Humans Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 2)

by T. Jackson King

  A brief sense of falling forward told him Max had shifted the drive flare to point ahead of their new vector. That sense disappeared as the one gee ship gravity produced by the grav-pull drive quickly readjusted to offset the change in inertial movement. “Maureen! What’s the distance to the colony ship?”

  “One twentieth AU!” she yelled. “We’ll be there in thirty seconds at this speed. A few minutes as we slow down.”

  Looking up at the lensing-distorted images of Gareth and Minna as each captain duplicated what the Uhuru was doing, he added a twist to their combat plan. “Captains! Eject two thermonuke torps now. They’ll pull ahead of us as we cut speed to arrive with zero vector movement!”

  Seconds passed as, on the front screen, Hideyoshi led the twenty-four ships of three fleets toward the orbital cluster of fifteen HikHikSot ships. To Jack, it was a thing of beauty. A yellow-orange ball of fusion drive plasma drew closer and closer to the cluster of enemy ships. While they orbited above Sedna with a normal separation distance of five hundred kilometers between each ship, they all occupied a common orbital track. A track that stretched out from the incoming Earth ships to Sedna’s far horizon. In short, every Alien ship lay along the same vector line as Hideyoshi’s flame ball and no enemy ship orbited beyond the 10,000 kilometer range of the neutral particle beam weapon carried by each of the fat spearheads that were the Earth ships. Briefly Jack recalled a vidtext that had displayed the ancient human sport called ‘bowling’, a sport limited to just one horizontal dimension where the aim was to throw a hard plastic ball at a triangular group of white objects called ‘pins’. Knocking down every ‘pin’ achieved what sportsmen called ‘bowlers’ said was a ‘strike’. Hideyoshi’s flaming ball of fleet ships had the chance to take out every orbiting ship, with either the drive flares or the neutral particle beams carried by each ship. And thereby achieve a bowling ‘strike’.

  “The torps are racing ahead of us!” called Maureen from the holo above Jack’s Tech panel as the woman worked in her Battle Module at the rear of their ship to bring online both the antimatter projector and their own neutral particle beamer.

  “I’ll handle the HF lasers and railguns!” he told Maureen, tapping on his panel to bring the Fire Control for those weapons to his station. “You focus on using those beams to kill something once Gareth’s Higgs Disruptor takes out any gravity probes.”

  The woman grimaced. “Glory hog! I can handle every weapons system on this ship. But go ahead.”

  “Brother,” called Elaine from beyond the empty Combat station seat. “NavTrack has us aimed directly at the midbody of Big Momma. What vector when we arrive at null accel?”

  Noticing how the cluster of six HikHikSot ships had yet to move or show the gravitational lensing of an activated grav-pull drive, he judged the enemy ships were still coping with the arrival of dozens of gravitomagnetic pulses. And trying to figure out what to do and who to aim at. The HikHikSot ships were dispersed, with one each at the nose, tail, spine, each side and belly of Big Momma. Which left the top spine of the ship as their best target, even though the range of lasers and beams was such that no part of the colony ship was unprotected. Still, it helped. “Put us and our two partners into a sideways track that runs down the ship’s upper spine from nose to tail. Let’s see how many compartments we can open to vacuum!”

  “Arriving!” called Denise. “Neutrino talk-talk has suddenly increased. They’re awake for sure!”

  Jack had no doubt of that. While he expected the HikHikSot fleet to have a record of every combat action ever undertaken by the Uhuru during their one-on-one combat Challenge fights with other Aliens, plus their later battle with the Unity’s Mao Tse-tung heavy cruiser at comet 1999 DG8, their decision to arrive at top grav-pull accel in a plasma flame ball had never been recorded by Menoma. Nor by any Earth ship likely to share data with that conniving Alien. Six bright dots suddenly appeared in the true-light image of the colony ship.

  “Gravity probes released!” cried Elaine.

  “Captain Gareth, take out the probes closest to us. Minna, keep an eye on our backtrack! Let me know if any ship from the orbital cluster comes our way.”

  The lensing-warped front screen image of Gareth, carried to them by tight-beam laser link like the image of Minna, gave him a thumbs-up gesture. “Will do!”

  Jack looked right. “Elaine, distance to our target?”

  “Fifty thousand kilometers and closing,” she said, her slim fingers dancing over her Piloting panel and the sidearm NavTrack panel. “We’re down to one-twentieth of lightspeed and slowing rapidly.”

  “Jack!” called Maureen from her holo. “Our six thermonuke torps are within a thousand klicks of the colony ship!”

  Behind him the neutrino comlink pedestal shrieked in Alien speech. “Something is happening!” called Denise.

  “They’re firing!” called Max from the rear of the cabin.

  On the front screen Jack saw four blue neutral particle beams lance out from the enemy ships at the nose, tail, spine and one side of the colony ship. They impacted on four of the incoming torps.

  “Maureen! Blow the remaining two torps!”

  “Igniting!”

  Jack’s thoughts raced. Their detonation signal traveled at light speed on a laser tight-beam. The weapons control choices of the defending HikHikSot ships operated equally fast. Which would happen first? Two hydrogen bomb explosions? Or his last two torps being vaporized?

  “Yes!” Nikola yelled from behind.

  A 50 megaton thermonuclear explosion in space is the sudden appearance of a small star. A globular star. First comes the outer infrared heat shell which leaves black scorch marks on anything more solid than flesh. Then comes the gamma and neutron radiation front, its shell showing purple and green sparkles as it strikes tiny stellar dust particles. Finally comes the yellow-white of the fusion globe, the plasma of which matches the interior temperature of Sol. The fusion globe normally stretches out to a diameter of ten kilometers. But these two blasts were nearly side-by-side. As they combined into one star-like globe of brightness, they filled the space between his three ships and the colony ship with masses of ionized particles, x-rays, gamma rays and heavy neutron bombardment. While the standard spaceship EMF field would deflect all charged particles, the neutrons, x-rays and gamma rays would shoot right through any EMF field. Only dense hull plating and a shell of water below the outer hull would stop the rads from sleeting through the thousands of Aliens in Cold Sleep aboard the giant colony ship. Silently he gave thanks for the water-filled double hulls possessed by each fleet ship.

  “In range!” cried Maureen, Gareth and Minna simultaneously.

  Blue neutral particle beams shot out from each of their ships, crossing the ten thousand klicks distance to the tan-brown hull of the colony ship in the blink of an eye.

  Black holes appeared in the upper spine of the colony ship. White sheets of air and water gushed out as the beams sliced along the kilometer length of the Alien hull. Then the hull cutting stopped as the blue beams shifted sideways to transit through empty space. Three bright sparkles told Jack that the Alien’s gravity probes had acted to deflect the neutral particle beams by way of gravitational deflection. Which meant they had to get within a thousand klicks so Gareth’s Higgs Disruptor could take out those probes.

  “Incoming!” yelled Elaine, her voice tone high.

  Blue beams fired by the five HikHikSot ships suddenly entered the yellow-orange glow of the plasma drive flares that preceded the Earth ships. They died out before reaching the Uhuru, Wolverine and Dragon. And his people.

  The cold chill had run down Jack’s spine when he saw the blue beams reaching out to kill him and his crewmates. It now ended. To be replaced by a hot sweat. He liked neither body sense. “Maureen! Gareth! Minna! Fire your lasers at those five ships! See if our lasers can disrupt any more particle beams fire!”

  “Jack,” called Nikola’s soft voice from behind. “Look at the split-screen! See Hideyoshi’s fleet? It
’s smashing every ship in orbit!”

  He’d forgotten that the other twenty-four Earth ships were moving across Sedna’s orbitals at eighty percent of lightspeed. Their combat had already begun seconds before the thermonukes exploded. He pulled his eyes away from the jagged screen image of the colony ship, an image partly discolored by their three drive flares, and looked at what his fellows were doing.

  On that part of the front screen yellow-white explosions filled the orbitals above Sedna as blue neutral particle beams struck out from within the flaming globe of Hideyoshi’s combined fleets. Appearing like a giant globe of ball lightning that sped through black space so fast it was almost a streak to his eyes, the fifteen ships in orbit above Sedna died violently. Three lay directly in the vector path of the plasma ball and they just melted before the impact of multiple drive flares. The remaining twelve died in multiple ways. The fusion reactors in some HikHikSot ships lost containment and vaporized the entire ship. Other ships fragmented into several pieces as blue beams cut through their tan hulls. Six ships at the distant horizon of Sedna managed to fire neutral particle beams at the onrushing flame ball but those beams died out, consumed in the raging inferno of fusion plasma the same way the first barrage had died under the decel thrust of his three ships. Eventually those six ships died before they could activate their grav-pull drives and jump beyond the range of the Earth ship weapons. On screen the image of the Earth flame ball grew sharper as the ships making up the ball fleet slowed their headlong flight. In seconds what had been a grav-pull distorted streak became a retreating ball of flame, then became stationary. In less than a second that stationary ball of yellow-orange flame became larger as Hideyoshi moved his fleets toward Jack and the colony ship.

  “All ships! Cut your grav-pull drive!” Jack ordered.

  “Firing the Higgs Disruptor!” called Gareth from another part of the screen.

  Jack shook himself back to the battle nearest him. “Minna! Maureen! Fire your antimatter beams at the middle of that ship. I want to see a tunnel of vacuum cutting through it. And use your neutral particle beams to take out the defending spine ship and other guardian ships!” He turned back to Denise. “ComChief, send out a radio broadcast on Charon Standard Channel Four. Repeat it on the neutrino comlink. Say the Earth humans have won this Combat Challenge! Tell them all survivors have two minutes to leave this system or be vaporized.”

  “Working on it, Captain Jack,” Denise said, bending her head and speaking softly into the pickups of the two comlinks.

  “Firing!” cried Maureen from her holo above his Tech panel.

  Jack peered closely at the giant hull of the colony ship. The venting of white air and water become ice had mostly stopped as automatic pressure hatches closed on the Alien ship. On screen three yellow explosions suddenly flared.

  “Probes dead!” yelled Gareth. “Aiming at the other three probes. Also firing HF lasers at Big Momma!”

  The Uhuru shuddered as the ship’s Main Drive fusion pulse flare shot toward the colony ship and its guardians, slowing them further as they neared a full stop at 800 kilometers. That was the target range he’d ordered during the Charon Base fleet battle conference. To either side the Dragon and the Wolverine also deceled, using only their Main Drives.

  Another barrage of blue neutral particle beam fire speared out at them, disappearing again within the flare of their plasma exhausts. But Jack noticed a change in guardian ship placement even as Maureen and Minna unleashed black beams of antineutron antimatter.

  “They’re moving sideways and upward!” he yelled, touching the HF laser pod controls on his panel. “All ships! Fire your lasers at those two HikHikSot ships moving to hit the sides of our group!”

  Seconds seem very short most of the time. In space, much can happen in seconds.

  “Got one bastard!” yelled Maureen as she swung the Battle Module so its neutral particle beam emitter could lock onto the western enemy ship.

  A blue beam reached out from the eastern ship, aiming for Gareth’s Dragon.

  It was met by a blue beam shot from Minna’s Wolverine.

  In space two powerful particle beams met, fused and created a blue light globe so bright it hurt Jack’s eyes.

  “Colony ship is hit!” cried Elaine, her voice sounding relieved that Minna had defeated the attack by the eastern ship. Which now died under a blue beam from Maureen’s Battle Module.

  Jack shook himself. He had known that the Uhuru’s Battle Module and Minna’s Battle Node could fire both their antimatter and their neutral particle beams at the same time. He had just never seen it happen. Giving thanks they had not lost the Welshman and his Belter crew, he focused on the remaining HikHikSot ships.

  Gravitational lensing showed around the two remaining guardian ships as they prepared to blip jump away, likely joined by the unseen belly guardian ship. Jack didn’t care as the gravity probes had died at the same time as the spine guardian, along with the two attacking ships, thanks to neutral particle beams fired by Minna and Maureen. Meanwhile, Gareth’s Higgs Disruptor beam had left the colony ship defenseless against two black beams of antimatter.

  The tan-brown hull of the kilometer-long spaceship now grew a meters-wide hole that was filled with yellow-white light as its metal underwent a total matter-to-energy conversion. The ball of raw light grew and grew, going deeper into the giant ship as Maureen and Gareth maintained the flow of antineutrons.

  “Signal!” cried Denise. “Incoming AV broadcast on Charon Standard Channel Four. Putting it up on the front screen!”

  Jack saw a third image split the screen, with the antimatter glare filling the right side image while the left side showed the approaching flame ball of Hideyoshi’s fleet. The middle image showed two people, one human and one HikHikSot. The human he recognized.

  “Dictat Maathias! What are you doing on that colony ship! And who is that beside you!”

  The man who had promised Jack that Earth would not seek to control any place beyond Earth’s atmosphere looked at him on the Come-Back signal, his face florid with blood. Appearing German stocky and Swiss dressed, he appeared far from the European casual that Jack remembered from their last encounter.

  “Stop your antimatter attack!” the man said in a low bass rumble. “There are 30,000 people aboard this ship! You’ll kill them all if you continue this attack!”

  On the right side of the screen the antimatter ball of matter-to-energy conversion grew wider, taking in a hundred meters of the ship’s hull. All it would take to kill the entire ship would be for Jack to order Maureen and Gareth to swing their beams sideways, along the ship’s spine, until they hit the fusion reactors at the front and rear of the ship.

  “How did you get to Sedna?” Jack asked, watching the cheetah-leopard Alien who was leaning forward as if ready to leap onto Jack and his crew.

  The man blinked, his black eyes darting to the side where the Alien stood, then back to Jack. “Earth built a new ship with the gravity-pull drive. Our HikHikSot friends gave us the specs! My ship entered this ship’s cargo hold. I told them we are now part of the HikHikSot realm. Stop the attack!”

  “Alien, do you admit defeat in this Challenge fight?” he said to the being who resembled a cross between a cheetah and a leopard, a being that stood on two tan-furred legs, held two pawhands in front of his blocky chest and who fixed golden yellow eyes on Jack. Triangular ears flicked forward.

  “You are our subject peoples!” the Alien roared in a throaty-cough. “Surrender yourselves to your masters! Or we HikHikSot will cull more living humans from Earth than the few million we normally receive in annual tribute.”

  “Ludwig Carsten Berthold Maathias, are you aboard the colony ship?”

  “Yes!” the man screamed, then winced as the cheetah-leopard Alien put a clawed pawhand against his neck.

  “Good.” Jack focused on the Alien, who stood in a large room filled with control panels, touch screens, holos and a dozen other crew beings at stations that resembled Hideyoshi’s
Command Bridge. “Alien, what is your name? I wish to tell your people who caused my fleet to attack their Home Range at Delta Boötis B.”

  White spit flew from the Alien’s mouth as fury filled its black-spotted face. Moving faster than Jack could see the Alien slashed through the carotid artery of Maathias’ neck. Then he screamed.

  “Earth is ours! Claimed by Duotat of the Home Range!”

  On the left side screen the Pinwheel Plasma Torch ball of Hideyoshi’s combined fleets had arrived at the western end of the colony ship. The twenty-four ships suddenly changed their orientation, using grav-pull drives to blip into an inverted tornado shape. A shape with a kilometers-wide hole at the front of the cone-shaped formation. On screen came Hideyoshi, seated in his Admiral’s seat on the Command Bridge of the Prince Otto von Bismarck heavy cruiser.

  “Captain Jack, shall we assist you in reducing this Alien ship to flaming embers?”

  “Yes! Advance and hit the nose with your particle beams.” He looked back at the image of Duotat, who stood alone as Dictat Maathias’ body twitched on the floor in its death throes. “Earth belongs to humans. Sol system is our Home Range! You are defeated in this Challenge combat, by the Rules of Engagement that govern the Great Dark. Tell your guardian ships that are now blipping away to return home, or we will hunt them down and destroy them. Your gravity probes cannot deflect our weapons fire. And our antimatter beams will vaporize any HikHikSot ship that enters Sol system. Surrender!”

  “Never! You are our food! You are—”

  “Denise, kill that link.” Looking down at Maureen’s image in the holo above his Tech panel, he spoke. “Combat Commander, move your antimatter beam along the spine of that ship.” He looked up at another captain image. “Captain Minna Kalevic Kekkonen, do the same with your antimatter beam. In memory of your Anneli Korhonen, leave no ship chamber with air or living beings!”

  “Transiting!” growled Maureen.

  Minna’s blue eyes met Jack’s as her pale face became deadly stern. “Transiting also, my captain. In memory of Anneli!”