“Cease-fire,” called Hideyoshi. “All Gyklang ships are dead or disabled.”
Black dots suddenly appeared on the hull of the right side ship as Maureen fired a load of ball bearings at the Gyklang ship that had gotten far too close to the fleet. And to the Uhuru.
“Admiral, the Uhuru is fully functional,” Jack said as he scanned ship systems readouts on his Tech panel. “We lost our starboard laser pod in that particle beam slash. Pressure hatches closed automatically. We are combat operational in all other portions of our ship.”
Elaine, he noticed, was looking worriedly for the image of Ignacio. Her lover and the man with whom she had finally found the hope of a future life of partnership and love.
Jack saw no image of Ignacio.
“Badger! Report in on your neutrino comlink!” he yelled, heart thumping, mouth dry and his heart heavy with the possibility that his fleet had lost an entire ship.
“Incoming neutrino signal,” Denise said sharply. “Going up front.”
The helmeted face of Aligarde Ekaitz took form on the front screen. The man’s swarthy face looked strained. “We all live. But the Pilot Cabin took a hit from two Gyklang lasers. They punched through our Pilot station. Which was empty at the time. But fragments punctured the vacsuit of our brother Ignacio. Cousin Wokirk is tending to him in the ship’s medoc module.”
Elaine gave a gasp, then turned away from the motion-eye, not wanting anyone outside to see her tears.
Jack became all too aware of the black boina beret he always wore into any battle. Thanks to the gift of his Basque brother. Now, the man’s cousin and weapons chief was reporting Ignacio to be injured from exposure to vacuum. And maybe the fragments. He nodded slowly. “Good that you all live. Your other cousins, Ibai and Josepe, are they well also?”
Aligarde nodded quickly. “Ibai is in command of our fusion drive and our grav-pull. Josepe is working the NavTrack from his ComChief post. The Badger is combat operational.”
Jack licked dry lips. “My brother Ignacio, is he breathing without assistance?”
Aligarde winced. “Breathing, yes. But with pain. His vacsuit was penetrated in the right leg area. All suit pressure was lost. But my cousin held his breath until Wokirk got him into pressure in the medoc. Which is close to our Pilot Cabin.”
Jack knew that. Still, his brother had held his breath while cold vacuum sucked at his body for at least two minutes. And the fragment in his right leg had to hurt like Hades. “I will ask Admiral Hideyoshi to send their lander Rudyard Kipling to move your cousin to surgery in the Bismarck. They have three surgeons trained to deal with vacuum wounds. Do you have pressure in your main hallway? Can you get Ignacio to the midbody airlock for transfer?”
“Yes,” Aligarde said hurriedly, looking back over this shoulder. “Wokirk will have cousin Ignacio at the airlock within fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I must surrender this comlink station to cousin Josepe. He aims to repair the AV comlink so we can have normal laser link communications.”
Jack waved agreement. “Understood. My heart is with you. And may all Euskaldunak of the old homeland give honor to you, your cousins and your Ignacio for their bravery in this battle!”
Aligarde smiled briefly. “Thank you. Badger shutting off for the moment.”
The man’s image disappeared.
“Fleet Captain Jack,” called Hideyoshi from the group of ship captain images at the top of the screen. “I am sending the Kipling over to our sister ship now. Our flight surgeons are of the highest caliber. They will repair Captain Ignacio’s leg wound and make sure he is fully functional.”
Jack sat back in his seat, sweat drenching his neck. “Admiral, thank you.” He fixed on the leader of the Second Belter Fleet. “Captain Gareth, will you and your ships send out your landers to salvage grav-pull drives from any intact Gyklang ship fragments? We won this battle and part of winning is the gaining of more grav-pulls for our Belter volunteers back home.”
The wide-shouldered Welshman nodded, his full black beard filling half of his helmet. His manner was serious. “The Dragon and our sister ships will launch landers to do as you order. My Sensor chief says he detects nine operational grav-pulls, based on low G-band emissions. Can your Sensor chief confirm that?”
Jack looked to his sister. Whose rad-tanned face was now stiff and formal. She glanced down at her Sensor panel, then up to the leader of the Dragon.
“Captain Gareth, my Sensor panel shows the same. There are nine surviving grav-pull drives, based on the low G-band graviton emissions put out by their ship gravity function.” She paused, looked down again, then glanced his way. “Captain Jack, there are only six operational grav-pull ships in this system. All are on the outer comet disk at the site of the sucker bait Gyklang ship.”
Did her tone suggest disapproval of his decision to fight a two front war? His oldest sister had long been the tough one in the family, able to stand up to being bullied by Earth-born youths on Ceres when she attended the Navigators Academy there. Being a member of the Belter minority that attended the academy had not been easy. But she had earned her rockets and then joined the leading Belter shipping company that ran cargo transports to every part of the Asteroid Belt. He hoped she understood the pain he felt every time any fleet member was hurt, let alone killed. But fighting battles in space, even with more ships than your enemy, was never safe. Three dimensions gave plenty of room for ships that moved like bumblebees to dart here, dart there and fire on you before your own lasers achieved lock-on. He turned from her to face his fleet allies.
“Admiral, captains, let us tend to our ships and crew,” Jack said as calmly as he could. “Later we will seek refueling at the moon Sotop. And do some trading with the Flock Leaders of the ChikHo. If the outlying grav-pull ships do not leave within the next few hours, then I will take the Uhuru out to fight them!”
His allies gave him a wave, a smile, a nod, a thumbs-up, every gesture and reaction meaning one thing. They supported him. Now, if only his sisters and his lifemate felt the same way. That was something he was about to discover. He looked back to Denise.
“ComChief, shut off our laser AV link with the other ships. It’s time for this crew to do as I suggested just now. Who wants a steak, a cigar and a glass of booze?”
Nikola gave him a wide smile, her long brown hair curling atop her shoulders. “Me! Cooked rare. By our captain!”
He felt relief flood through him.
Cassie fixed her hazel eyes on him, her rad-tanned face showing love and sympathy. As if she understood his worries. “Brother, cook mine medium. And I lay claim to a bottle of Europa Pale Ale!”
Archibald, Blodwen, Max and Denise all raised their hands to signal they too wanted the same as Cassie and Nikola. He turned to his sister Elaine.
Who was wiping wetness from her eyes. Clearly the news of Ignacio’s wounding had struck her deep. She looked up, gave him a tired look, then a thumbs-up. With a weak smile.
“You saved us all, my brother. Yes, I hurt for my Ignacio. But I insisted on joining this wild crazy trek through the stars! Which brought me the surprising love of a wonderful man.” She shrugged her slim shoulders, her black leotard stretching. “Love among the starways. Amazing!” She turned back and faced her NavTrack and Sensor panels, pretending to be absorbed in work.
“Well, I’ll bring you a rare steak, a cigar and a shot glass of Johnny Walker Black Label! Okay?”
She smiled as she looked down. “Sure. Just be sure to put plenty of butter inside my baked potato!”
Jack stood up and turned for the Spine hallway. The entry of Maureen, wearing her black leotard and her sucker-grip shoes, blocked him. She fixed him with a stern look.
“Lost one of my laser pods, did you? Well, you did kill that other ship with the lasers. Before you lost it. So I forgive you.” She walked past him to sit in her Combat station seat. “Oh. Since you are taking food orders, make mine rare, with two cigars and a full bottle of Wild Turkey! Gotta stay here and see if Lieutenant Lo
pez has a spare laser pod in that whale of a heavy cruiser! I refuse to allow us to head out of this system with only one working laser pod!”
Jack walked through the hatch and into the long, echoing length of the Spine hallway.
His crew was behind him. His sisters, his lifemate and the rest of them. They all supported him.
With that kind of devotion he would take on the entire Orion Arm any day of the year!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“That’s a really alien Alien!” Max muttered.
Jack agreed. He stared at the AV image coming in from the occupied world that orbited the yellow main sequence star of 55 Cancri. The fleet had arrived at 40 AU north of the star’s ecliptic plane, keeping to stealth mode and silent in all EMF frequencies except for their laser tight-beam comlink.
The front screen showed one Alien beating up another Alien. Both were weird, strange or just normal for the fifth world that orbited within the star’s liquid water habitable zone.
The beater Alien resembled a bipedal gray seal whose conical head was encircled by a ring of octopus-like tentacles studded with suckers. Small hooks shone inside each sucker. The eight tentacles were swinging a thick wooden pole against a six-limbed arthropod that lay on its side on a sandy beach, its thick forearms uplifted to protect its triangular head. Two compound eyes that were mobile watched the amphibian Alien as it swung the pole against the arthropod’s brown exoskeleton.
“Denise, guess we know what Boolean Hunters look like,” he said musingly.
“Yes. A mix of a walking seal with an octopus with a mouth filled with canines,” she said, her tone distracted. “This was the strongest AV signal among the 243 AV broadcasts received by my antenna.”
“Understood. But if the seal-octopus is the Boolean, then what the hell is that critter on the ground? It has six limbs in three pairs, a head, thorax and abdomen, and two compound eyes. That makes it an arthropod, according to my Tech studies on Vesta and on Charon. But it sure as hell does not resemble any Earth insect I ever saw.”
Denise laughed softly. “You need to watch more Earth wildlife shows. The coconut land crab, Birgus latro, can reach a meter in width. It gets its name from using its front claws to crack open green coconuts.” She paused, tapping on her computer panel. “But the land crab is a crustacean while this arthropod Alien on the ground resembles a praying mantis of giant size. It runs two meters in length, from head to end of abdomen. Plus it’s brown instead of green.”
Jack could see that. Which meant the Boolean seal-octopus Alien was at least two meters in height. “What do the other AV channels show?”
“Looking. Scanning for metal content. Ah! Here goes,” she said, sounding happy with her signal analysis algorithm.
A new image took form.
It was a distant view of some kind of habitation. Or city. Or nest. Or whatever the hell was occupied by thousands of these brown-skinned arthropods. Jack peered at a landscape filled with conical buildings that had the look of mud but were clearly made of rock and steel. Elevated walkways ran between some of the cone places, while flatbed vehicles similar to the long trucks of Earth ran down major roadways. No dust rose from the oversize wheels of the flatbeds, so the roadway was coated in something. In the center of the ‘city’ was a hill topped with a giant cone building. Winding tubes circled the sides of the cone. Small figures of arthropods were walking along the top of the tubes as if they were artificial branches. Or ropes. Or whatever the winding elevated pathways were called by the local sapients. On the horizon beyond the city there rose a spaceship that looked like a fat cone. It rose on yellow chemical rockets. The hull was smooth as the exterior of the many cone buildings. Either the arthropods did not need portholes to see out, or their engineers had argued against inserting such a weakness into a structure that had to withstand the aerodynamic pressures of passage through the upper atmosphere. A voice could be heard talking, as if in narration. But that voice was a mix of squeaks, saw-sounds, buzzes and thumps.
“How soon can Anonymous translate the local language?”
“Very soon,” Denise said. “It applies my SETI linguistic analysis very quickly. But it still takes a group of images associated with language sounds before it can generate a basic language matrix.”
“Explosions!” yelled Elaine from her Pilot station. “Thermonuke blasts! Three of them! One near the outermost sixth planet at 5.77 AU and two near the fourth planet at three-fourths AU. That world is a gas giant half the size of Saturn. The outer planet is three times the size of Jupiter.”
Damn. His sister’s Sensor map of the system had documented the presence of nineteen grav-pull ships, most of them clustered near planets four and five in the habitable zone. Three orbited planet six. And three grav-pulls were placed far out, near the 40 AU outer edge of the system’s Kuiper Belt of comets. There were also twelve fusion drive ships running between planets four, five and six. “Are the blasts near any of the Boolean ships?”
“No . . . uh, yes!” Elaine said. She looked down at her Sensor panel, then up as she gestured at the front screen. “I’m putting the blasts up on the Sensor view of the system’s ecliptic plane. The yield of each blast is at least three megatons, based on the gamma ray and x-ray emission levels tracked by my sensors.”
Were the Booleans mining a moon in orbit about planet four? Or a moon around the super Jupiter? Or was somebody fighting someone else? He looked closely at the blast locations and the positions of the grav-pull ships. The two blasts at planet four were not near any grav-pull ship. Although they were very close to two fusion ships. The single blast at planet six was close to a grav-pull ship.
“Blodwen, you have any idea what is happening with these blasts?”
“A few,” she said, her tone cautious. “Could be asteroid or moon mining like we’ve seen earlier. Could be someone attacking the grav-pull ships at planet six. Or it could be a civil war between two groups of arthropods, judging by the blast that is near those two fusion drive ships at planet four.”
Too many possibilities. He looked up at the images of his fleet allies. “Admiral, captains, I suggest we hold station here before we go after those Boolean ships. While nine ships are next to the Earth-like world of planet five, with four in orbit about planet four and three orbiting planet six, it looks like someone is fighting someone else. Or several someones. Let’s have Denise scan the AV broadcasts for any news reports on this fighting.”
“Agreed,” Hideyoshi said from the Bismarck. The man’s receding hairline now reached halfway back from his forehead. “However, there could be gravitomagnetic sensors in this space just as there were at 54 Piscium. It will take five and a half hours for any radio signal to reach those Boolean ships. We should act before then.”
Jack knew that. But he had invited comments on his plan to keep the fleet in overlook mode. He scanned the other captains. “Other thoughts, anyone?”
Minna raised a slim, rad-tanned hand. Their Finn commerce raider looked thoughtful. “We need to analyze those AV broadcasts. Find out if any of these arthropod people are fighting the Boolean occupation.”
“Exactly,” growled Maureen from the holo above Jack’s lap. She was in the Battle Module, making ready for combat. “We don’t want to be the target of someone else’s Fire-and-Forget thermonuke torp!”
No other captain offered a comment. He looked over to Elaine. “Pilot, let us know if any of those grav-pull ships head our way. Denise, any luck on an AV news report?”
“Yes!” Tap-tapping sounded from her station. “Going up on the front screen. With rebroadcast to the fleet by way of our laser link.”
An image of a blue and green world shone against the cinder blackness of space. White clouds, blue oceans and land masses green and brown shone under the yellow light of 55 Cancri. In the foreground hung a cone ship of silvery color. It was thrusting on fusion flames, moving outward from the planet. Which Jack guessed was planet five, judging by the oceans and the sunlight levels. A raspy voice-over gave nar
ration.
“The Imperator today dispatched a fighting ship to dislodge the misguided rebels who occupy the large moon Nootok that orbits the inner world of GikgikHok. Reports of a star blast explosion near a Boolean ship at our outermost world of Tootag were denied by the Imperator’s First Spouse. She also denied reports of fighting between Imperator troops and rebels on the southern continent of Warm Forest.” There was a pause as the image of the planet rapidly enlarged, with a triangle blinking on a continent in the southern hemisphere of the world. “The colonizing of the central massif on Warm Forest by our Boolean guides was accepted by prior Imperators. Our world of TiktikPok has greatly benefited from the overrule of our Boolean guides. Today is the annual celebration of their arrival ninety cycles ago.” The planet close-up changed to an image of a city filled with cone buildings that surrounded a large plaza filled with thousands of brown-skinned praying mantis arthropods. Who were chanting something not translated by Anonymous. “In other news, recent graduates of the Great Dark Academy on the northern continent of Blue Rivers are being assigned as crew for three resource mining ships now being built at the fabrication yards of the Clan Hiksoot. That clan is well known for its loyalty to our Boolean guides, despite rumors that a third of the academy’s students recently left to provide crews for rebel ships. Clan Leader Thikpo welcomed these news graduates with—”
“Enough,” Jack said. “Reverse that AV back to the image of the southern continent of Warm Forest. I want to see just where the Boolean colony is placed.”
“Returning to the earlier scene,” Denise said. “It’s up now.”
Jack peered at the continent. It was the size of Australia and Madagascar combined, nearly equal in size to North America. It was covered in a green carpet that could be dense forests. While two long mountain ranges ran along the eastern and western coasts of Warm Forest, its center was dominated by an uplifted massif that was as big as the Colorado Plateau of western America. Multiple rivers ran from its center to cascade over its rim into the green forests below. The silvery sparkle of two dozen cities showed, most scattered between the massif and the mountain ranges. A large silvery urbus occupied the center of the massif. Three yellow glows were lifting off from the central urbus, perhaps shuttles rising up to meet one of the orbiting grav-pull ships of the Booleans.
Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) Page 26
