Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4)

by T. Jackson King

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Arrival at the Megurk system was as simple as before. The fleet exited Alcubierre space-time drive, courtesy of Max’s time-lock setting for the Alcubierre stardrive. Everyone was wearing vacsuits and helmets. And the swiftness of their arrival had left everyone eager for this confrontation. He looked to the right, past Maureen’s empty seat. “Pilot, tell us how things stand.”

  She gestured at the front screen. It’s true-light image from the Schmidt refractor scope showed solid blackness ahead. “We are 51 AU out from the star’s coordinates. Just beyond the Isolation Globe boundary at 50 AU.”

  “Max,” Jack called, “how are power and engines?”

  “Fully operational,” his buddy replied.

  “Good. Elaine, what does your Sensor panel say about the space ahead?”

  She looked down at the panel that she had swung in from her left armrest. “As before, nothing. Which is not normal. Even empty space radiates heat at a few degrees Kelvin. And the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation fills all of space-time. Except for here. Also, we are too close to see nearby stars. Unless we turn Nikola’s Big Eye scope to look rearward.”

  His lifemate chuckled. “I am deploying the Big Eye. We’ll need it to see what lies within this system. Once the globe disappears.”

  Jack liked that kind of positive thinking. “Pilot, give us a sensor image.”

  Elaine tapped on her Sensor panel. Up front appeared a split-screen view of the space ahead. On one side there appeared a circular space of solid blue. A cluster of ten red dots lay near the outer edge of the blue. “The red dots are the ships of the fleet. The blue is the zone of absence of any kind of EMF radiation. Including x-rays, ultraviolet, gamma rays, random neutrons, stellar wind, everything!” Across the top of the screen there appeared the images of the nine other ship captains as their laser Come-Back signal integrated through Denise’s Comlink panel. Elaine looked his way, her expression grim. “Jack, I can’t tell you more until this Isolation thingie goes away.”

  For which there was no reason to delay further. “Pilot, thank you.” He scanned the ship captain images. “Fleet captains, are your ships on Combat Alert?”

  “On alert!” called Hideyoshi. “We are sweeping the space ahead with our Higgs beam. As a precaution.”

  Jack liked that. The yellow beam from the Bismarck swept across the space before them. Only a few brief sparkles happened as tiny dust particles gave up their atomic cohesion.

  Zhāng gave him a quick, professional nod. “The Nimitz is ready to fight. All systems operational.”

  Gareth grinned. “The Dragon is also ready. We are watching to the rear, in case some Hunter chooses now to visit this system.”

  “The Caiman is ready to snap her jaws,” said Júlia, her helmet half-filled with the tight curls of her black hair.

  His Basque brother Ignacio scanned him, gave a smile as he saw Jack wore his own black boina, then slapped his chest. “The Badger is ready to kill!”

  “My ship is eager to taste blood!” called Akemi. The petite woman held up a slim hand. “My shogun, may the Orca precede you into this system?”

  The normally calm woman, who looked years younger than her 40 chrono years, seemed ready to jump out of her Pilot seat, swinging the ancient katana sword she had inherited from her samurai family. “Captain Akemi, yes, you may precede the fleet. Once we jump into the system ahead.”

  Aashman, Kasun and Minna were equally ready. Jack checked the holo above his Tech panel. Maureen looked at him. “Well?”

  Exactly so. Jack looked to the image of Zhāng. “Fleet Commander, proceed as we discussed. Let Archibald and Agnes do their thing. With the guidance of you and Lieutenant Johansen.”

  The woman’s normally bland expression showed sudden eagerness. She looked back over her left shoulder to where Jack could see his two physics geniuses standing before a control pedestal. “You have the galactic coordinates for this system’s star. Fire your Dark Energy Projector!”

  “One moment,” muttered Archibald over the intership laser comlink. “Ah. Perfect. Agnes? It is your accelerator that made this possible. Would you care to accelerate some Dark Matter so we can strike the Isolation Globe with too much Dark Energy for its belly?”

  A feminine chuckled came over the Nimitz comlink as Zhāng lifted an eyebrow. “Fleet Commander, we are accelerating the DM. And now we are . . . firing!”

  Jack looked down at the true-light image of blackness. The Dark Energy beam was not visible, just as Dark Matter was also non-radiative in the EMF spectrum. Which left him to watch and hope. He had no idea how large the Isolation Globe left behind by the Arbitor ship was. He just knew, by instinct, that anything built to handle the powers of Dark Energy had to have some limit. Clearly the device had been built to suck Dark Energy from the metaverse as a means of powering a stationary Alcubierre space-time globe the size of a star system. While nano-level microelectronics and virus fabrication had allowed for an incredible miniaturization of all Tech systems over the last hundred years, he was betting that the Arbitor device had limits. It was, after all, smaller than the Arbitor ship itself. Which had the mass of the Nimitz destroyer. That put a limit on the size of the power matrices that the device could hold. Which left him wondering. Which would happen first? Would the DE Projector run out of Dark Matter to accelerate or would the Isolation Globe hit system overload before then?

  “Yes!” yelled Elaine.

  The front screen filled with starry images. Yellow, white, blue, every color of star now filled the front screen. A bright yellow star occupied the center of the screen. Which must be the Megurk star. “Elaine! What are your graviton readouts? Any grav-pull ships in that system? What about neutrino sources? And—”

  “Damn!” she interrupted, lifting her left hand to point at a side screen that now appeared to the left of the true-light image. A silvery spot appeared next to a giant silver globe. “Graviton blast! From next to the home star. Wow!”

  Jack grinned. Since gravitons traveled at FTL speeds throughout the universe, they were the only natural emission that his fleet could see in real-time. The graviton blast had to be from the Isolation Globe. And since the probe had to generate gravitons as part of the Alcubierre space-time globe, the sudden blast meant the entire device had died. Even as he watched the silvery spot grew smaller and smaller until it winked out. Leaving only the giant silver globe of the yellow star. No doubt the side screen would show silvery balls for each planet in the system, once Elaine changed her Sensor setting. Everything of mass emitted some level of gravitons. Stars, planets and quasars emitted lots of them.

  A slap on his back made him jump. “Yes!” cried Nikola from behind him. “Oh, Jack! You guessed right. We killed that fucking Isolation Globe!”

  “Well done, youngster,” said Maureen from within the holo image above his Tech panel. “Anybody left to hunt in that system?”

  Above the front screen came cheers, yells and joy from every ship in the fleet. Hideyoshi, normally so professionally bland, was pumping the air with a fist. Gareth was howling about how the Welsh dragon ruled the universe. As for Zhāng, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Archibald and Agnes had approached her from behind and were now pouring a bucket of ice cubes over the woman’s helmet. “You whackos!” she screamed, though her face showed happiness.

  Jack could only shake his head at the antique sports victory celebration. Then again, Belter people loved some old habits. While Zhāng’s red uniformed people looked on in surprise, with Weaponry Chief Johansen grabbing the shoulders of the two vacsuited physicists to pull them back from his boss, Zhāng’s boss Hideyoshi just shook his head.

  “Fleet Commander, get used to these Belter antics!” the Mars admiral said. “They are part and parcel of our allies.”

  His other crewmates were out of their seats and gathered around up front, most of them giving him a fist-pump, a grin, two hands up in the old victory sign, and good Max had pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker
Black Label. Which he was unscrewing.

  “Hey!” he yelled as Blodwen gave him a hug and pursed her lips in kiss blocked by her helmet. “Max, hold off on that booze. We have an unknown star system ahead of us. We could be facing combat. Everyone! Back to Combat Alert!”

  Loud groans came from all his crew, but they moved back to their function stations. A whisper came from behind him. “I’m proud of you,” said Nikola over the suit comlink.

  Jack grinned. It was right to feel great. For the first time in 3,000 years, someone had killed the Isolation Globe of the Arbitors. Which meant Jack and his fellow humans could do the same at the remaining 13 Isolated systems. He suddenly realized that a local victory like this had long-term implications. “Pilot, any grav-pull ship signatures showing in that system ahead?”

  “None,” she said hurriedly. “Only graviton emissions coming from ahead are the normal ones from the planets and the star.”

  “Nikola? What do your instruments tell you about the system ahead?” Jack hoped no one had paid attention to her soft words.

  “Uh, I’m changing the front image to what my Big Eye can now show us.” Ahead the screen swiftly expanded to show five white planetary crescents scattered across the star’s ecliptic plane. Which lay below them. “The star is a G2V yellow dwarf, like Sol. As for planets, the inner two are Mercury small and too close to the star to be people occupied. Planet three is at the inner edge of the liquid water habitable zone at nine-tenths AU. Which makes it a likely Venus analog. Planet four lies at 1.2 AU. Its size is slightly larger than Earth, but it is the likely place for people to live. Planet five is a gas giant at 12 AU. And . . . ” a red cursor dot appeared on the true-light image, moving between planets four and five. “My infrared spectroscope says there is an asteroid belt between four and the gas giant.”

  “Which explains these neutrino readouts,” Elaine said, tap-tapping her Sensor panel. A side screen went up to the right of the central image of system star and planets. On it were three white spots, scattered in an half-circle that ran along the orbital track of the asteroid belt. “Those are stationary neutrino sources. Their emissions match those from a . . . a fission power reactor!”

  Jack saw something else. Planet four glowed with white spots as if it had a case of measles. “Elaine, planet four. What the heck is that? The neutrino emissions are too broad to be a fusion or fission reactor.”

  “True.” She tapped again on her panel. Other emission sources suddenly showed, coming from the planet. “My Sensor panel reports 43 locations that are now emitting x-rays, neutrons, gamma rays and secondary re-radiation. In addition to weak neutrinos.” She looked to him, her expression sad. “Planet four is a radioactive cinder. Those 43 locations, on the side of the planet facing us, are thermonuclear fusion bomb strike points. Somehow, somewhen, after the Isolation Globe went up, the Megurk Hunters killed their home planet in all-out nuclear war.”

  Jack’s mouth went dry. The thing that people of the last century had worried might happen during the Cold War, and which had happened in a few spots on Earth when Iran and Israel fought the Six Hour War, had come to pass on this world. “Any fusion pulse ships in the system? Any sign of Tech-level survival anywhere in the system?”

  Elaine shook her head slowly. “No signs of artificial power generation, EMF broadcasting, nothing other than the antique fission reactor sites in three places in the asteroid belt. My guess is those are old uranium-fueled reactors that once supported asteroid habitats.” She paused, tapping her panel. “There are no radio, radar, lidar or maser emissions from those three spots. We would have to visit one or more of those locations to see if anyone still lives there. The reactor rods would emit neutrinos and gamma rays long after any living person passed away. So, either this system is entirely dead of all life, or it barely hangs on at those three spots.”

  Jack wondered if chemosynthetic life lived in ice-clad oceans on some of the moons of the gas giant. As it did on Europa and Enceladus. But no reactor emissions showed from the outer gas giant. “We can come back here after our battle with the Arbitor. If there are survivors, we can offer what help we can. At least now, any survivors can see the stars.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Nikola murmured from behind him. “What a curse! To be inside that black globe and the only light comes from their sun and from the light reflected by their fellow planets and asteroids!”

  A true curse it had been. A curse that had killed a civilization. A curse that now looked like genocide. “Nikola, let’s head for the juvenile system at HD 128311. It’s listed in the Nasen star holo.”

  “Sure.” She tap-tapped on her Astro panel. “Distance to HD 128311 from Sol is almost 54 light years. Distance from the Megurk system is 124.122 light years. Which amounts to a travel time of three days, two hours and 31 minutes.”

  “No seconds?” he teased.

  “Goofball!” She tapped again. “Coordinates sent to Elaine.”

  Jack looked up at the images of his nine ship captains. “Unless someone has a reason for staying here, I propose we leave for this juvenile system. And make contact with them. Which will surely be reported by the Sentry probe that orbits every juvenile system. Questions? Issues?”

  Minna frowned. “I do, Fleet Captain Jack. What are the chances there will be Hunters of the Great Dark camped out in the cometary belt of this system? The way they were in Sol systems? Perhaps we should arrive in Combat Alert mode.”

  The captain of the Wolverine had a good point. “Agreed. All ships, go to Combat Alert status just before we exit Alcubierre drive on the outskirts of this system. Minna, as for the chances, I think they are low. As we’ve seen, only a few juvenile systems have Hunters camped out, waiting for that outer planet contact.” He looked back to his lifemate. Whose long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She lifted sandy brown eyebrows. “Nikola, what do we know about this star system we are heading for? Planets, cometary belt, similar stuff.”

  She tilted her head. “Was wondering if you might ask for the basics. The system has five planets in it, with two large Jupiter-like gas giants and one Earth-like planet at the second orbital position.” She looked down at her panel, then up. “Results of the Long Baseline Stellar Interferometer scan of this star documented an excess of infrared radiation at its outer edges, which suggests a cometary or debris disk. Plus the scan documented three additional planets, including the one lying in the inner habitable zone. The outermost planet five is small and thought to be Pluto-like. That’s all we have until we arrive there.”

  Gareth raised a hand. “I suggest our three Higgs Disruptor ships go to an outer ring formation about the seven other ships. Just in case we detect gravitomagnetic sensors, laser platforms or automated torps upon our arrival.”

  Jack liked that. “Agreed. The Uhuru will take polar position. The Bismarck and the Dragon will take position 120 degrees down from either of us. Everyone else, cluster in the middle of our ring. Comments, questions?”

  Hideyoshi raised his gloved hand. The admiral’s expression was thoughtful. “Once we contact this juvenile system, there is no going back. The Arbitor will try to Isolate Sol. Fleet Captain Jack, how do we proceed?”

  Jack liked that the man had not asked if he planned to back down. “Fleet Admiral Hideyoshi, I follow the advice of the Chinese strategist Tu Mu. Who said ‘If wise, a commander is able to recognize changing circumstances and to act expediently’.”

  The Mars admiral smiled at the quote. Which, as a student of war, he must have studied at the Unity Naval Academy. “So true. But now the circumstances have changed in our favor. As Sun Tzu said, ‘Anciently the skillful warriors first made themselves invincible and awaited the enemy’s moment of vulnerability’.”

  Jack doubted his fleets were invincible. But they did have the DE Projector. And they were able to move fast by routes and methods not expected by the Arbitor. Who likely assumed he would be met by the traditional thermonukes and energy weapons. “I prefer Sun Tzu’s combat stra
tegy maxim. Which was ‘Now an army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness’.” He smiled. “We know our enemy’s weakness. We will pretend to be one thing while preparing to strike his weakness. Agreed?”

  Hideyoshi nodded slowly. “Exactly so. As the Master also said, ‘all warfare is based on deception’. I think we are doing well in that area.”

  Jack scanned the other captains. When no one else said anything, he looked back to Max. Who had been in a great mood since the return of Blodwen from her forced reporting to Vesta’s Academy of Sociology. “Hey, genius. Nikola has given Elaine the coordinates and my dear sister has oriented this ship and the fleet in the proper direction. You ready to tap the panel and make magic?”

  “Of course.” His buddy put a hand over the control surface of the Alcubierre drive pedestal. Then he gave Jack a big grin. “I sure like zipping across interstellar space like a bee with a rocket up her tail!”

  Everyone laughed, including the normally bland Asians among the fleet captains. Kasun, usually the quietness of the six other captains in the First Belter Fleet, actually chuckled. “I think the Lord Buddha would be entertained by the image of such a bee. I and my crewmates certainly are. My Drive Engineer reports we are in laser time-lock with good Max’s drive. Let us leave and meet these new people.”

  Jack totally agreed. “Max, set her on fire!”

  No one corrected him to say neither the grav-pull nor the Alcubierre space drives emitted flames. They understood his enthusiasm matched their own. Especially now that they all knew humanity had a weapon able to kill an Isolation Globe. And also kill the Arbitor’s ship’s protective field, most likely. Jack sat back in his seat as the front screen images went jagged, then hazy, then disappeared. They were on their way to freedom and liberation.