The older man pursed his lips. “Occam’s Razor analysis suggests we are seeing what you suggested. Twelve Alien ships amongst twenty local ships. But which Aliens? One of the dozen species we encountered at Sedna? Or an entirely new species?”
Jack had the answer for that. “We can find out. We move forward on fusion pulse drives only, at twenty percent of light. In stealth mode, with only laser tight-beam communications. No grav-pull blip jumps that will register on gravitomagnetic sensors. I prefer to take these Alien ships by surprise. And moving silently allows our spysats to image the designs of both ship types. If one type matches an Alien species in orbit above Sedna, we’ll have ID’d our Alien predators!”
Hideyoshi nodded slowly, his thin black eyebrows drawing together as he squinted as his own screen imagery. “Good plan, Captain Jack. Uh, if the Uhuru and the Bismarck both launch spysats now using our railguns, those sats will move ahead of us far enough to feed data back to us by way of a laser link.”
He liked the Asian’s spysat idea. “Agreed. All ships, go to Main Drive fusion pulse! Once we are at full vector velocity, Admiral Minamoto and I will launch spysats. And you other ships should also launch spysats using your own railgun launchers. Minna, Ignacio, Gareth, Akemi, Aashman, Kasun and Júlia, do you vibe me?”
“Yes, Captain Jack,” called the Brazilian from her Caiman ship. Other captains made similar confirmations.
“Jack!” yelled Nikola. “Give me a minute to collapse my Big Eye reflector and pull it inside to the Mech Shop module. It’s not built into the ship hull like the Schmidt refractor.”
“Max, hold on release from Pinch Mode until Nikola has her scope inside,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the front screen.
“Details, details,” grumbled their Engineer from Lodz.
A sigh sounded from behind him. “Max, my Big Eye is inside. You can release the Main Drive,” Nikola said.
“Good!” vibed his friend, sounding happy that he could once more play with a controlled fusion implosion.
Jack watched as seventy kilometer-long drive flares emerged from the tails of Bismarck, Wolverine, Badger, Dragon, Orca, Mongoose, Leopard and Caiman. The Uhuru quickly matched their forward velocity. It was fun seeing the true-light images of his fleet ships. While the Bismarck was largest of them all at 400 meters in length, with his ship half its size and the other fleet ships showing hundred meter lengths, the true-light image from the Schmidt scope gave him a clear-as-glass view of each ship. And the painted-on predator images that matched each ship’s name. He sat back in his Tech seat, his mind sorting through future options.
“Fleet, monitor the system ahead of us and report on laser link anything you think the rest of us should know,” Jack ordered. “Maureen, please develop some combat simulations based on the assumption of twelve enemy Alien ships. Elaine, get me atmospheric, temperature and gravity data on that innermost planet one. Denise, monitor that planet for any radio, microwave or AV emissions. Max, please keep our Main Drive at full thrust.” He paused, thinking intently. “Nikola, study those three planets and let me know if any of them have hydrocarbon contaminants in their atmospheres. Or anything else out of the ordinary for an Earth-like planet and two Jupiter types.”
His crewmates acknowledged his orders, as did the captains of the other ships in the fleet.
Jack guessed it would take the fleet nearly two days to reach the planet two gas giant, at five AU out from Epsilon Eridani. Both the gas giant and the small Earth-like world were on the same side of the home star, though at a twenty degree diagonal in orbital relationships. Close enough. They could watch traffic going from the inner planet out to the gas giant, then back inward, by tracking neutrino emissions from each ship’s fusion reactor. They could also monitor the Alien ship actions by tracking graviton emissions from the grav-pull drives used by the Alien ships. This dual tracking would tell them a lot about what was normal space traffic in this system. And perhaps Denise could pick up some AV signals from the inner, Earth-like planet. Which had a small moon. Would be nice to see what the local Alien people looked like.
He grinned at himself. Hurry up and wait. It was an ancient dictum usually linked to war-fighting. It seemed equally well suited to interstellar star-roaming! Nodding at Maureen, who looked up from her combat simulation holo, he unlocked his straps, stood up and smiled at Nikola. “Chief Astronomer, want to join me for some Europa Pale Ale? I think we can make headway in decimating Elaine’s favorite brew!”
The outraged shout from his sister followed him and Nikola into the Spine hallway. Holding his lifemate’s hand, he wondered if she would open up more about her life with her parents, who’d died in the ancient city of Prague from one of the frequent pandemics that still swept Earth.
She brushed long brown curls out of her eyes and grinned at him. “Bet you I can last longer than you!”
“Bet accepted!” Jack began walking faster down the metal deckway. “Uh, but who keeps track if we both lose our marbles?”
“Autonomous of course! Our super-aware expert program is good for a lot more than just obeying orders.”
He nodded. Then he began to run. “First one there gets first claim on the coldest bottles!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Hours later Jack watched the front screen of the Pilot Cabin, totally entranced with the AV images coming from the small Earth-like planet. When they had come within one AU of the Jupiter-like planet two, Denise had picked up dozens of EMF transmissions coming from the inner planet one. A planet that showed dark green over most of its land forms, with the blue of oceans and seas scattered here and there. The polar cap areas seemed nearly ice-free and dark brown or gray in color. While the front screen had split into three segments, with the inner planet imagery on the left and the gas giant image on the right, it was the central image that fascinated him and everyone in his crew.
“They don’t look like herbivores,” Maureen said as she sat at her Combat station, a space combat simulation holo forgotten as she watched the antics of a half-dozen planetary Aliens.
“Could this be a game to garner money? Or earn mating rights?” said Nikola from behind him.
Jack watched as eight foot tall bipeds climbed tall ponderosa-like trees so fast their movements seemed a blur. Their two hands and two feet seemed to move up the reddish bark as if they were running on the ground, the way Jack and other humans were used to moving quickly. But the objective in this game, where long tails served to balance the frantic climbing, seemed to be the acquisition of orange balls that might be fruit. A pile of such balls lay at the base of each tree. The six competitors, covered in short green fur, moved their four-fingered hands and four-toed feet up the tree bark as if they had sticktite on their soles and palms. Nearby stood a single biped dressed in a short white tunic whose purple eyes seemed to follow the actions of each competitor. The white-clothed Alien held some kind of tech device in its right hand. Jack wondered if it was a stopwatch or the equivalent. Some Aliens were a bit slower than others. But the fastest climber was a biped whose lithe body movements reminded him of the way prosimian lemurs on Earth moved through forest branches and leaves. Effortlessly this competitor moved up, down, and back up again. His pile of orange fruit balls was the biggest among the six bipeds involved in an apparent contest. Which had an audience! Off to either side of the AV image were hundreds of other bipeds, many of them dressed in rainbow-colored short pants, similar to the dhotis worn by Hindus who worked in the fields or did manual labor. Other Aliens wore something that resembled a short tunic. The temperature of the landscape shown in the AV images was at least a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, according to Elaine’s sensor readings.
Denise chuckled from her ComChief seat. “It’s a competition for sure. And the bipeds in the crowds on either side are dressed differently. One group wears only the short pants, while the other group wears a short tunic like the Doric chiton of the Greeks.” She paused, then pointed at the central image. “See the hips of the bipeds wearing the
chiton? They are wider than the hips of the bipeds wearing only the short pants. Perhaps they are females who wear the chiton while the males wear just shorts?”
“Good point, Denise,” said Elaine, sounding amused. “And it seems that only naked male bipeds are climbing those trees. Based on the penile genitalia that show whenever they leave the tree to add fruit balls to the pile.”
“For sure there are two genders,” Denise said thoughtfully. “But I don’t mean to suggest these bipeds are mammals. I agree there are shape and clothing differences. But they could be furry reptiles that lay eggs! Or avians that lost their wings the way whales and dolphins lost their feet when their ancestors went back to the ocean.”
“Children,” growled Maureen from his right. “Focus! Yes these people of the small planet are interesting. And their tallness goes with the six-tenths gee gravity which Nikola computed from its orbital elements, size and moon. But focus on the Tech! See that delta-winged plane in the background? It’s moving fast as if jet-powered. And up on that hill that overlooks this grove of trees, there’s a group of pillared buildings. Habitations of some sort. But see the glow from the inside? Artificial illumination. Which is not surprising if the fusion pulse spaceships belong to these people.”
Jack had shifted his gaze from the eight foot-tall bipeds to the right side screen that showed the gas giant. And the space around it. Metallic sparkles showed from devices that hung above the orange and red-streaked world. “Nikola! Increase magnification on those metallic sparkles above the gas giant! Those are ships or satellites or both.”
“Oh!” Nikola said as she looked at the side screen. She tapped her Schmidt scope controls. The right side image enlarged a hundred-fold.
“Spaceships!” yelled Max from the rear where he kept the Main Drive in Pinch Mode, with thrust shut off. “Two types. Plus two orbiting space stations, judging by their rotating wheel shape. Which says whomever lives in the stations does not have artificial gravity control and needs spin-gee.”
Jack thought one of the ship designs looked familiar. “Denise, that crescent-shaped spaceship off to one side and away from the long spearheads of the other ships. It looks familiar. Does it match any ship image recorded from Sedna? From when we arrived and joined up with the orbiting Alien ships?”
“A moment,” she said hurriedly as if distracted. Jack heard her fingers tapping rapidly on her touch panel. “You’re right! There were four ships orbiting Sedna that match this crescent shape.”
“But,” Maureen said abruptly, “that single crescent ship does not match the ship design of any Aliens which we fought, or that Jack and Max fought earlier in the old Uhuru.”
“You’re right,” Jack said, wondering at the shape of the Aliens who occupied the crescent ship. “Maureen, there’s a central globe there, embedded in the middle of the flat crescent. I think there are hydrogen-fluorine lasers there, with one each on the outer tips of the crescent. And . . . yes! See that short tail behind the central globe? That could be a rear-pointing neutral particle beamer. What do you think?”
Maureen had replaced her combat holo with the image of the crescent ship. “Agreed. But look at that hull! Those painted on designs look like feathers. And the feather colors are red and black, while there are two red eyes on the front of the globe. And a yellow triangle that could be a beak if this represents a bird.”
Jack swallowed. “Krisot! That imagery resembles the griffin shape of the Krisot Aliens. They’re shaped like an eagle crossed with a lion.” He looked up at the images of his fellow ship captains that ran across the top of the screen. “Minna, Akemi and everyone, recall that the Krisot attacked us just after we left Menoma’s chamber?”
“Yes!” yelled Aashman of the Mongoose. “Those cursed creatures! They have black claws on their feet which were too damn painful!”
Jack wondered if the underside of the crescent ship held two clawed feet images. It didn’t matter. No other Alien they had met at the Gathering Hall on Sedna had feathers, other than the Krisot. And no other Alien had been so instinctively murderous in their Challenge attack as the Krisot. “Denise, didn’t you say, on our return to Mathilde from the First Sedna Battle, that flying eagle-lions could not have evolved on a world with gravity as strong as Earth’s? That the Krisot you saw in our vidrecords had to come from world with a lighter gravity? If so, that would explain why they took control of this system. The bipeds’ home world has just six-tenths gee gravity.”
“Do we hail them?” asked their impulsive redhead.
“No!” yelled Maureen, her tone murderous and her expression grim. “Our fleet needs every advantage possible if we expect to defeat the Krisot control of this system. Surprise attacks like the one we did in the Second Sedna Battle are vital to battle success. And to keeping our losses low.”
Jack wholly agreed with Maureen’s feelings. And with her combat caution. “Denise, record any Alien talk-talk you get on that modulated neutrino comlink pillar that is beside your seat. But no neutrino talk back. Nor does any fleet ship emit any radio, microwave or other EMF emissions.”
“Agreed,” said Hideyoshi from the front screen. “But may I ask how the Uhuru was able to decode this AV transmission from the small planet? The Bismarck is receiving more than three dozen EMF transmissions from the planet, signals that range from three kilohertz to 300 gigahertz. Although the stuff above 1,000 megahertz seems to be microwaves of various types.”
Jack looked over his right shoulder to Denise. “ComChief? Shall we let your cat out of the bag, to use an archaic phrase?”
Their young stowaway smiled broadly, then pushed at her red curls as if nervous, before facing the image of Hideyoshi. “Admiral, well, I studied EMF transmission modes in Paris, before my parents took me out to Charon. I switched to studying Animal Ethology and Behavioral Ecology there.” She paused, blinking red eyelashes over green eyes. “Anyway, I spent the Alcubierre transit time working with Autonomous, our ship’s primary computer. Autonomous, respond please.”
“Responding,” came a neutral male voice.
Denise looked up at the ceiling sound emitter. “What is the source of the differentiating algorithms which you used to separate out radio, television, microwave and GPS-style transmissions?”
“Algorithms used in converting incoming audio and visual EMF signals to match the display modalities of this ship’s equipment were based on experimental algorithms developed by the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and by a NASA contractor tasked with analyzing possible SETI signals,” the Autonomous computer said, its words sounding almost human-normal.
Denise smiled shyly at her questioner. “Fleet Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto, I’ll be glad to have Autonomous transmit these conversion algorithms to your ship, if you wish?”
Hideyoshi seemed touched by the youthful eagerness of Denise. “Very well done, young Denise. Yes, please transmit those algorithms and their matches to the biped AV transmissions to my ship. My ComChief will no doubt find them highly useful. And ComChief Denise?”
“Yes, admiral?” said Denise, her expression hopeful.
“You did vital, critical work in developing these analysis and conversion algorithms,” the man said, his expression very formal. “While my ship could tell which Alien transmissions were radio and which television based on signal strength, modulation and amplification, deciphering those transmissions into coherent imagery and sound was impossible without your work.” The man paused, then looked to Jack. “Perhaps your captain can reward you with . . . a few elk steaks? Or drinks of her choice?”
“Oh! Yes. Thank you!” Denise said excitedly, sounding happy to have the approval of the man who had commanded crews and spaceships for the last thirty years.
“She will have any steak of her choice,” Jack said to Hideyoshi, then gave Denise an approving nod.
“People!” interrupted Maureen as she looked up from a holo that hovered above her Combat panel. “Focus on those spaceships just one AU away from us. And Denise, review your Alien
AV transmissions for any imagery of these Krisot Aliens. You know what they look like from the First Sedna Battle. I want to know where, on the inner planet, they are located. Surely they will appear in bipedal AV broadcasts if the Krisot treat these tree-climbing bipeds as subject peoples.”
“Yes, Combat Commander,” Denise said hurriedly, as if worried she had done something wrong. “I’ll use Autonomous to search the bipedal AV transmissions for the bodyform of these Krisot Aliens.”
Jack snapped his fingers, the sound loud in the Pilot Cabin. “Maureen. Combat Commander. You are right to remind us that we face a future fight against these Krisot. So . . . where are their ships, based on graviton emissions by their grav-pull space drives? Is there a cluster of such ships? If so, where in this system? And is there any sign of an Alien base in this system, like the Sedna dwarf planet base set up by Menoma?” Jack paused, looked over his crew in the Pilot Cabin, then up to his fellow ship captains. “People, we need answers to these matters. And soon. While we are not using our fusion drives at present, I do not trust to luck that we will evade detection. These Krisot avians are surely monitoring local space traffic and are aware of anything that happens in this system. Like Menoma was aware of what our ship and other ships did in Sol system.” He paused, not happy with his worries. “We need to find these twelve Krisot ship locations. Then we need to annihilate them! Quickly! Before they can send an FTL probe back to their home system, wherever that is.”
Maureen looked at Jack, her expression intent. “You will have your answers, my captain. Soon. Because I learned in the first Belter Revolution to never trust to luck!”
Jack nodded, then sat back in his Tech station seat, hands folded over his lap, trying to think of any other problems he might have missed. Fighting against Aliens who had invaded Sol system was easier than this. In Sol, you knew where they were and what they were trying to do. Here, inside Epsilon Eridani system, he and his fleet knew only that one group of Aliens ruled over another group of Aliens. And that the ruling group had dangerous spaceships that could bring death and destruction to the humans of Earth.
Humans Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 2) Page 6
