“Firing!” A blue beam shot out from the whiptail of their Battle Module as Maureen joined her efforts with his.
A second blue beam shot down from the Orca’s stern, its neutral particle beam paralleling Maureen’s beam.
The bronze-colored hulls of the two disk-ships brightened to the laser fire, then each disk split in half as the blue particle beam cut through and beyond the ship’s frame. A sudden yellow-white glare from one of the split ships became a thermonuclear ball of fusion flame as the ship’s reactor lost its magfield containment.
“Incoming!” cried Denise.
The front screen image blinked, then showed an outward view of space. In the middle of the image were four disk-ships arranged in a row facing them. The two outer ships were tipped ninety degrees to bring their ring of laser mounts into firing position while the two inner ships pointed their north pole beam emitters at the fleet cluster. The yellow-orange of plasma drive flares washed over the true-light image, making dim the shapes of the disk-ships.
“Firing antimatter!” growled Maureen.
In the blink of an eye it was done.
The Hackmot ships shot two blue neutral particle beams and four green HF laser streaks at Jack and his fleet.
The beams entered the seventy kilometer-long drive flares of four fleet ships, dying within the superheated embrace of fusion plasma that filled the space between the fleet and the attacking disk-ships.
Four black threads of antineutron antimatter reached out from the fleet, each thread impacting on the central dome of a disk-ship. A ball of yellow-white plasma flared out at impact, then grew to consume the disk-ship bodies.
They died in bright balls of fusion flame as their reactors lost containment and the internal plasma joined with the antimatter plasma of total matter-to-energy conversion.
Four tiny suns glowed where once intelligent beings had lived.
Jack looked to Elaine. “The other grav-pull ships! Out in the system. What are they doing?”
“A moment.”
As Hideyoshi rearranged their seven ships into an outward-facing ring, with six ships surrounding Gareth’s ship Dragon in the middle, Jack noticed Denise madly tapping away on her Comlink panel, her youthful voice whispering into pickups that linked her to a voice-activated part of the Uhuru.
“All thirty-five grav-pull ships are blipping inward!” Elaine said hurriedly. “Their graviton emissions are now multiple streaks heading for us.” She met Jack’s gaze, her narrow chin tense and her rad-tanned lips grimacing. “We are outnumbered five to one. And I’m also . . . ,” she looked down at her Sensor panel, “and I’m detecting twelve Hunter-Killer torps coming over the horizon from the western edge of the planet. They’re approaching at eleven kilometers a second. They will reach us before the incoming disk-ships.”
“Maureen,” Jack called to his Combat Commander’s image in the holo above his Tech panel. “Ideas? Defense suggestions?”
“We could blip away on grav-pull,” she murmured, her gaze focused downward at her own Fire Control panel. “But where to go? Wherever we jump our gravitomagnetic pulses will guide the disk-ships to us.”
Jack knew that. “Hideyoshi, I’m taking back command.” He looked rearward at Max. “Drive Engineer, launch two of our four remaining thermonukes at those incoming torps.” He faced the images of his fellow captains. “Every fleet ship will launch two thermonukes at these torps, in a spread-out cluster. Set for detonation when the enemy torps are within three thousand klicks. No doubt their onboard E-and-E software will detect our torps and go into random vector changes. But the radiation front from these fifty megaton blasts will fry their onboard electronics. And guidance. Any enemy torp that approaches closer will be zapped with lasers from the ship closest to the approaching torp.” He fixed on the fleet’s wild Welshman. “Gareth, have your Combat Commander aim the Higgs Disruptor outward, at the incoming disk-ships. Tell her to be ready for a sweep across the incoming ships when I give the word.” He looked at the man who had more combat experience than any person in the fleet. “Hideyoshi, my apology to you. But I have some ideas on how to take out these incoming disk-ships and the tactics are not anything we’ve discussed earlier.”
“As you command, Fleet Captain,” the Asian said. The man gestured to the woman who served as his Bridge Weaponry Chief. “Lieutenant Marlena Lopez will join our efforts with those of the Uhuru and every other ship. Do we aim our drive flares at these incoming ships? If so, when?”
“Yes! But only after we take out these incoming Hunter-Killer torps,” Jack said hurriedly as he watched Elaine’s Sensor screen with its depiction of the long silver streaks that were incoming graviton sources. Twenty sources were approaching from the two outer gas planets, while fifteen other disk-ships were streaking in from other parts of the Keid star system. They were all approaching along the plane of the ecliptic, thankfully. But they made for three bunches heading his way. One from the eastward orbital track of the planet. One at a seventy degree angle from the outer planets. And a final bunch from the westward orbital track of the planet. Whatever the disk-ships had been doing in those distant reaches of Keid system he knew not. But they were incoming. And they would cover a large hemisphere of space when they arrived. Which gave him an idea.
“Captains of the fleet! Launch five barrel loads of ball bearings at the incoming vectors of these disk-ships. By the time they arrive the bearings will be spread out enough to create an invisible shell of deadly bullets.” The floor vibrated as Maureen began launching marble-sized steel balls from the Uhuru’s dual railguns. “Every ship, follow my lead as we drop orbital elevation to just a hundred kilometers above the atmosphere. We can at least cut off any chance of attack from the planet vector.” Jack’s mind imaged the three dimensional relationships that faced his seven ships. “Here’s our Battle Plan! First comes our thermonuke blasts against these incoming torps. Second comes our ball bearing shell that will meet the incoming ships. Third comes several sweeps by Gareth’s Higgs Disruptor beam across the face of the ships coming in from the outer planets. Fourth stage is shooting antimatter beams at the eastward and westward ship bunches! After that, we use our neutral particle beams and lasers to kill anything that gets close, while we rely on our drive flares to disrupt counterfire from the disk-ships.”
“It will work!” yelled Maureen, her expression determined.
Jack’s gut felt empty. His fingers felt shaky. And his heart was thudding so much he was sure people could hear it. But none of his fleet captains showed the slightest doubt as they met his gaze.
“Excellent!” cried Hideyoshi.
In the holo above his lap panel, Maureen looked up from her Weapons control readouts in the Battle Module. “Thermonuke ignition!”
Jack winced as fourteen small suns ignited on the western horizon of their orbital vector. The split-screen that covered the attacking Hunter-Killer torps darkened, as did the cabin’s portholes.
The neutron, x-ray and infrared radiation front spread outward as fourteen globular shells of expanding plasma, gas and deadly energy. The split screen showing that vector blinked, changing to a view from one of the spysats ejected by the Uhuru upon arrival above the planet. It showed the solid fuel drive flares from twelve Hunter-Killer torps. Those flares went into multiple E-and-E vectors as the torps tried to escape the oncoming thermonukes. Unfortunately, the tiny chip-brains in the Hunter-Killer torps could not handle a radiation barrage equal to being just above the corona of a star.
Ten incoming torps simply exploded. Two wobbled on their inbound trajectory, then dove down toward the upper atmosphere of the planet below. Jack nodded satisfaction at the defeat of one attack front.
Maureen fixed her gray eyes on him. “All Hunter-Killer torps defeated. They are either dead or headed for burn-out in the atmosphere.”
“Well done, Maureen,” Jack murmured, his heart beating at the approach of multiple combat fronts. “Well done. What’s the outward range of the ball bearing blasts?”
In the holo, the woman glanced down at a Battle Module readout. “Twelve thousand kilometers distant from us and expanding. The bearings will impact on any disk-ships arriving beyond that range.”
“Good,” he said, checking out the multiple split screens that adorned the front of the cabin. “Prepare to fire both your antimatter and your particle beams! We have to—”
“Don’t tell your grandma how to fight, youngster!”
Jack licked his dry lips. What else needed his attention? Did he have to wait? He hated waiting and—
“Got it!” yelled Denise from behind Jack.
He turned back to their redhead. “Got what?”
“The language spoken by those multi-legged lobsters! Anonymous has made a translation! Look! There’s an AV broadcast that is being repeated across all channels.”
Jack turned to face the front screen, his hind brain mentally counting the minutes until the arrival of the first disk-ships. Ahead, the middle part of the screen filled with the image of four centipede-lobsters. The creatures stood within a yellow walled room and faced the AV imager. No straps showed on the body segments of the Aliens. But red and yellow markings were painted on the front segments of each creature. Four sets of pink eyes looked out at Jack and his friends.
“People of the Warm Lands! Our masters the Hackmot have been attacked by beings from beyond our world. Join us, your March Leaders, in fighting those who harm our beloved masters. Even now we are launching rockets at the invading ships! Chant with us! We Mikmang adore our masters!”
A background chanting came over the AV broadcast. It was the sound of hundreds of Mikmang voices screech-singing the words “We adore our masters!”
Jack felt a chill run down his neck. “Shut it off!”
“Ahhh, fuck!” cursed Ignacio from the back of the cabin.
“Attack missiles coming at us from the two continents below!” cried Elaine.
“Max, fire our two remaining thermonuke torpedoes at that wide peninsula on the northeast coast of the small continent. That’s where the two disk-ships launched from. That has to be the site of the Hackmot colony,” he said.
“Firing two torps!” Gareth and Hideyoshi said simultaneously.
That would make for six fifty megaton thermonuclear blasts at a kilometer above the peninsula. With dominant winds coming in from the northeast, cobalt-dusted radioactive fallout would spread out to settle on the eastern third of the small continent. Perhaps there were Mikmang in that area who would die. But so would every Hackmot reptile living in that part of planet Warm Lands.
“Firing lasers at the approaching rockets,” Maureen said from the holo, her tone casual, as if every day they fought a battle on four fronts.
“I’m sorry,” Denise said, her voice trembling over the EVA suit comlink that linked her to everyone in the cabin.
Jack waved at her as he kept his focus on the true-light screen image of space and the nearby infrared sensor imagery that would reveal any automated torps or self-propelled mines coming at them.
“Not your fault,” he said softly. “Every conquered people have had collaborators. Seems these Mikmang have their share. Why don’t you work on a propaganda broadcast for later, after we win this battle. There’s gotta be some rebels somewhere among those people!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jack focused on the graviton tracks of the nearest disk-ships. Those were the twenty coming in from the outer planets. The smaller group of disk-ships at the 30 AU gas planet had joined up with a larger group orbiting the inner gas world. Somehow the two groups had adjusted their grav-pull speed to allow a rendezvous before their arrival on the dark side of the planet Warm Lands. The other two groups of incoming ships lay more distant. They had at least ten minutes before those fleets arrived. Wishing he could scratch his nose through the clear bubble of his helmet, Jack looked back at Denise.
“ComChief, activate the neutrino comlink! Got some words to share with these approaching Hackmots.”
“Activating,” she said, her tone sounding steady.
He glanced at the right side of the front screen, where Elaine’s Sensor image showed the graviton streak of the twenty disk-ships nearly at the planet-moon position. “Hackmot fleet! We made Meat of your ships and moon base. We claim this system under the Rules of the Great Dark. Leave or die!”
Nothing happened. The front screen’s true-light image of the space between the fleet and the distant moon stayed empty. The images of his fellow ship captains showed them giving orders to their crewmates. The side image that showed the night side of the world below grew bright with seven yellow explosions as Maureen’s lasers eliminated the slow-moving rockets fired at them by the Mikmang collaborators.
“Targets!” muttered Elaine as the front screen filled with the distant images of twenty disk-ships. “Range is twenty thousand klicks. And closing fast.”
“Incoming neutrino AV!” called Denise.
The middle of the front screen filled with the upright body of a single Hackmot, who sat on a central pedestal. To one side stood a square metal block with a round cake shape atop it. At the other side stood the thick pedestal that was the modulated neutrino comlink which connected the Alien’s ship with Jack’s ship. Red-scaled arms rested on the two devices. Two golden eyes fixed on him as the creature’s toothy mouth opened.
“Humans, we eat you! Our domain this system is. For 1,200 orbits of the world below we have eaten the Mikmang and taken what we wished. Attack!” it screeched.
The image vanished.
The oncoming disk-ships did not go to grav-pull drive. Instead they relied on their original speed before going to grav-pull. Which seemed to be ten percent of lightspeed from what Jack could tell from Elaine’s Sensor screen. Fast enough to bring them within range of his fleet’s weapons.
“Gareth! Higgs Disruptor sweep now!”
In the true-light image at the center of the front screen, six of the twenty ships showed white gushes of air and water as they ran into the ball bearing shell. Those ships began tumbling, their orientation control clearly lost as the five Hackmot crew on each ship died from lack of air. Or from penetration by ball bearings moving at six kilometers per second, thanks to the electromagnetic impulse of the fleet’s railguns.
“At ten thousand kay range!” cried Maureen from her holo.
The imagery of the oncoming Hackmot fleet grew hazy as the yellow-orange gases of the fleet’s fusion drive flares spat outward toward the approaching disk-ships. Jack wondered if the Higgs Disruptor beam that caused boson particle disruption in a manner to kill local gravity, and undo the field-linkage of subatomic particles to each other, would disrupt any incoming energy beams.
A yellow beam suddenly flared out from the center of the fleet ship ring, its coherent shape broadening slightly until it reached a kilometer in width at its maximum range of ten thousand kilometers.
“Yes!” cried Maureen as a disk-ship in the middle of the oncoming formation simply felt apart as if a balloon inside the ship were expanding it outward. All semblance of structural integrity vanished as the steel, titanium, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms of the ship and its contents flew apart due to the impact of the Higgs Disruptor.
Jack blinked, feeling amazed. The fleet’s antineutron antimatter beams destroyed all matter as the negative charge of antimatter met the positive charge of normal matter, causing an energy blast ten times greater than that of a thermonuke. But the quiet finality of a beam that could make any matter, any gas, anything made of atoms, could make that substance come apart at the subatomic level, it amazed him.
On the front screen the yellow beam swept rightward, hitting four other disk-ships.
Those ships became glowing clouds of single subatomic particles. The process happened so fast that the fusion reactors on board each ship had no time in which to become unleashed thermonuclear explosions. For the deuterium and helium-3 isotopes could not fuse in the presence of the Higgs Disruptor beam. They simply became drifting baryon
s, mesons, hadrons, quarks, leptons and other subatomic particles that had lost their strong nuclear force ability to cohere into atomic nuclei.
“All ships fire your neutral particle beams!” Jack yelled over the laser comlink.
Six beams of coherent neutral particles swept out like blue swords of light.
The beams hit the habitat bulge in the center of each ship that resembled a spinning top balanced on a belly spire, a spire that was a neutral particle beam emitter.
The surviving nine Hackmot ships shot their own neutral particle beams at Jack’s fleet, the blue scythes reaching toward each ship and for Gareth’s ship at the center of the ring. Those enemy beams swept past the fleet’s own blue beams.
Jack stopped breathing.
All nine enemy beams dove deep into the yellow-orange fusion drive flares emitted by Jack’s seven ships. They moved past the outer edge of the ionized gases emitted by the drive flares, coming inward.
Until they hit the glaring yellow-orange shaft of plasma emitted by the deuterium/helium-3 fusion created by the Compact Fusion Reactor attached to the magfield exhaust funnel of each fleet ship.
At sixteen kilometers from the seven ships emitting yellow-orange flares, the incoming neutral particle beams evaporated as their particles were consumed by the star-hot plasma of each drive flare.
“Yes!” he yelled loud enough to make Elaine startle-jump in her Pilot seat.
“Every ship! Fire your antimatter beams at those nine disk-ships! And Gareth, try to sweep your Higgs beam over some of the survivor ships.”
“Sweeping,” said the black-bearded man as he looked aside to the woman who ran his Battle Nodule. “Angelique, add our antimatter beam to the fleet beams!”
Seven black threads of coherent antimatter shot out faster than the eye could follow, passing to the side of the yellow Higgs Disruptor beam. Which beam now swept upward to envelope two disk-ships not being targeted by the antimatter beams.
Humans Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 2) Page 13
