Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3)

by T. Jackson King

  “Me!” cried Helena, her Slav face flushed with emotion.

  “My ship already has those facilities in our Schmidt scope,” said Zhāng calmly, as behind her image moved a half dozen men and women wearing Mars red combat vacsuits. “The base is now launching anti-satellite interceptor rockets!”

  Jack nodded to the woman, then fixed on Gareth. “That leaves you and me to extract the Unity bureaucrats from within the center of Brussels.” He looked to Hideyoshi and the other captains. “Note they are attacking first. Maybe they have a guilty conscience. Hideyoshi, Minna, Aashman, Júlia, Kasun, Ignacio and Akemi, take care of the incoming rockets. You folks with the Higgs Disruptors, activate them now! Sweep our vector clear of any stealthed platforms. All other ships, use your lasers and particle beams against any incoming threats!”

  “Sweeping!” called Hideyoshi and the other Higgs captains. Six yellow beams with wide footprints sprang out to all sides of the fleet.

  “Firing,” muttered Maureen.

  The front screen grew a third split-screen, this one showing their own Schmidt scope images of high-rise buildings lying north of Leopold Park and west of Cinquantenaire Park. Elaine put blinking red spots on the four buildings targeted by Maureen.

  Yellow-white globes of flame blossomed atop the roofs of the four buildings, then spread outward as the total energy release of matter-to-energy caused by the black thread of their antimatter stream ignited four small suns along the Rue de la Loi. He blinked. The destruction was total and instant. No doubt nearby buildings had blown-out windows, surface cars and buses were turned over and any pedestrian within three hundred meters had been knocked to the ground. Still, it was better than killing the million plus population of the ancient city.

  “Firing also,” called Gareth from the Dragon. “Angelique has targeted the Justus Lipsius, Residence Palace and the EU Council Building.” South of Maureen’s targets there loomed a massively large yellow-white globe of flame. It filled the space between the Rue de la Loi and the Steenweg op Etterb avenue. Nearby buildings swayed in the air blast caused by the black antimatter thread, while the yellow and orange of small fires sprang up around the main blast as the infrared heat glow of the blast ignited flammable materials.

  “Hitting Chièvres!” yelled Helena as the Grizzly’s black antimatter beam joined with the beam from Zhāng’s ship Nimitz.

  A close-up true-light image of the spaceport filled another split-screen. Two fusion pulse spaceships standing at their lift-off gantries, plus four anti-satellite rocket launchers, became engulfed in yellow-white flame as the antimatter beams turned all matter they touched into pure energy with one hundred percent efficiency. A nearby hangar and an office building caught the edges of the antimatter flare and became one with a kilometer-wide ball of flame. They heard no sound from the ground level strikes of course. Just as there was no sound emitted by the six green laser beams fired at the oncoming anti-sat rockets launched from Chièvres. But in each case destruction was total.

  “Four Hunter-Killer torps just went to fusion thrust!” yelled Minna from the Wolverine. “Targeting them!”

  Minna’s blue neutral particle beam reached out to the western horizon of their orbital vector, slicing through the silvery sparkle of a thermonuke torp four hundred klicks away.

  Blue beams from the ships of Kasun, Aashman and Ignacio also struck out, killing the remaining torps.

  “Target status!” called Jack as he touched his Tech panel’s Fire Control to fire two barrels of steel ball bearings ahead of their vector toward Geneva. He figured the bearings would take out any mobile mines missed by Hideyoshi’s Higgs beam.

  Maureen looked at him from her holo. “All offices of the Unity bureaucracy in Brussels are now ionized electrons. Searching for possible mobile ICBM launch sites in Germany.”

  Zhāng nodded abruptly. “The same for Chièvres. All offensive rocket launchers and the two fusion drive ships that were preparing to launch are now vaporized. All base control facilities are likewise gone.”

  Jack scanned the split-screen showing Elaine’s sensor output. Their fleet of 33 ships was alone in space for the moment, with no sign of offensive sats within a thousand kilometers. He looked back to Denise. “Set me up for a global AV broadcast. Link into the worldwide internet. And override the geosync AV sats with our signal so everyone with a home or office receiver gets our signal.”

  “Done, Captain Jack,” she said, tapping on her comlink panel, then resumed chewing on one red braid.

  Feeling as nervous as Denise, Jack unsnapped his seat restraint locks, stood up and faced the motion-eye above the front screen.

  “People of Earth, I am Captain Jack Munroe, leader of the multi-world fight against Alien carnivores who want to make the solar system their Hunt territory, and treat humanity as serfs suitable only for service work and table snacks.” He gestured back toward Denise. “View this AV imagery of the Nuuthot people of the star Epsilon Eridani as they are attacked and eaten by the Krisot predators! My allies and our ships killed the Krisot avians and returned Eridani to the control of its native peoples, the Nuuthot primates. Do not believe the claim that humans can be junior partners in an interstellar culture where only predator Aliens travel star-to-star! Humans must never be the slaves of Aliens!”

  “Captain Jack,” called Denise. “The geosync sat that serves North America has gone dead. It killed itself. Switching to a nearby geosync sat controlled by the Russian Federation.”

  Jack leaned forward in his vacsuit. “Our people and our ships come from the Asteroid Belt, Mars and the Moon. We stopped the HikHikSot Aliens when former Dictat Maathias sought to sell out Earth to those Aliens. But now, the Unity Space Force has attacked one of our Belter worlds with thermonuke torps, in violation of the Fourth Protocol of the Concord of Mars.” He paused, wanting the viewers of his broadcast to track with his points. “That attack was approved by Dictat Lykourgos Deimos Katsaros and ordered by Fleet Admiral Santiago Narváez of the South Pole Naval Academy. We hold them responsible for using thermonukes against human settlements. So we have destroyed the Unity offices in Brussels. But the individual nations of the Unity can break free of this terrible regime that wants you to be the servants of interstellar predators! Choose a return to personal freedom and liberty! Reclaim control over your national destiny! The free people of Sol system will welcome you as partners in defending humanity from interstellar cannibals!”

  He gestured to Denise to cut off the AV broadcast. Turning, he walked back to his seat. “Any sign of chatter about this on the worldwide web? The NewTube? On business intranets?”

  She peered at her comlink panels. “Yes! Five different internet talk shows have now switched to debates over your broadcast. They are live events, not recorded. And the business nets in Asia, Europe and North and South America are all chattering about the effect of our attacks on global and interplanetary trade.”

  “Good!” He sat down in his Tech seat and relocked his straps. Tapping his Tech panel he called up the Fire Control touch points for the railguns and lasers. “It’s time to complete—”

  “Incoming!” yelled Maureen from the holo above Jack’s panel. “Anti-sat missiles launched at us from southern Germany! From the former NATO bases at Ramstein, Stuttgart and Hohenfels. They’re approaching at one-fifth planetary escape velocity.”

  Jack’s panel showed what Elaine now added to the front screen. Yellow lines that were the approach vectors for twelve missiles launched from the three bases. They were still a hundred kilometers below them but coming on fast.

  “Everyone! Fire lasers! Those missiles could be nuke-tipped! Gareth, back us up with a wide Higgs footprint!”

  The true-light image of the Earth below them suddenly filled with green laser streaks, blue particle beams and then a wide yellow beam emitted by the Dragon’s Combat Node.

  “Nine dead!” called Elaine anxiously. “Ten! Eleven . . . yes! Twelfth one dead. Just thirty klicks below us. No warhead explosions.” She looked at
Jack, her expression worried.

  He sighed. “All ships, target practice time. Use your antimatter beams to destroy those three bases. Take out everything that stands above ground!”

  “Firing!” Maureen grinned maniacally and added the Uhuru’s antimatter thread to the 32 other black beams going downward.

  Yellow-white light glared from three spots in southern Germany, rising up through the snow-white cumulo-nimbus clouds like three thermonuke mushrooms. Only there was no radioactive fallout from their antimatter strikes. It was a point he had stressed at the fleet battle conference, that there was to be no thermonuke use against the surface of Earth. Their battle was with the Unity, not with the civilians of their home world.

  “Entering the space above Switzerland,” Elaine said, sounding relieved.

  “Denise, give me an AV link to the Dictat’s private office. Break through any calls he might be making.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “Autonomous, locate the AV frequency for the office of Dictat Katsaros, Geneva, Switzerland. Override any outside signal and project AV imagery and sound on the front screen.”

  “Executing,” said the impersonal voice of the expert system computer that ran most functions aboard the Uhuru. “Accessed. Displayed.”

  An image of a black-haired, muscular man of swarthy skin tone and irritated manner looked at them from behind a standard executive desk. The office occupied by the well-dressed man was located in Building S of the Palais des Nations Unity headquarters at the north end of Geneva. According to Elaine’s sensor backtracking of the Come-Back signal.

  “Who dares to break into my private calls!” the man said in guttural French, which Autonomous automatically translated into Belter English. “You! You pirate! You will pay—”

  “Shut up,” Jack said, keeping partial attention on the Tactical Display above his panel that tracked any incoming attackers.

  The clean-shaven man shut his mouth, but the man’s brown eyes glared at Jack. The he started up again. “You are the pirate Jack Munroe. Well, we captured your two spies and found out what we needed to know. You Belter rebels will—”

  “How do you wish to die?” Jack asked, raising one hand to the Fire Control screen on his Tech panel. “By antimatter? By laser? By orbital bombardment like we offered your predecessor, Dictat Maathias?”

  “What do you want?” Katsaros said, gesturing to two women assistants to leave his presence.

  “Answers,” Jack said, lowering his gloved hand. “Why did you send five ships to attack one of our Belter habitat asteroids? And why is Earth trying to reclaim control of Sol system, when your own Unity Congress passed the law you wrote that abandoned such control?”

  The man grimaced. “That law was invalid. Passed under deadly threat. The Unity represents all humans! It was our duty to reclaim system control and seek a peaceful agreement with the Aliens you keep killing!”

  Jack felt his patience growing thin. “Do you doubt the AV broadcasts we’ve made? Of multiple predator species hunting and killing intelligent beings in other star systems? Then eating their corpses?”

  The man shrugged, the thin white lines of his formal suit creasing slightly. “We believe the broadcasts. But humanity cannot defy an interstellar culture that has controlled the Orion Arm for three thousand years! It’s madness to try that! Best for Earth and all humans to reach an understanding with these Aliens who have come to our system.”

  “Oh?” Jack said, gesturing to Denise to continue recording their discussion. “Do you mean an understanding that includes yearly culling of millions of humans to provide meat protein to Aliens? An understanding that allows Aliens to plant a colony on Earth, perhaps taking over Australia? Or Madagascar? Tell me, why should humanity become serfs to Alien masters?”

  The man’s expression went politician blank. He sat back in a chair that automatically matched his body shape. “The Unity has ended all wars on Earth. There are no more mass famines, unlike earlier this century. Food, water, shelter and education are provided to all peoples of Earth. If a few humans must die to preserve peace, to allow us access to Alien technology, so be it.”

  Jack held back from sending a thermonuke torp down to vaporize the man who felt it was his right to decide who among Earth’s peoples should live and who should die at the teeth of Aliens. “And the ships you sent against us? Why pick a fight you cannot win?”

  Fury filled the man’s face. “You pirates of the Asteroid Belt are troublemakers from antiquity! You deserve to be killed, or tamed to civilized behavior. If we had had more gravity-pull drive ships, we would have sent them all against you!”

  It was enough. “One last question. Will you and the Unity surrender all power to us? And to the individual nations of Earth?”

  “Never!” The man slammed a beefy fish against the solid oak top of his executive desk.

  Jack smiled. “Is the Unity Congress in session? The web internet says this morning was the start of a full conclave.”

  Puzzlement showed on the man’s swarthy face. “Yes. The Congress always meets in full panoply in the first week of September. That has been the practice for decades. Why?”

  “ Then, in the few seconds you have yet to live, you may wish to advise your fellow politicians to say their prayers to whatever deity, beyond money and power, they believe in.” He looked back at Denise. “Shut off the link.”

  “Shut down, Captain Jack,” the young woman said, her tone sounding normal despite her awareness of impending events. “The whole session has been recorded to the ship’s Library computer.”

  “Good. Thank you.” He looked to the images of his allies. “Admiral, captains, the Unity had their chance to surrender. Their Dictat has refused my request. It is time to end their rule. Join your antimatter beams with mine to take out every building occupied by the Unity Congress and their staff!”

  “D’accord!” “Hai!” “Will do!” and other agreements sounded from Hideyoshi, Minna, Gareth, Zhāng, Ignacio and every other fleet captain.

  Jack looked at the holo image of Maureen. Whose expression was sober, not eager, not impatient. “Combat Commander O’Dowd, list for me and our allies the buildings that compose the Unity Congress in Geneva.”

  The woman’s expression went Irish somber as she looked down at her Tactical Display panel in the Battle Module. “The Unity Congress is located in the New Building, Library, old Palais des Nations core structure, Building D, Building S and in the nearby Musée Ariana. They are surrounded by the Parc de l’Ariana and the Botanical Garden that separates them from the shore of Lake Geneva.”

  Jack nodded to the woman who understood that some civilians, even some children, might die in the impending attack. She was a grandma after all. But she was also a blooded battle veteran of the First Belter Rebellion. “All ships, fire antimatter at those buildings and the park area until the waters of Lake Geneva fill the landscape. Now!”

  The true-light image of the ancient city of Geneva expanded in the ship’s scope view to a size large enough to show the roofs of the buildings that made up the Unity Congress. He gave thanks that the headquarters of the International Red Cross lay far enough away that its people should survey the air blast and heat wave generated by their attack.

  “Firing!” cried Maureen.

  Thirty-two other voices echoed her.

  The middle of the front screen showed thirty-three black threads instantly reach down from his combined fleets to impact on the buildings named by Maureen. And on the landscape between them. The total conversion of matter to energy happens very quickly. And the oxygen in the air only added to the fury of Hades unleashed on a part of Geneva.

  Pine trees toppled a kilometer away. Buildings closer to the blast zone swayed in the air blast generated by the total matter-to-energy conversion that now happened, bringing a small sun to rest atop a once beautiful part of the ancient city. Buses overturned on the nearby Route de Ferney and Chemin de l’Imperatrice, while trains in the marshaling yard south of the blast zon
e showed yellow flames on their wooden bodies as the infrared heat wave scorched or incinerated all matter within a hundred meters of the blast edge. The yellow-white mushroom flame only died when the blue waters of the nearby lake rushed into the vaporized cavity that now marked the spot where once hundreds of bureaucrats and politicians had run the affairs of Earth.

  Jack looked to Elaine. “Give me a vector to put us above the South Pole Naval Academy. No need to stay in this orbital. We can blip jump there in a few moments.”

  “Done. The NavTrack vector is laid in and shared with the rest of the fleet.” His sister looked his way, her manner calm, professional and with no sign of her worry for their sister Cassie.

  The stars outside began to blur as gravitational lensing bent their photons.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The fleets left grav-pull moments later, leaving Jack to stare at the massive white continent of Antarctica, fifth largest land mass on Earth. While mostly covered in massive ice sheets, their target was located in the McMurdo Dry Valleys at the foot of the Transantarctica Mountains, a short helitack trip from the old American McMurdo Station on Ross Island. The front screen image expanded as Nikola worked the adaptive optics CCD imagery of their ship’s Schmidt scope. The screen image now focused in on two ice-free, parallel valley systems separated by a partly ice-free ridge line. To either side of the valleys lay the ice-covered peaks of the Transantarctica range. The South Pole Naval Academy consisted of six buildings, all located in a valley area that split the central ridge line. A text overlay from Nikola labeled that spot as Bull Pass. A spaceport field and hangar sat next to a freshwater lake not far from the academy buildings. The label for that area said Wright Valley and Lake Vanda. He looked up at the screen images of his allies.

  “Admiral Hideyoshi, please expand on what we are seeing.”

  The man, seated before a curved assemblage of control panels on the Command Bridge of the Bismarck, looked aside at a repeater screen which showed the imagery Jack and the other captains were now viewing. “The spaceship factory building is the hangar structure next to the landing field by Lake Vanda. The six buildings that make up the academy are three housing dormitories that flank the three central buildings. The administration building is the middle one. There are basements below each building and access tunnels to allow for student movement even during a blizzard. Including a tunnel to the spaceport building.”