“Put through the governor.”
A middle-aged man with wavy brown hair, a handlebar mustache and the look of a lifelong politician peered at Jack.
“Fleet Captain Jack Munroe, thank you for taking my call so quickly,” the man said in English tinged with a Southern accent. “I am Governor Billy McDonough, of Memphis. The sovereign state of Tennessee has today declared its independence from the North American Cooperative. Our National Guard is taking control of all border crossings and I have personally imprisoned the Unity Governor General for Southern America.”
Jack nodded. “That is welcome news. But there are no spaceship launch sites in Tennessee. So why are you calling?”
The man, who sat behind a granite-covered executive desk in an official-looking office, gave him a Good Ole Boy smile. “True. But the Oak Ridge National Laboratory site produces plutonium pits for use in thermonuclear warheads. Today it was occupied by our National Guard. The Unity will no longer make thermonuke weapons using our resources.”
That was encouraging. Jack had not given thought to the multiple weapons making complexes under the control of the Unity. This made one less available to the Unity Naval Command. “Thank you. In view of the attack on my asteroid home, that means much to me and my people. Tell me, are there other governors moving to do as you did?”
Governor McDonough smiled as if greeting a new voter. “Yes! Governors in the states of the Midwest, South and Southwest, except for Texas, have agreed to withdraw from the North American Cooperative. We have reestablished July 4th as an official holiday, the Star Spangled Banner is now being played on our radio stations and at our schools, and our state legislatures are revising our state constitutions to include the Bill of Rights.” The man paused, looked down at a yellow datapad, then up. The man’s expression turned to a neighborly smile. “We are calling ourselves America. Will your people on Ceres send cargo transports to our airfield in Memphis? We have food, fiber optic devices and plenty of other tech to trade.”
If only his grandpa Ephraim could have heard these words. Jack smiled, did his best to not yell Righto! And instead nodded agreement. “Yes, for certain! There are many old America refugees among our Belter citizens. I am certain Ceres Central will send ships to you for barter trading.”
“Good. I hope your National Guard is effective in its defiance of the NAC land forces.”
“It will be.” The man’s expression turned darkly serious. “The governors of our member states have agreed to join our guard forces under one command. Plus we have an armored brigade of VTOL tanks south of Nashville. It has declared its allegiance to us. We will fight as we must.”
Jack had no doubt of that. “Send an AV signal to Ceres telling them all you have shared with me. They will send a cargo transport ship to you. Now, I must take other calls. Good-day.”
The man’s image vanished.
“Jack,” called Nikola from her Chief Astronomer seat behind him. “Do we have to do more fighting?”
He turned around. She looked worried by the unpredictability of taking on the Unity military forces. He reached out and touched her vacsuited hand. “Yes, more fighting lies ahead. But it will be over soon. Then we can head back to Mathilde for a steak, some bourbon and one of my Cuban cigars. Okay?”
She gave him a patient look, as if recognizing his effort to distract her. “My scope site on Mathilde is now a radioactive crater. And our next interstellar trip is not happening. When do we leave behind the problems of Earth?”
She gave voice to exactly the worries that had been plaguing him ever since the thermonuke attack. He had thought, upon returning from the decimation of the HikHikSot system and one of their home worlds, that they could spend the time needed to upgrade the left behind fleet ships to Alcubierre FTL drive ability, plus adding more Higgs Disruptor beamers to some of those ships. But the Unity had forced a detour in that happy route. He became aware that Blodwen, Archibald, Max, Cassie, Denise and Elaine were also waiting for his answers. And likely also Maureen, who was back in the Battle Module but heard everything up front thanks to the shipwide voice-activated speaker system.
“In two weeks.” He looked at his sister Cassie, whose long waterfall of curly black hair now shone bright after the first bath she had had in a week. But her hazel eyes were shadowed, as if the death of her boyfriend Howard still hung over her. “Hey! We beat the Alien predators! We’ve destroyed the Unity’s grav-pull ships. And we will head out to the stars real soon. You ready for another steak dinner at O’Neill’s Cafe? ”
His crew laughed, chuckled or looked amused. Even Cassie, who gave him a painful smile despite the bruises she’d taken during beatings by academy interrogators.
“Brother, will there be room for me on the Uhuru?” she said hopefully. “Don’t know if you will need an amateur spy on your star roaming. But I can clean floors, wash clothes, cook well enough that people don’t get sick and—”
“Yes!” he interrupted with a loving smile for his sister. The woman who had almost died at the hands of the Unity. “You can join us when we head out again. Maybe you can work with Denise on her SETI algorithms for deciphering Alien languages? And Nikola could use a helper in sorting through the Nasen holo data on juvenile and subject people Aliens in Orion Arm.”
Cassie looked happy. As did Elaine, who had been deeply concerned for her younger sister. He turned away and faced the fleet captains and admiral who had been watching his Earth leader talks and his promise of future star-faring.
“Admiral, captains, you heard the countries listed by Denise that are joining the national independence movement. Well, only half of Earth’s launch sites are covered. The other half need to be destroyed. Nikola, will you transmit those sites and their GPS locations to the rest of the fleet? I’ve got more talking to do.”
“Yes, be glad to,” she said from behind him, her voice sounding confident. He heard the sound of her fingers tapping on her Astro panel. “I’m transmitting the launch sites in Canada, America, Mexico, French Guiana, Italy, Morocco, Senegal, Spain, North Korea and the United Kingdom. Most are in remote locations, far from populated areas.”
Hideyoshi, Gareth, Minna, Ignacio and the other captains looked down at their own Tech panels. The admiral was the first to look up. His expression was grimly formal.
“The heavy cruiser Prince Otto von Bismarck will lead the Mars fleet against the North American launch sites and the French Guiana site,” he said.
Gareth gave him a determined look. “The Dragon and the Second Belter Fleet will take care of the sites in Europe and Africa.”
Minna pushed her two blond braids behind her ears. “The Wolverine will handle the North Korean site.”
Ignacio, his Basque brother who always sought to be first in any battle, showed him a sympathetic gaze. As if the man understood his doubts. “The Badger will take out the sites at El Arenosillo, El Hierro and Morón Air Base in Spain. We know the Spaniards well.”
Jack felt his mouth go dry once more. His heart hammered as he felt relief. His allies were following his lead with no objection voiced. How long could he keep making the right decisions? Keep acting like the leader these people needed? How long before he screwed up? He shook himself. And remembered a talk his Grandpa Ephraim had shared with him about hunting squirrels in the Tennessee woods. As a young kid, before moving to the Belt with his parents. His grandpa had said “Spot ‘em, take aim and don’t stop shooting until they’re all on the ground.” Well, he and the others had done that in Sol system and in interstellar space. Now came the time for finding allies among juvenile species who did not know other intelligent peoples existed, and for liberating subject peoples who had spent decades or centuries under predator domination. He welcomed the dual challenge. But he feared his ability to accomplish them.
“Admiral, Gareth, Minna and Ignacio, thank you! I guarantee each of you first choice of whatever cigar you wish. Upon our return to Mathilde.”
“Captain Jack, they’re waiting,” called Den
ise.
He turned away from his fleet allies. There was still half an hour to go before his ships began vaporizing Unity launch sites. He looked at the motion-eye above the front screen and spoke.
“Hello. Who is calling?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
O’Neill’s Café occupied the lowest part of the habitat torus. The torus had spun inside the Mathilde Dock Cavern all his life. But now it lay still, still with one gee gravity thanks to the Unity grav-pull drive he had given the Mathilde Citizens Council. It was a week since they had returned from the battles above Earth and time to plan for the next two stages of humanity’s future. Which were making contact with juvenile Aliens who did not know other people existed, and liberating subject people Aliens who had been dominated for centuries by apex predator Aliens. Fortunately he had help. Gathered around the oblong table that occupied a back section of the café were thirty-two ship captains and one admiral, plus his crew folks. Jack swallowed hard, his heart thumping. Cold sweat popped out on his bare neck despite the warmth of a café where loud Country and Western music, wild dancing, and dozens of people coming and going were normal. Their back table location had been roped off with a black curtain to separate them from the rest of the café. It was quiet enough for them to hear each other. And unlike prior meetings, they had begun this one with grilled steaks, baked potatoes, green string beans and an ancient sauce called A-1. Whatever that meant.
An elbow in his right ribs pulled him out of wandering thoughts. Nikola. His lifemate smiled at him.
“Hey! Where are those Cuban cigars you promised everyone?”
“Stored under my chair,” he said, looking around the table at the 40 people gathered there. “Until dinner is finished. Why? I thought you never smoked anything.”
She gave him her Woman Superior look. “Well, I inhale your cigar smoke in our habroom! Truth be, I trade your cigars to a friend of Maureen’s for knitted sweaters she makes. She gives the cigars to her husband for their Winter Solstice celebration, and I have a man-sized Shetland Island wool sweater as a birthday gift for someone I know.”
“She got you!” Cassie teased from his other side of the table.
Jack smiled. His youngest sister looked nearly healed from the beatings she’d taken. Slim, tough and beautiful enough for her to star in any AV vidcast put out by one of the Prime mercantile families, she seemed happy. And recovered from the loss of her fellow spy Howard. It was past due for him to leave behind his own morose musing and instead look to a hopeful future. After all, the steaks they were eating had been traded in by an Argentine spaceship sent to Ceres by its newly independent government. One of Elaine’s cargo transport friends had brought the prime beef to Mathilde. It was lots tastier than grilled guinea pig.
“So true.” He looked across the table to where Elaine sat beside her lover Ignacio, their heads close together. The two had announced their plans for a civil Covenant Ceremony in a week’s time. Which gave them time for Ignacio’s other cousins to arrive from 16 Psyche while his Mom no doubt would spend days shopping with Elaine for the exactly right wedding dress. He looked around at the other happy couples. His buddy Max was holding hands atop the table with his girlfriend Blodwen, while Maureen was chatting animatedly with Gareth. It seemed their Belfast granny liked having a younger man pay romantic attention to her. But his battle ally Hideyoshi sat alone in his Mars red uniform, with no female company. While the man had chatted earlier with Minna, Júlia and Denise, he now sipped a glass of warm sake, his gaze downcast. Well, there was one sure way to lift his spirits.
“Hideyoshi, you happy with that neutral particle beam mount that the engineers fitted to the belly of your Bismarck?”
The man looked up abruptly, his expression surprised. Then he gave Jack one of his rare smiles. “Yes. It’s very nice to have a mobile particle beam. Our nose mounted beamer hampered our combat versatility.”
Jack refrained from mentioning the memorial stele he and the other captains had erected in the torus’ park habitat. It bore the names of the four crew people the admiral had lost during the last battle against the HikHikSot. And also the names of Ignacio’s two dead cousins and Minna’s drive engineer Anneli Korhonen. There had been a burning of incense, a solemn ceremony overseen by Shinto priests and low drumming by fellow Asian crew members. He and Nikola had attended the memorial ceremony, as had nearly everyone present at the table. To lose just seven people in multiple space combat battles was remarkable. Still, the losses stung. He nodded, then banged the table with his metal spoon.
“People! Let’s talk about the future.” Conversations went quiet and everyone shifted their attention to Jack. “How do we bring freedom to the stars?”
Casual looks turned intense as ship captains whose names he barely knew focused on his question. They all understood that defeating the Unity had been about more than just bringing liberty and freedom to the subject nations of Earth. Those captains in Gareth’s and Hideyoshi’s fleet who had stayed in Sol system during their first interstellar trip had known well the threat posed by interstellar predators. Nature was indeed red of claw and tooth and unforgiving to lifeforms that failed to defend their home ecozone. They had all heard Denise’s lectures on Animal Ethology and how natural selection clearly worked at the interstellar level. But even the vidcam records of their battles and talks with Aliens had not brought home to the ships that stayed behind the reality of one simple truth: either a predator species like humans kept expanding their resource territory, or some other predator would expand into humanity’s resource zone. That principle was behind the Alien-dominated system that now ruled the Orion Arm. Liberating a few nearby subject peoples from bloody domination by some predators would not put an end to the workings of evolutionary biology in the galaxy.
Vigdis Sturludottir, captain of the Belter ship Hawk, raised a slim, long-fingered hand. “Fleet Captain Jack, can you illustrate for those of us who stayed home the scope of what we face? Like where these predator Aliens live? And the size of the . . . the Hunt territories they claim?”
He looked to his lifemate. “Nikola, can you help?”
“Yes.” The woman who had been Chief Astronomer at the Charon moon base of Pluto pulled out a yellow datapad from her rucksack. She tapped on it. “I’m co-opting the cafe’s entertainment system in this area. Here’s a holo of what we gained from the Nasen astronomer Nalik.”
Above the middle of their long table there grew a man-high hologram. It contained a dense stream of stars of all colors, with one end linking to another galactic star stream.
“This portrays the part of space that we call the Orion Arm. There are anywhere from 600 million to a billion stars in the arm,” Nikola said, her tone professor formal. “Based on the records of predator Aliens, the folks we know as the Hunters of the Great Dark, there are 113 predator species within this space.” While Jack had seen this before, he still felt amazement as purple dots appeared over the 8,000 light year long stretch of the arm. “The purple dots are the Home systems of each Alien predator species.”
Rad-tanned Vigdis peered closely at the holo. “It seems there are very few predator species out there.”
“True,” Jack said. “But as we learned, there are ten ‘subject people’ Aliens for every star-roaming Alien species. These are the 1,203 stars occupied by ‘subject people’ Aliens, as shown by these red dots. But there’s more. Nikola?”
“As my lifemate said, there are plenty of stars occupied by intelligent peoples.” She gestured at the glittering holo that held millions of stars. “There are 14,317 star systems in Orion that are occupied by juvenile species. Those are Aliens who have not yet reached their outermost planet. Thus they are not part of any predator’s Hunt territory. Yellow dots mark those systems.”
The sudden appearance of thousands of yellow dots caused many at the table to gasp.
Vigdis fixed her blue eyes on Jack. “It would take centuries to visit all those people!”
“True,” Jack said. “Which is why
I asked Nalik to focus in on a 400 light year wide sphere of space. At our FTL speed of four light years per day, this is the zone we can have the most effect in. The next image group shows the stars, names and Hunt territory boundaries of those predator peoples who live near to us. Nikola.”
“I’m adding in the stars of juvenile peoples,” Nikola said hurriedly. The holo image enlarged, enlarged again, then stopped. Within it shone hundreds of stars. Sol blinked at the center.
“Predator stars are marked here by a black claw,” Nikola said, her tone matter of fact. “Subject peoples stars show a blood-red slash. Juvenile people stars carry a yellow bar. The Nasen home star Zeta Serpentis glows white. The HikHikSot home star Delta Boötis B glows blue. As everyone can see, there are plenty of Alien peoples who do not belong to any Hunt territory because they are viewed as juvenile species by the Hunters.”
Zhāng Dingbang coughed. “The subject peoples stars,” said the middle-aged Chinese woman. “Do we know how long those peoples have been dominated by predator Aliens? I noticed in your vidcast of the Nuuthot system conquest that it was easier to bring them to rebellion than the Mikmang invertebrates. I recall the Mikmang were ruled longer by those Hackmot reptiles than the Nuuthot were ruled by the Krisot avians.”
Jack had wondered about just the matter raised by Zhāng. “Don’t know. Maybe our astronomer does.”
Nikola tapped on her datapad. “That data was embedded in the datafiles transmitted to me by Nalik. Which she did, by the way, using a brain implant that allowed her to mentally tell her own datapad to talk to mine.” She gestured at the enlarged area. “Subject people stars that have been occupied for 200 years or less now have a yellow dot on top of their red slash. Subject stars without such a dot have been conquered for a longer time. Recall that this galactic predator system has been around for 3,000 years.”
Elaine hummed. “There are a lot more juvenile star systems than there are subject people stars, or predator home stars. Do we know if there are predator Aliens camped out in the cometary Kuiper Belt of each juvenile people star?”
Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) Page 9
