Jack nodded, feeling pleased with the man’s news. The secret to making their own grav-pull drives would allow them to ignore the encrypted data in the academy factory computer and focus on building the globular container and tubular control circuits that made up the Tech pyramid that was a grav-pull drive module. “Great news, Archibald. Anyone else with news on our Trades?”
Akemi Hagiwara looked up from her bowl of wonton soup. She gave him a brief smile. “My contacts with two Melagun Purple Coat merchants taught me a lesson about wrong assumptions.”
Jack noticed how everyone had stopped eating and was paying close attention to their samurai clan daughter. “Yes? Everyone messes up on assumptions, now and then.”
Akemi scanned the same people Jack had looked over. Her Asian manner was usually non-emotional, like Hideyoshi. But he could tell she was pleased to be the center of attention. The petite woman held up a slim-fingered hand. “My shogun, I had assumed these Melagun would be as interested in trading for interactive combat videos as the Nasen were. Wrong. But they did love my personal collection of sports vid-disks. Particularly the images of people playing volleyball, doing the high jump, pole vaulting and track and field. Any sport that involved jumping, or diving from a height, drove them mad to possess it. Seems they have recovered plenty of raw diamonds from their Home volcanoes, and from inner planet three. It’s hot as Mercury, but with an atmosphere. And it’s of a size to have an iron core rotating within liquid rock. Its volcanoes erupt like clockwork. Producing lava fields. The Melagun have sent down robot excavators to mine old lava fields for diamonds. For industrial uses. They were amused when I told them how our females liked diamonds for dress-up.”
Jack wondered if the captain who had grown up on the asteroid 52 Europa would be willing to sell him a diamond. He wanted to surprise Nikola with a Commitment Ring to celebrate their lifemate promise. “Oh? Did you get many for your sports vid-disks?”
The slim woman who looked years younger than her 40 chrono years fixed glistening black eyes on Jack. She tilted her head like a sparrow. “Oh, about three hundred, give or take a few. You interested in buying one?”
Jack was intensely aware of the presence of his Spy sister and lifemate Nikola on either side of him. No doubt both women had read into his question his intent to get some diamonds. And since he wore only an emerald Tech Master’s ring, they knew his question was not for his personal use.
“Uh, maybe three,” Jack said, hoping Cassie, Elaine and Nikola would not invade his private Tech study on the Uhuru.
Akemi nodded slowly. “Can be done. Contact me before we leave this system for my barter prices. They are reasonable.”
Jack hoped so. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.
“Here. You earned it,” Nikola said, holding up the bottle of red wine that he had drunk from earlier.
“Thanks. I needed that.”
This time everyone laughed.
Looking around, he gave thanks for the people gathered to eat with him. Each person here had fought with him in space, or on Sedna, or both. They had risked their lives in his crusade to overthrow a millennia-old system of Alien domination. They would risk them again in the upcoming trips to other juvenile systems, then later in their raids on subject people systems. And while they had twice as many ships for this star roaming trek, numbers did not guarantee safety. Mentally he crossed his fingers and prayed to the Odd Gods of the universe that this second trip into the Great Dark would not add new names to the memorial stele on Mathilde.
He would use every bit of sneakiness, duplicity, cunning and deadliness he had learned at the knee of his grandpa in order to keep safe these people. And to allow the budding romances of his crewmates and allies to grow into lifemate unity. His mother had said he was not a natural romantic. Perhaps so. He tended to be logical, factual and functional in his view of people, the worlds and life. But he could study how to be romantic. He smiled. Nikola, Ignacio, Max and the others were teaching him how much more complicated, and how much more rewarding, real life was.
It was a lesson Jack had never expected. But it was a lesson that gave him the strength to cope with the doubts he had about his ability to lead hundreds of people into velvet blackness of the Great Dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Forty AU north of the ecliptic plane of Tau Ceti, the Uhuru and the other fleet ships moved under grav-pull drive. The front screen’s image of stars and galaxies was blurred, reflecting the gravitational lensing caused by a drive that pulled his ship toward an external point regardless of the ship’s inertial vector. As usual, Jack felt nothing physical. Max had told their Drive computer where they wished to be, shared it by way of laser time-lock, and they all straight-line translated to the X-Y-Z coordinates of that locality.
The blurring stopped.
“We’re there,” Elaine called out, her tone sharp. “Max, cut the grav-pull drive.”
“Done,” Max said, his tone casual. “Can I catch a nap while you and Nikola play your spatial coordinates game?”
Jack grinned, wiped the grin off when he noticed Maureen watching him from her Combat seat to his right, then focused on his job. Which was setting them on track to Gliese 832.
The front screen filled with rainbow colored stars that shone with no twinkle against the depths of forever. He looked down at the Tech panel that he had pulled over his lap. It showed the status of every ship system, from fusion drive to grav-pull drive to the Alcubierre space-time manifold generator. The air mix, the oxy output of the Garden module of the ship, the emptiness of the ship’s Food Refectory, Med Station, Rest Area, EVA and Lander hold, Mech Shop and the Battle Module, they all registered on his panel. The two Compact Fusion Reactors that ran the ship’s weapons nodules and the fusion pulse drive showed maximum output. Other images showed the external impact of gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, far infrared, neutrinos and gravitons. Mentally he gave thanks for the Autonomous AI computer that monitored every ship system to ensure it was operating within defined parameters. Finally, the panel’s infrared image of the Pilot Cabin showed everyone seated as they should be. Him, Maureen and Elaine up front, followed by Nikola, Denise and Max in the middle row, with Cassie, Archibald and Blodwen seated in the rear row of function seats. He looked up at the front screen. The laser link images of one admiral and 21 captains watched him and his crew. They all lived, breathed and perhaps felt impatient to start their next interstellar jump. Time to act.
“Nikola, share with us the data regarding Gliese 832,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed forward.
A rustle behind him said his lifemate had pulled her Astro panel over her lap. Tap-tapping sounded. “Gliese 832 is a red dwarf of M1.5V class. It’s about one-half the size and one-half the heat output of Sol. Distance to it from Sol is 16.16 light years. Distance to it from Tau Ceti is 14.501 light years.” She paused, tap-tapped again, then hummed to herself. “Records say it has three planets orbiting the star, with two of them in the liquid water ecozone. The outer third planet is a gas world half the size of Jupiter. Gliese 832 is 11.76 light years below the galactic ecliptic as measured from Sol. Elaine, I’m sending you the X, Y and Z coordinates with galactic motion corrections.”
Well, that was succinct. He glanced past Maureen to Elaine, their Pilot and Medoc and a woman quite capable of not allowing the image of her lover Ignacio to distract her from her job. “Pilot?”
She finished pulling on the yellow headband that kept her brown curls out of her eyes, while focusing on the NavTrack panel that had been pulled over her lap. “All parties strap in. Coordinates loaded. Transmitted to the fleet.” She looked his way, amber eyes all so serious.
He gulped. Being watched by 22 other ships, his older sister and everyone else in the cabin still felt strange. He recalled with pleasure his youthful days when he used a beat-up, third-hand Hopper to carry oxy tanks, water bladders, self-heating food packs, vidgames, Tech parts and cigars to asteroid miners who spent most of their life finding, surveying, assaying
and then registering their finds with the Vesta Central Hall. Well, those days were deep in the past. He cleared his throat.
“Chief Astronomer, what is the estimated trip time?”
“Three and a half days, give or take a few hours,” said his love in her trademark musical voice.
“Arrival location at Gliese 832?”
“Thirty AU out and above the star’s ecliptic plane,” Nikola said calmly. “I chose an emergence site north of the ecliptic even though the Long Baseline Stellar Interferometer has not documented any cometary debris ring like our Kuiper Belt. It’s safer that way. And we are less likely to be noticed by anyone in the system.”
One last matter. “Nikola, any info in the Nasen stellar holo about the people who live at Gliese 832?”
Her boots began an impatient tapping on the deck floor. “Nope. Just the same five datums we knew about Tau Ceti. Which are the system location, the year of its discovery, the presence of space-going ships, the fact that the local people have not reached their outermost planet and the system’s classification as a ‘juvenile’ species location.”
Well, that was that. They would learn more when they arrived on the outskirts of Gliese 832. Which required that they engage their FTL drive. “Max, establish laser time-lock with the drive modules of the other fleet ships. Then take us into the Alcubierre space-time manifold.”
“So soon? I was just starting to nod off.”
Jack could not hold back his grin. Nor did the other ship captains. Even Hideyoshi showed a wry smile. “The ladies are done sooner than soon,” he said. “Time for you to unleash the wonder you and Archibald banged together.”
“If you insist.” Jack heard his buddy tapping on the Alcubierre drive pedestal that stood between Max and Denise. “Reactor power feeding to the Alcubierre module. Space-time manifold established. Space to our rear is expanding and the space to our front is shrinking. Launching!”
Jack felt his friend’s excitement in the last word.
Ahead the images of people, stars and galaxies grew hazy, then jagged, then vanished completely as the gravitational lensing that happened during Alcubierre space-time transition bent incoming photons into crazy pretzels. Until finally the external light, radiation and space-time limitations vanished with their entry into a bubble of space-time independent of the normal universe. Their ship, and the other fleet ships, shot toward their target star at a speed of four light years per day.
He reached down the right side of his seat, searching for the water bottle he always kept there. Nothing.
Someone tapped his left shoulder. “Looking for this?”
Nikola. She did enjoy playing games from his rear blind side. “Thank you,” he said, reaching up with his left hand. It closed on empty air. A clattering sounded from down the Spine hallway.
“Your turn to cook dinner for this crowd,” Nikola said tartly in her Woman Superior manner.
The trouble with being the center of attention of his fellow crewmates was that he could not hide any reaction. So he groaned.
“Thought it was Cassie’s turn. To cook. And Archibald’s turn to run the Auto-Cleaner.”
“Nope.” He felt a thud against the back of his seat. “Get a move on! If you are going to brainwash the Gliese Aliens into joining our Freedom Alliance, you could start by learning how to cook. Better, that is.”
Jack unsnapped his seat locks. Stood up. Faced his lifemate Nikola, his sisters Elaine and Cassie, their redhead Denise, bemused Blodwen, sardonic Max and Maureen of the impatient look. He saluted them.
“Orders accepted!”
His run for the hatch leading to the Spine hallway was just fast enough to avoid any impact to his bottom from the ladies he passed.
“Cook those steaks rare!” yelled Maureen.
Catching his breath he slowed his pace. Rare they would get. Would be interesting to see how carnivore hungry his mates were.
♦ ♦ ♦
Three and a half days later the fleet exited the Alcubierre space-time bubble at 30 AU north of the ecliptic plane of the star Gliese 832. Jack immediately checked the front screen’s true-light imagery, including the faces of the 22 other captains. Thanks to atomic timing crystals, each ship had arrived within 50 kilometers of the other ships. He saw the faces of Hideyoshi of the Bismarck, Gareth of the Dragon, Minna of the Wolverine, Ignacio of the Badger, Akemi of the Orca, Júlia of the Caiman, Aashman of the Mongoose and Kasun of the Leopard. Plus the captains of the other Belter and Mars ships. Each captain waved at him, nodded or looked attentive as was their personal manner.
“Nikola,” he called back over his shoulder, “deploy your Big Eye. Then tell us what it says about this system and its planets.” He looked at Elaine. “Pilot, put up a Sensor image of the system that shows all the emissions we track.”
“Right.” He heard the tapping of Nikola’s fingers on her Astro and giant reflector scope panels. “The inner planet one is located in an elliptical orbit that ranges from 0.134 AU out to 0.192 AU. It’s a superterran planet with a mass 5.4 times that of Earth. Its atmosphere is heavy in carbon dioxide. Which has turned it into a cloud-covered, Venus-like world too hot for normal folks to live on. But it has three moons orbiting it, one the size of Triton. That outer moon has an oxy-nitro atmosphere. It’s habitable. The year of planet one is 35.68 days.” She paused, tapped her Astro panel and a true-light image of the three planets in the inner system now occupied the center of the screen. “Planet two was located by the interferometer fifty years ago. It’s ten percent larger than Earth, has a gravity equal to Earth, has a light spectrum that shows an oxy-nitro atmosphere with lots of water vapor, and it’s located at 0.25 AU out from Gliese. Its year is 75 days. It has a small, airless moon that is one-third the size of Earth’s moon. My Big Eye imagery shows an icy north pole and icy south pole on planet two. We have to get closer for more planetary details. Last is planet three, the gas giant.” She paused, tapped more, and Jack saw a third half-disk become highlighted by Nikola’s cursor. “The system’s only gas giant is half the size of Jupiter, has two dozen small satellites around it based on the infrared spectrum from my scope, and it’s located at 3.4 AU. Way outside the habitable zone of the star. Oh. Its year is 3,416 days, or a bit over nine Earth years.”
“My turn?” called Elaine, sounding impatient.
“Of course,” Jack said, keeping his focus on the front screen imagery that was being shared with other fleet ships by way of a laser Come-Signal sent out by Denise.
His sister looked up and spoke to the sound-activated software of the ceiling speaker. “Autonomous, overlay my system Sensor feed atop the reflector image of the system. Display non-fleet grav-pull ships as yellow spots. Fusion pulse ships are green. Neutrino sources are white. Process!”
“Processing,” said the dry voice of the Uhuru’s primary computer. “Completed.”
“Interesting,” rumbled Max.
Maureen snapped her fingers. “Good. No grav-pull ships besides ours.”
Jack felt the same. There were no artificial graviton sources beyond their fleet. But there were nine green spots that marked fusion drive ships, while fifteen white spots showed on planet two with a single neutrino source on its moon. Reactors no doubt. Fusion ship locations were three above the large moon of planet one, four above planet two and the rest were transiting between the two planets. The front screen also showed UV, infrared, far infrared, gamma ray, x-ray, graviton and neutrino emissions. All from natural sources. What was artificial were the maser and lidar emissions from planet two and the moving ships.
Elaine looked at him. “That’s the total Sensor feed. Folks are busy running between planets one and two, and chattering on planet two. No ship or neutrino emissions from planet three. That’s it.”
“Thank you Pilot.” Jack looked back to his SETI translator and specialist in Animal Ethology. “Denise, what do you pick up for AV channel broadcasts? Maser traffic? Radioastronomy emissions? Any other active EMF sources in Gliese 832?”
Jack looked at the modulated neutrino comlink pedestal that stood next to Denise’s seat. Then he looked at Maureen.
“Combat Commander, do you see any threats to the fleet?”
The woman turned from a Tactical Display holo simulation that floated above her lap to Jack. Her manner was calm. “Nothing obvious. Those nine fusion ships may be armed, but there is no cometary belt to toss ice balls at planet two. So they could be unarmed. If we move closer I suggest keeping above the ecliptic plane. Most planet-bound folks think horizontal, as in along the ecliptic plane.”
Jack nodded, then faced his allies. “People, stay off the neutrino comlink. Hold off on any use of our grav-pull or fusion drives. These folks on planet two may have giant scopes able to pick up our drive flares. Or the neutrino emissions of our reactors and drives. Let’s scan their AV broadcasts for a glimpse of their people shape.” He looked back. “Denise?”
“Got three really strong AV channels,” she muttered. “Anonymous, put strongest image broadcast on the screen next to the scope and sensor imagery.”
“Complying.”
A new split-screen took form to one side of the scope imagery. In it were gathered several dozen four-legged creatures who resembled the shaggy coated musk oxen Jack recalled from his Open Library studies. The creatures stood outdoors in a grassy bowl surrounded by a horseshoe of hills. The sky was pale blue, the ground cover was green and up on the ridgeline stood a single oxen, looking down at the gathered herd. Jack noticed this solo creature held a shiny orb in its mouth. While its teeth were the squarish molars of herbivores, the purple tongue had split into five narrow segments that worked like fingers. They grasped the metallic ball, which was pointed at the herd. He wondered if the orb was a vidcam. But what was strangest was a yellow-white fleshy mass that lay atop the creature’s blocky head. The mass was wrinkled, convoluted and had two spine-like antennae raised above its mass. The mass, which looked soft, rested between two yellow horns that rose above the ear flaps of the oxen. While the Alien had two eyes arranged for binocular vision plus the long jaw common to plant-eating herbivores, the movements of the observer and the herd oxen were not those of nervous cattle. Instead, they seemed alert and focused on something coming at them from off screen.
Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) Page 15
