinats, merely a nuisance to be eliminated like Pia's parents were years ago. It made a rage build up inside her, and she felt like she could breathe fire. What came out instead were hot tears down her flushed cheeks.

  No one saw her trembling lip, or the blood stained hands where her nails dug deepest. During the battle to escape Earth orbit, Pia Lamotte watched the heroics through her chip implant. It let her feel protected, as if it were just a movie. Once the all clear was signaled, she had rushed back to the privacy of the forest hab and turned off her neural net.

  The crew split into management and worker factions. Miller, Coburn, and Vineland formed the Management group, smaller but holding all the power. Miller enjoyed the extra authority that Vineland’s presence commanded, along with the war stories the Colonel told.

  Back when Earth had reached its tipping point and environmental systems cascaded into failure, smaller nations fought in the devastating Water Wars. Veteran warriors like Vineland were in high demand for their skills.

  But as the world burned, traditional superpowers tried to stay out of conflicts, hesitant to use nuclear force in an already decimated planet. Piece by piece, country by country, corporations with vast amounts of capital and no physical location quietly swept up the rubble into their portfolios. In the end, world peace had been purchased with a pen stroke at the Beijing Accords of 2042.

  The rest of the crew, who were mostly scientists and engineers, called themselves the STEMs, and grew closer while helping each other on projects in the labs. Sara was the lone exception, as she could have easily stayed with Vineland and the Management group, but had much more in common with the STEMs.

  She was twenty years younger than Vineland, and despite constant recruitment by militaries around the world, had managed to stay independent. Sara became one of the foremost smugglers alive, and every corporation left standing had used her skills at some point.

  Most armies had been disbanded years ago to conserve materials, and the only significant warfare came from the Free Earth network. Factories could be ground to a halt, food storehouses raided, and supply drones redirected; a clever mind halfway around the world could hack just about anything. This shadow group opposed all the Multinats equally, but focused on stealing resources.

  Even the Free Earther attacks had seemed to subside in the weeks since Cerex launched. Everyone was watching and waiting to see if the mission was successful or not. If it was, then the best business move might be accepting a merger. If not, then a Multicorp Alliance would carve up Natocorps at its weakest.

  Ceres had now grown larger in the sky than a full moon back on Earth and final approach was upon them. Theo knocked on Pia’s hatch half an hour before the crew was set to gather in the emergency module.

  “Time to go," Theo announced.

  “Some date, no flowers?”

  “Nah, someone's hoarding them. C'mon, let's go find a crater for me to pulverize.”

  “Theo, he’s got you babysitting me?” Pia chided as she buzzed him through the airlock.

  “Just following orders.” He grinned and offered her his arm. “You were late to the first launch."

  Pia ordered Theo to turn around as she quickly got changed into her launch suit, a pair of skin tight Kevlar nanomesh pants and matching long sleeve top. ‘I look like a damn superhero,’ she thought, then doubled back for a chunky knit sweater to throw over top. She smiled thinking of Miller's head exploding when he saw her wardrobe addition.

  As she entered the airlock, Pia noticed Theo's suit had a much looser fit than hers. He shrugged, “you wouldn't want to see me in a leotard like that, trust me.”

  She reached up and lightly yanked on his scruffy beard. “True, you'd bust the seams,” Pia teased. “And for the record, I wasn't late. The launch was early.”

  They arrived as the last of the STEMs filed in, and climbed into the assigned landing pods.

  “Telementry shows us near optimal trajectory, Commander.” Coburn confirmed a solid connection with CereSat, the Natocorps satellite which had been orbiting the dwarf planet for two years already. Coburn was a corporate yes man and communications officer who relished the opportunity to gain favor with Miller.

  Everything was secured for the descent, but Pia still worried for her tiny forest. Her face betrayed nothing as she sat strapped tightly in her deceleration net. Only her shoes moved as her toes wiggled, longing for soil to dig into. It was deeply unsettling for Pia to be so far from Earth. No matter how many plants she grew, nothing let her forget that she would be living indoors for the next few years.

  Vineland was in his element, deftly spinning to perform last minute checks on the flight systems. “Any obstructions showing on final scan of the glide path?”

  “None, sir,” responded Barton crisply.

  “Commander Miller, we're coming up on T-minus five minutes," Vineland reported.

  Miller narrowed his eyes as if focused on a finish line that was rapidly approaching. Ceres now took up much of the screen on the forward holos. There were no windows in the traditional sense onboard, however most walls could be used as projection screens by the crew. Miller saw trillions of dollars and the future of Natocorps waiting for him on the utterly alien landscape.

  “All crew secure and engines prepped for final descent burn,” Vineland barked out, but just then Barton began working furiously and pivoting in her harness like an acrobat.

  “Lost contact with engine three, short circuit possibly. Subsystems are working to reestablish communication but we're running out of time.”

  “What the hell is going on, Colonel? snapped Miller.

  “Four minutes til burn, ideas anyone?" Charles asked as he searched through the back channel engine checks.

  For a second the frenzy ceased as everyone thought, and in the pause came Pia’s voice. “Can’t we manually override and fire it?”

  “You climbing outside? Miller asked mockingly.

  “No, inside,” Pia said.

  “The Spine,” Zee uttered as he suddenly understood.

  “Where can we reach wiring for engine three?” Vineland asked.

  "Access panel eight,” Zee responded after querying schematics. “Pia, it's right next to you. Hold on, I'll come help.” He began undoing his restraints when Pia stopped him.

  “There's no time. You won't make it back to your pod. Just talk me through it.”

  Pia felt her stomach tighten as she climbed out of the pod. She was done being a bystander in her own life. If this was the end for her, she was determined to have it happen on her own terms. “Can you pop panel eight, Colonel?”

  “Done. Barton, can we make it with only three?”

  “What the hell is going on, Captain?!” Miller demanded anxiously.

  “They're trying to hotwire her,” laughed Theo.

  Pia wrapped her legs around the Spine to hold on in zero G. Inside there was a mass of electronics which her chip displayed as humming with a symphony of different tones. She could see the signals and code passing effortlessly through the hardwire while understanding none of it.

  “Sure this is a good idea?” Pia muttered mainly to herself.

  Then she felt Zee, or rather his thoughts, as he linked into her chip directly. Suddenly it was like having two people in the same brain. He saw with her eyes, and for several seconds he seemed to be the one moving her hands for her. Wires were unbundled and spread apart to reveal thicker cables underneath.

  “One minute until the Burn Wall,” Vineland announced. “We need to fire, whether it's with three or with four, or else we're
going to skip off Ceres like a stone. We'd be drifting through space for the next billion years. What's going on down there Pia?”

  “She's almost there, Colonel,” Zee answered for her.

  “Pia, you're going to have to strap yourself to the Spine, immediately,” Barton warned.

  “With what?” She looked around in a panic, then froze. “Shit, ok, hold on. Sarah, could you pop Access Panel...seven?”

  “Can do,” Barton worked at a holo display for a moment, “there you are, we're a go whenever you're set.”

  She wriggled out of her flight suit pants and tied the end of each pant leg together after threading them through the access panel frames. Once it felt secure she slid up through the loop she had made and hooked her arms around it.

  “Hold off a second,” Zee demanded, and fished around his pockets quickly before leaning out of his pod. He craned his head around until he spotted Pia dangling half naked from the exposed panels of the Spine. “Jesus, Pia...ok, get ready, you'll need this soldering pen to make a spark.

  “Not a word,” Pia smirked nervously, “throw it.” The pen spun slowly in weightless flight, and bounced off her hand before she finally grabbed hold of it.

  “We're good,” Pia yelled up to the pilots.

  Immediately the ship shook from the powerful plasma jets erupting between them and the rapidly enlarging Cererian landscape. Pia lost her breath as she was slammed against metal panels, scraping and cutting her newly bared legs. The displays showed a nauseating spin caused by the missing engine blast, but most of the crew only felt the heavy compression of their bodies into the pliant straps of their pods.

  Pia groaned as her back and arms struggled to hold onto the improvised harness. Zee entered her mind again, hacking her implant to guide her hands to the correct engine wiring. She scraped it against the nearby casing until the center fibers showed.

  Vineland may have been the veteran pilot, but his combat days were long past him. Barton took the lead, and she too struggled to maintain a proper heading. The ship listed to one side, forcing her to let their course drift or risk the ship flipping. “I need that engine NOW!” she shouted at them.