StarFight 3: Battlecry

by T. Jackson King

  The three women acknowledged Jacob’s guidance. Daisy still wondered just what kind of creatures these invader aliens might be. Alicia’s comments were helpful but not enough. “Lieutenant JG Antonova, please come up to the Command pedestal.”

  “Coming, ma’am.”

  Her holo of the Bridge showed Jacob looking down at her, his black eyebrows lifted. She ignored that image as the slim figure of Lori Antonova came around and stood in front of her, her right hand lifted in a salute. “Antonova reporting, sir.”

  Daisy saluted her back. “Antonova, you are our exobiologist. Can you add anything to what Commander Branstead said about the nature of these invader aliens?”

  The young Russian woman looked toward Alicia, then back to Daisy, her blue eyes intense as she stood there at parade rest in her transparent vacsuit. “XO, I agree with everything Commander Branstead said. The spysat imagery and combat videos are our entire database on these aliens. They are clearly predatory pack hunters who want to possess the fourth planet, presumably for colonization purposes.”

  Daisy nodded. “What else are they? Any ideas?”

  Lori squinted, then leaned forward, her pageboy black hair swinging past her ears. “XO, besides what the Science Deck chief said, one might add the assumption these aliens are eusocial. Their cooperative behavior could indicate cooperative care of the young, overlapping generations of adults and reproductive labor divisions,” she said, her soprano voice low and soft as if she were aware everyone was listening to her. “As you know, eusociality exists among insects, crustaceans and mammals.”

  Daisy recalled that. “Are there other social patterns that could fit the observed alien behavior?”

  Lori glanced over at Alicia, then back to Daisy, her stance still formal and stiff despite being at parade rest. “Yes ma’am, other patterns are possible. These aliens could be parasocial. Which means they could behave communally. Their observed behavior rules out them being presocial or subsocial.”

  “But if they are eusocial, their behavior will be similar to that of humans and the Swarm wasps?” Daisy said, determined to understand this new enemy.

  Lori blinked. “If they are eusocial, yes, their behavior will be similar to mammals like naked mole rats, to ants, bees and wasps, and to crustaceans like parasitic shrimp. E. O. Wilson asserted last century that humans are eusocial. However, Herbert Gintis and others say that is incorrect. They explain human behavior as a result of the inclusive fitness theory of W. D. Hamilton.”

  Ask a theoretical question, get lots of meandering words. “Antonova, you are a graduate of the Moscow Exobiology Institute. What is your opinion? Are humans eusocial or something else?”

  “Eusocial,” she said, clenching her fists. “As Wilson noted in his book The Social Conquest of Earth, early humans cooperated to rear the group’s children while other group members hunted and foraged. And we know from ancient burials there were overlapping generations among the homo sapiens sapiens, homo neanderthalensis and homo denisovan peoples.”

  Daisy nodded. “So what else does the eusociality of these invader aliens tell us about them?”

  “They will cooperate in group defense, they will be deadly in their attacks and they will not give up,” Lori said softly. “Like us humans and the Swarm wasps.”

  Not good news, but a reasonable extrapolation. “Anything else? Any guesses or speculations about these aliens?”

  Lori shook her head firmly. “No ma’am. Until we enter one of their ships and see how it is organized, and capture one or more of them to study, they will remain mostly unknown.”

  “But deadly enemies.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Daisy waved to the young woman. “You may return to your seat.”

  Lori nodded, turned and headed back to where she had been sitting next to Carlos. Daisy looked up at Jacob. “Captain, may I suggest we attempt to capture fragments of any invader ship that survives our fleet attack?”

  “You may,” he said, his baritone low and musing. “Engines, move us up to twelve percent of lightspeed. All ships, match our speed. I want to reach those invader ships before they can get into attack range of Thirteen’s ship.”

  “Increasing thruster output,” called Akira.

  Daisy told herself to sit calmly in her seat. The Lepanto had held up to thruster levels beyond 12 psol during that first attack above the fourth world. It would hold up over the next four hours. And it was not as if the thrusters would be firing fusion pulses continuously for all that time. Once the ship reached 12 psol, the thrusters could shut down until it was time to use them to do combat maneuvers. Still, pushing the giant ship’s three thrusters to this level always left her feeling uneasy. Maybe she could grab a glass of wine when she took a lunch break. A little red wine would not impede her thinking. And it would definitely help her relax.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Seven watched the perception imager at the front of his Flight Chamber. The pheromones from his Fight Servant spoke of intent watching of the flight path chosen by the two-legged human leader. The scents cast out by the Speaker To All, the Fighter Leader, the Servant for propulsive devices, the Matron behind him and his Stinger Servant were similarly intent as they watched the flight path which would bring them all to the aid of Support Hunter Thirteen. He focused on the young female in charge of his flying nest’s propulsive devices.

  “Servant!” he scent-cast to her in a flood of aggregation, trail, releaser and primer pheromones. “Can you and your Workers repair either of our propulsive devices before we reach the nest of Thirteen?”

  She leaned her antennae his way. Her brown wings beat swiftly. “Support Hunter Seven, both devices are melted internally. There is no way to repair them without access to a sky nest fabrication globe. The colony Food Enough possesses such a globe.”

  He knew that. “What of our nest’s maneuvering devices? The ones that shoot out gases to shift our flight aim? Do they operate?”

  “They all operate,” she said in a flow of aggregation pheromones, clearly hoping to reassure him.

  “Are they able to alter our flight path?” he scent-cast.

  “Only a small way,” she scent-cast back to him. “Those devices cannot slow our forward flight path. But they can move us from side to side.”

  “That is a welcome smell,” he scent-cast, adding calming pheromones to the mix of scents he cast forth. There was no need for the Swarmers who shared the Flight Chamber to know what he planned. No need until the moments just after his nest cast loose from the giant human nest. Then he would act and the flying nests of the invaders would be taught the cost of killing helpless larvae!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rebecca looked away from the wallscreen image of Jacob and his Bridge, where the young man’s XO had concluded her questioning of the exobiologist woman.

  “Andrei, do you agree with the invader analyses of Branstead and Antonova?” she said, looking left.

  The Slav turned to her, his gray eyes intense. “Commander, I do. It is the most we can gain from the spysat and combat videos. And his XO was smart to suggest checking out any battle fragments for alien survivors or corpses. Biology may not be destiny, but it is very much an indicator of likely culture.”

  She smiled. Her XO was reminding her of their ongoing debate about the role that biology played in the behaviors of people, aliens and alien lifeforms on the seven planets occupied by humanity. “Well, biology is destiny for these invaders to the extent it caused them to fight for control of planet four. That tells me they are planet-based creatures, at least.”

  He nodded. “Agreed. Should I prepare our LCA and two shuttles for future fragment tracking? The pilots and our Marines can work on some rendezvous and docking simulations until we enter combat.”

  “Do that,” she said, looking ahead to Astrid. “Weapons, you heard the antimatter ball stuff. Prepare our nose railgun to launch Smart Rocks. Seems only solid stuff will collapse those balls before they hit our ship.”

  “Comm
ander, working on it,” the Norwegian said. “Ma’am, may I suggest that I program the Rocks to attack in clusters? These black antimatter balls may not collapse upon encountering something as small as a single Smart Rock. It may require the mass of a missile or a shuttle to make its containment field collapse.”

  She winced. This was something she should have thought of earlier, when she’d told Astrid to prepare the stern silo missiles for attack on emergence. “Do that. And let us hope the mass of a missile, or maybe a cluster of twenty Smart Rocks, will be enough solid matter to collapse its field. I’d hate to send out our shuttles on autopilot as a final defense.”

  “Commander,” called Howard from Tactical. “I support Weapon’s programming proposal. It may take a large mass to cause black ball field collapse. Shall I share her analysis with my fellow Tactical officers on the other ships?”

  Rebecca looked up at the wallscreen. Along the top of the screen were the images of Jacob, Joy, Joan and Thirteen the wasp ship leader. Below them were system graphic, spysat and sensor images. The fleet captain was not looking her way. “Tactical, yes, share our Weapons analysis with the other ships. That is part of the co-targeting ordered by the fleet captain. And let’s hope that at least the missiles have enough mass to trigger the black balls.” She looked aside. “Weapons, have the missile launch crews remove the x-ray thermonuke warheads from the nose cones of the missiles. No point in wasting the thermonukes since they would have no impact on a ball of antimatter.”

  Astrid nodded, her blond braids swinging as she tapped on her control pillar. “Sending the orders, commander. I will also have the missiliers bring up four more missiles from Armory Three, loaded only with nav computers and sensors.”

  “Just right,” she said, sitting back in her seat and thinking hard about what else needed to be done over the next four hours. “We can launch two volleys of missiles and have them flank us and precede us as we enter the enemy’s vector track.”

  The fleet’s vector track would bring all ships to within four thousand kilometers of the enemy ships, but no closer. That would expose ships and people to enemy gamma ray lasers, but hopefully not the black antimatter balls. Still, the enemy would see their vector track and be able to compute where their four ships would be when their vector intersected with the invader ships vector. Their speed of engagement would be at least twenty percent of lightspeed, if you added the approach speed of the aliens to the fleet’s arrival speed. That left little time for sharpshooting with energy weapons like the CO2 and proton lasers. And the plasma batteries she relied on for close-in defense against missiles and enemy Smart Rocks would be useless against balls of antimatter. Which left her with her nose railgun that pointed forward, carbon dioxide lasers on her nose and tail, and proton lasers on her left and right flanks. Plus the four silos in her ship’s stern that would launch missiles with the same one-tenth lightspeed inertia of the ship herself.

  Would they be enough to take out antimatter balls that the two alien ships would surely fire well toward their vector track well before the fleet ships arrived within weapons range? She hoped so. But the Chesapeake was six hundred meters long and a third of that wide. It made for a very big target when the enemy had mobile antimatter balls. Then again, those antimatter balls would have the one-tenth lightspeed inertia of their launching ships. Which meant the balls could not just float around on the fleet’s vector track. Those balls would cross the human vector track very quickly, unless they hit a solid object like a ship. Or a missile. Much would depend on how good the aliens were at aiming their antimatter balls with a timing to intersect the human vector track exactly when human starships passed through. And the same applied for their own launch of missiles and Smart Rocks. She looked forward to being better at space combat than these unknown aliens.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Richard stood in the hangar next to Silo Eight, his Marines, their team leaders and pilots arrayed in front of him. Behind them stood four Darts, lifter cables attached to the top of each Dart so they could be fed into the silo launch tube. It had been a busy four hours since their emergence from Alcubierre, and everyone had been busy. The pilots had spent loads of time in the hangar flight simulators, practicing rendezvous with and locking onto tumbling ship fragments. The team leaders had cross-checked everyone on Shinshoni hard shell comlink coordination, then had done practice VR training using the wasp combat videos from the boarding of Seven’s ship. Only the new guy from the admiral’s Battlestar had never seen the vids. But integrating him into team action meant all of them had to relive some hairy moments. As had the other two new Marines that came as pilots of the two Darts given them by the admiral. He scanned the faces of everyone, which were easy to see with their helmet HUD visors not yet lowered.

  “Marines!” he yelled. “You ready to kill some fucking aliens?”

  “Yes sir!” they all shouted back, twenty voices echoing off the gray metal walls of the hangar.

  He tongued his hard shell’s helmet rim controls to activate the suit comlink. “Communications cross-check. Check in with your team leader and pilot. Then me. Do it now!”

  Richard watched as twenty white-suited Marines tongued their helmet comlink tab, spoke to their team leader, then their pilot, then him.

  “Do you wish to hear every human voice at the same time?” asked Jerry, his suit AI.

  He chuckled. “One by one with a one-tenth second interval inserted. Do it.”

  “Arranging comlink call-ins as ordered,” the AI said in his helmet’s right ear pad.

  When the last check call had been made, he focused on the pilots. “Master Sergeant Mabry, is your vehicle hot and ready?”

  “Yes sir!” yelled the woman from Houston. “Dart Chao Lee is missiles loaded, laser hot and ready to board!”

  That he believed. Linda Mabry had proven herself in the wasp ship boarding. He looked to the Australian woman who had come over on one of the new Darts. “Master Sergeant Hawker! Is your crate ready to fight and kill!”

  “Dart Fallujah is ready to fly hot and kill anything in our way!” yelled back Lois Hawker, formerly of Sydney and more recently of Denver. The thirty-something woman was stocky, had biceps most guys would envy and her black eyes resembled targeting dots in the simulator wallscreens.

  The other new Dart pilot was from Seattle. Black as the night he was. “Master Sergeant Mattis! Is your bird ready to fly and bite!”

  “Sir!” growled James Mattis from where he stood in the middle of the group. “Dart Tarawa II is ready to eat alien butt! And very ready to honor the memories of First Sergeant Wayne Park and First Sergeant Aaron Jacobs!”

  Richard liked that. The new pilot had surely experienced the VR of that last fight above the atmosphere of Valhalla, where Aaron and Wayne had died when the original Tarawa had been caught in the Midway’s antimatter beam. That beam had created a plasma cloud of pure energy as it shot down to kill a cluster of nuke warheads launched against the human colony world by the last surviving wasp battleship. It was good to see the man was aware of the debt they all owed to those two men. He looked to the last pilot, someone he knew very well.

  “Master Sergeant Johnson! Is your Dart ready!”

  The middle-aged New Jersey native who spoke with a Mississippi drawl thanks to growing up with his Biloxi grandma gave him a slight grin.

  “Dart Chapultepec is ready to draw blood, sir!”

  “Good.” Richard scanned the four groups of Marines. Each Dart’s pilot stood front and center. Next to the pilot was the team leader. Behind them were three Marines. Every Marine’s hard shell was fully loaded with jellied gasoline for their flamethrowers, shells for their shotguns and power packs for their belly laser domes. A taser handgun and a .45 semi-auto adorned the hips of each Marine, along with a combat knife able to penetrate most anything except a hard shell’s exterior. The backpack worn by each Marine carried napalm-tipped rockets and feed lines loaded with shotshells. It made for a heavy load in a one gee gravfield. So be it. Every Marine
who had ever graduated was used to carrying heavy loads through the worst terrain, in snow, rain, mud or gale-force winds. Well, in space they only had to worry about vacuum, stellar winds, cosmic rays and laser beams. At least the hard shells had multiple layers of carbon ablative coatings that would soak up any handheld laser. A ship laser would of course cut right through the hard shell. Then again, no Marine should be staring down the emission node of an enemy ship laser. They should be inside that ship, raising hell and building a body count. He focused back on the team leaders.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Diego, Sergeant Boxley, Sergeant Chamonix and First Sergeant Harrison, are your teams ready?”

  “Ready to board and kill!” yelled out Jane Diego.

  Stocky, heavyset Tim Harrison raised a white-gloved fist that showed a thumbs-up. “The same here! But add kill again! Always make sure.”

  Richard liked the former corporal’s attitude. Assuming an enemy was dead sometimes left a Marine dead, as he recalled from a few fights against the jihadists in the jungles of Malaysia. The other two team leaders leaned forward.

  “Ready to board, kill and sort ‘em out later,” called Martha Boxley, her tanned face totally serious looking.

  “Ready to board, kill and grab the good stuff,” yelled Didier Chamonix, an easy smile filling his narrow face.

  Richard nodded to the team leaders and the rest of them. “Marines, we do not expect energy beam opposition from ship fragments. However, any alien alive inside a frag is first an enemy and second likely to be armed. Use your tasers on anything alive that moves within an invader ship frag. Then approach and scan for weapons. But watch out! Our wasp . . . allies have nasty stingers on their butts. These new aliens may have similar natural weapons. Tase first, inspect carefully, then load any alien bodies into vacbags for transport back here. We’ll let Doc Starkey and the MEs in Med Hall sort out what is alive and what is cooling flesh. Understood!”