The pudgy Asian nodded abruptly. “Agreed. My Weapons Chief Lieutenant Marlena says the newly built Combat Nodule that houses our Higgs Disruptor is operational. And closely attended by both Archibald and Matthias.” The man looked aside at his own front screen copy of what Jack was seeing. “Captain Gareth, mind if I keep your people a while longer?”
The Welshman gave Hideyoshi a big, bearded smile. “Hold onto them. Please! My Combat Commander Angelique just got happier. She likes running her weapons the way she likes to run them. Versus how some Tech professors think they should run!”
Jack, Hideyoshi and everyone chuckled. Including Max and Blodwen, Denise and Nikola, and even Elaine, who he knew was worried about Ignacio. Well, he could help a little there. “Good. Hideyoshi, I will ask the Badger, the Wolverine and the Dragon to accompany me on our attack run. The rest will join you. Agreed, everyone?”
Nods, smiles and two thumbs-up came from the eight captains.
“Nice tactic, Captain Jack,” Maureen said. “But what do the two subfleets do after making this run? When and where do we rejoin? And then what do we do?”
Jack sat back in his seat. He did not care for the feel of the restraint straps, which only made wearing an EVA suit more unpleasant.
“People, everyone, every crew person, keep wearing your EVA pressure suit from here on out! Too many chances for a stray laser to breach your hull and suck out air.” He paused. “As for what we do after this jump in-system and then the asteroid attack, well, let’s Alcubierre jump back out away from the ecliptic. Say to a position the exact opposite of where we are now. On the south side of the local ecliptic plane. I plan to make a neutrino broadcast from there. After that, I’ve got an idea for a final attack. But I’ll need to consult with Archibald, Matthias and Max on something before I share it.”
Maureen grimaced. “You’re just like your Grandpa Ephraim! He loved keeping secret his best moves. Until he made them. Made it hard for other ships to back him up.”
Jack knew that. His fleet operations and surprise attack methods came straight from what his grandpa had shared with him. Before the man died in the ramming of a Unity frigate. Nikola, Elaine, Cassie and his parents gave him plenty of reasons to avoid suicide runs. Still, the enemy did not need to know that.
“You always give good advice, grandma Maureen. Maybe your Gareth will listen to you.”
His uplifted arms caught the woman’s left-handed slap effort. Her expression was one of intense upset. She frowned. “You need to learn some subtlety, young Jack. Listen to your woman. All women know subtlety better than any man!”
Of that he had no doubt. “Thank you, Combat Commander. I am a willing student for anything Nikola wishes to teach me.” He looked back over his shoulder to their redhead. “Denise, you got enough AV broadcasts to do some language crunching?”
Her eyes opened wide. “Oh yes! Yes! Autonomous and I should have a SETI translation by the time we head out on our attack run.”
“Excellent.” Jack looked up at the other captains. “Gentlemen and ladies, in ten minutes we go to Alcubierre drive shell jump into the inner system. Arrival at two-tenths AU out from the star. After that, it’s grav-pull attack time!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The fleet arrived two-tenths AU out from the flaring coronal surface of Delta Boötis B. Jack gave mental thanks that the front screen showed true-light imagery looking outward, rather than back at the yellow prominences and curves of super-hot plasma. Ahead was a velvet-black space with no planet imagery in the middle. The rocky planet one lay far to the left as it swiftly circled the star. Planet two with its white clouds that so resembled Venus shone brightly to the right. Farther out, beyond the asteroid belt they were aiming at, glowed the green, brown and white glow of the inhabited planet three. With its single white moon. He looked up at the EVA-suited and helmeted images of his captain allies.
“Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto, is your Bismarck ready to blip jump with the Caiman, Mongoose, Leopard and Orca for the leading colony ship? The one on the eastward ecliptic vector?”
“Ready, Fleet Captain Jack Munroe,” the admiral said, his thin eyebrows furrowing as he squinted down at a lap panel. “All our weapons systems are operational, at full power and staffed. As we discussed, the Bismarck subfleet will exit grav-pull at fifty thousand klicks out from the target. Our Higgs Disruptor beam will vaporize all matter within its three kilometer wide footprint. My allied ships will flip nose to stern so their drive flares will precede us and disrupt any offensive lasers and neutral particle beams.” The man looked up, a stern expression showing. “Archibald and Matthias have been ordered to not interfere with Lieutenant Marlena’s use of our weapons systems. We are in laser tight-beam linkage and ready to enter grav-pull upon time-lock activation by Drive Engineer Max Piakowski.”
Jack looked to Gareth, whose expression was similarly serious. “Is the dragon ready to wing into battle?”
The man nodded slowly. He reached up to comb his thick black beard, found he was blocked by his clear helmet, then looked away from Jack to Maureen. “Celtic lady, shall we see whose antimatter beams can take out the most HikHikSot ships?”
Maureen gave a low whistle. Which echoed loudly over the suit comlinks. Then a shy smile filled her wrinkled features. “Challenge accepted!”
“People!” Jack said, reclaiming their focus. “Recall these HikHikSot ships have gravity probes that can deflect all coherent energy beams, including our antimatter strikes. However, our arrival at eighty percent of lightspeed will give them precious little time for their own Auto Track and Defend computers to launch probes against us. Or to fire on us.” He looked over at helmeted Elaine, whose curly brown bangs were restrained by her headband. “Pilot and Navigator, have you set the NavTrack for a vector to the second colony ship, the one that lags orbitally behind the first one?”
She gave him a look that said she was tired of his triple-checking with her. “Of course it is! As you can tell from your own Tech panel. Or see from the NavTrack coordinates I’ve posted up on the screen.” Elaine looked up at their audience. “Admiral and captains, I’ve sent each of you the coordinates for our south ecliptic rendezvous point. I suggest that each subfleet do their Alcubierre jump to that spot shortly after passing by the colony ship target.”
Hideyoshi, Gareth, Akemi and every other captain nodded their acknowledgment of receiving Elaine’s vital NavTrack data. Which left him with only one thing to do.
“Max! Initiate grav-pull drive!”
“Activating!” Ahead, the front screen images blurred, went jagged and the stars contorted as gravitational lensing warped all light around the hull of the Uhuru.
Maureen stood up. “Heading back to the Battle Module. I’ve got a bet to beat!”
It would take the Uhuru and its three allied ship just four minutes to cover the three-tenths AU distance to their target. Which was just barely enough time for Maureen to reach her Battle Module and its weapons panels. The sound of feet running came from the hatch that opened onto the Spine hallway. He smiled. Running in an EVA suit was not easily done. Especially in the one gee gravity field maintained on each fleet ship, thanks to a secondary function of the grav-pull drive. Providing such local gravity caused the G-band graviton emissions that had allowed Elaine’s Sensors to detect the stationary grav-pull ships. It mattered not for the two sub-fleets. The local star’s massive outpouring of gravitons gave a warping to local space-time that served to cover their approach. Jack gave thanks he’d chosen to play the ancient World War II aerial combat video games. Games which made a point of the value of attacking with the sun behind you. Such an attack angle worked just as well on the interplanetary scale as on the planet surface scale.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Emerging!” called Max from his Drive station seat. “Flipping to point stern ahead. Going from Pinch Mode to fusion drive flare!”
“Thermonukes launched!” called Elaine. “By the Badger and Wolverine. They’re on full thrust.”
>
“Higgs Disruptor beam emitted by the Dragon!” called Maureen from the holo above Jack’s lap panel. “On Auto Track and Defend. With manual supplement!”
Jack had no doubt his Belter veteran wanted to add her ship kills to whatever the computerized weapons tracking system accomplished. The cabin floor vibrated against his fleet.
“Railguns launching!” cried Nikola from behind him. “Colony ship ahead!”
Jack saw the true-light image of that ship suddenly filling the front screen. The tan-brown hull of a kilometer-long cigar already filled half the screen, thanks to Nikola’s scope enlargement. Which was already shrinking down a bit. Near the colony hovered twelve ball-in-a-flat-rectangle HikHikSot ships, their golden hide color easily visible at their rapidly reducing range. Already they’d gone from 50,000 kilometers down to just 30,000 klicks.
Yellow flashes and white glows filled the space between his subfleet and the colony ship.
“Mine field!” called Maureen. “One hundred twenty-seven evaporations! Plus three Hunter-Killer reactor flashes. Our way is clear!”
With his subfleet arranged across a narrow three kilometer wide front, with drive flares pointing ahead to disrupt incoming enemy fire, Jack thought they resembled a poisoned dart from jungle antiquity. While the ball bearings ejected by his ship’s dual railguns could be deflected by a gravity probe, they were so numerous that no single probe could deflect them all. And they approached at the fleet’s velocity of eighty percent of lightspeed. Plus some extra granted by the planetary escape velocity momentum granted them by the railgun magfields. He hoped some of them caught outlying ships that lay beyond the range of his lasers and beams.
“Closing!” called Maureen as the front screen range counter rapidly got smaller. “Twelve thousand kilometers and closing!”
Before he could blink, the screen showed black antimatter threads reaching out from the Uhuru and its three subfleet ships. Blue neutral particle beams from three ships joined the lightspeed barrage of coherent energy. Prior agreement had split the target field among the four ships so as to reduce the chance of redundant assaults on enemy ships by their beams. Still, there were twelve enemy ships and their first barrage amounted to just seven beams.
“Yes!” cried Denise excitedly.
Jack’s heart beat faster as the front screen showed four HikHikSot ships going to yellow-white total matter-to-energy blasts, thanks to the antimatter threads. Three other ships split in half as the blue particle beams hit their central globe and sliced through.
The five surviving ships struck back.
Blue particle beams and green HF laser fire flashed toward Jack and his ships.
The orange glow of drive flares filled the space between the fleet and the enemy ships.
The five beams struck deep into the ionized plasma of their drive flares, but they lost coherence at sixteen kilometers out from contact with any Earth ship.
“Second barrage!”
Maureen’s eager yell drew his attention.
The woman shot alternating blue particle and black antimatter beams at the surviving enemy ships. As did the weapons chiefs on the three other ships. While the Dragon had only an antimatter beamer and its HF lasers in its Combat Nodule, it still gave a good account. And its Higgs Disruptor beam kept their attack vector clear of all mines, Hunter-Killer torps and automated lasers. Brief flashes of which announced their death as his ships closed the distance to the colony ship.
Two 50 megaton thermonuclear explosions ignited at either end of the giant colony ship.
Fast as the eye could see, their globular blast spheres expanded outward. The red glow of the infrared heat came first, its temperature dazzling hot. Next came the gamma and neutron radiation front, its shell showing purple and green sparkles as it struck ship fragments from the fragmenting ship. Finally came the yellow-white of the total matter-to-energy conversion globe, the heat of which equaled the interior temperature of the sun. That globe would grow to reach a diameter of ten kilometers. But before that happened it met the expanding thermonuclear plasma globe produced by the other torp. They combined now into a dazzling miniature sun. A tiny Sol now occupied the spot where once millions of tons of ship and at least thirty thousand Cold Sleep capsules had existed.
“Jack! Hideyoshi’s fleet has killed its colony ship too!” yelled Nikola.
He’d not been looking beyond their battle. Fortunately his star girl had been looking sideways with the Schmidt scope. The other fleet’s victory now glowed in a side split-screen.
In less than a blink they were past the expanding star globe of their two thermonukes and heading deeper into the asteroid belt. At a speed so fast they would disintegrate if they hit anything solid.
“Max! Take us—”
The front screen image wavered, grew jagged and then warped as the gravitational lensing that began with the Alcubierre drive shell activation began englobing them in a space-time bubble. Faster than he could think, the screen went black.
“Already initiated, my brother,” came his buddy’s gruff voice. “As someone else has said, no need to triple-check what your crew are doing.”
Jack swallowed his retort. The man was right. After multiple space battles, multiple interstellar Alcubierre jumps and multiple surprises, his crew was more than capable. Including young Denise and quiet Blodwen, who now gave Max’s shoulder a squeeze. And a whisper of something he chose not to hear over the comlink. But it reminded him of something related to his future plans.
“Denise, what did your intercepted AV broadcasts show? And did you get enough imagery and talk-talk matching to produce a basic translation matrix?”
His ComChief shifted in her seat, looking at him from within her clear helmet. Her lips quirked up on one side, as if she too saw some humor in Jack doing what any ship commander should do. Which was look ahead, rather than hassle over the past. “Well, our bipedal cheetah-leopards seem to love their version of question and answer game shows. Or that’s what a lot of these broadcasts seem to show. There are some Tech content, nature content and animal herding shows that might be broadcast university lessons. If we assume the HikHikSot do distance learning the same way we humans have been doing it for a hundred years.” She paused, tapped on her ComLink panel and nodded forward. “Here’s a freeze-image from one of them.”
Jack looked forward. A color image of a dozen cheetah-leopards, wearing only body straps, occupied the front screen. Each stood before a floating panel that might be a touch input device. One critter stood in the middle of the circle, elevated on a pedestal. But what amazed him were the thousands of HikHikSot who occupied stone benches that surrounded the contestants. The structure greatly resembled a Greek amphitheater. The white stone of its construction shone brightly in the yellow light of the local star. A slight breeze ruffled the tan fur of each contestant. Jack could not see any obvious gender difference among the HikHikSot, including those in the surrounding audience. Floating above the ensemble was an airship. Since these Aliens possessed the same smart-talker phone imagers that were common in Sol system, he doubted the airship was involved in broadcasting the competition. Perhaps it was an elevated perch for high status HikHikSot? He looked back to Denise.
“Fascinating. Any broadcasts that resemble statements by government officials, CEOs or trillionaires?”
Denise frowned, her red eyebrows crinkling as her freckles grew darker on her pale white face. “Hard to say. Haven’t had much time to listen in on the digital vocals. That takes real time attention. But yes, Autonomous says it has developed a translation algorithm.” She looked directly at him, her manner unusually grown up for someone just 19 years of age. “You can make your broadcast in English that will be heard in the HikHikSot tongue of power, to quote our Nasen friends.”
“Allies,” corrected Maureen as she walked in from the Spine. “Captain Jack, time was short but total ships killed by the Uhuru’s weaponry are four. For sure.” She beamed, as if announcing herself as the winner of the Belter G
rand Prix races.
“Outstanding.” Jack almost stood up as she came to her seat. But that antique mark of social respect was not something known to most Belters. He only knew it from watching his World War II aerial dogfight video games. The woman sat down, pulled on her restraint straps over her EVA suit and then tapped her lap panel to bring up a Tactical holo. “Maureen.”
She looked up, startled by his first name use outside of official orders. “Yes?”
“Whether your score beats that of the Dragon or not, you will always be our top defender. As far as I’m concerned.”
The woman’s gray eyes grew shiny, as if moisture gathered. Course, the Belter veteran made a point of never showing a soft side. So that couldn’t be it. “Thank you. Your grandpa once said the same thing to me. Your . . . your words mean as much to me now as they did when your grandpa said them.”
Jack held back from hugging the woman who’d done so much to help then all survive. That would be going beyond what she had intimated in her response. Instead, he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. “Tops! Glad we vibe so well.” He looked back to Max. “About time to exit at our gathering point. Right?”
“Right.” Max’s expression was one of empathy. The kind of empathy he was relearning, thanks to Blodwen. “Exiting Alcubierre drive shell now!”
Jack felt glad that his EVA suit had an automatic moisture wicking function. Kinda hard to wipe one’s nose while enclosed in a bubble helmet.
Ahead the screen brightened with the glow of the Milky Way and nearby stars. The yellow spark that was Delta Boötis B shone in the middle of the screen. No planets could be seen in the current true-light image. Leastwise not until Nikola pushed out her Big Eye reflector. Which, judging by the tap-tapping he heard behind him, she was already doing. He smiled. As Elaine and Max had reminded him, there was no need to triple check his people. Any insecurity he felt needed to be handled by Jack himself. Not by causing his crew to repeat what they were already well trained in doing.
Humans Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 2) Page 25
