“No,” he said, thinking fast. “The only ship in nuke range of the blockhouse is Mongoose. And he will likely use geo-penetrators like we did against the Yiplak blockhouse. But we can definitely give him some help. Aim our HF lasers at the neutral particle beam snouts of the nearest turnip ship the moment we are in direct line of sight of them!”
Battles in space happen fast.
“Firing!” growled Maureen as the Uhuru crested the comet’s curve and caught a direct view of Mongoose.
The Uhuru’s two HF laser pods both fired at the turnip ship closing on Mongoose. The Badger and Wolverine fired their green lasers at the lower turnip ship, which had blipped sideways, aiming to gain a pincer attack angle on Aashman.
Green beams filled the black sky.
Aashman’s ventral and dorsal lasers fired at the nearest turnip ship even as it turned to bring its neutral particle beam root-tip onto his ship.
The lasers of Minna and Ignacio all impacted on the lower turnip ship’s root-tip, melting the slender rod of the neutral particle beam projector into uselessness.
The upper turnip ship fired its HF lasers at Mongoose, hitting the Hindu ship’s dorsal laser mount. The Alien’s neutral particle beam projector brightened as it began emission of a beam . . . then it vaporized into white sparkles as Jack’s hydrogen-fluorine lasers and Aashman’s gunners both hit the root-tip with their lasers.
Which still left two Alien turnip ships blip jumping like a bumblebee toward Mongoose as the human ship continued its descent toward the blockhouse, albeit blipping sideways too in order to avoid a predictable straight-line vector.
“Jack!” cried Denise from her Comlink station. “The Orca has killed the solo Alien ship with Akemi’s neutral particle beam! We got a turnip cut in half out there!”
The silly image of a real turnip cut by a paring knife almost made Jack smile. Instead, his gaze fixed on the real-time imagery of the Mongoose battle, he saw the blockhouse explode from hits by that ship’s geo-penetrators.
“Aashman! Get the hell out of there and over to us! Those turnip ships are aiming to ram you!”
Perhaps the Sikh aide had seen what Jack had seen. The two turnip ships, their deadliest weapon a melted root-tip, had paired up and were blip jumping in unison at a rate which would impact Mongoose in seconds. Which was less than the time it took for his laser comlink to reach the Hindu’s ship.
“He’s coming!” cried Elaine as she followed Maureen’s Delta Seven attack vector.
“All ships fire lasers at those two Aliens!” Jack commanded over the laser comlink.
Six HF lasers split their fire among the two Alien ships, causing hull ruptures and the spouting of atmosphere. First one ship stopped blipping and began tumbling, then the second ship followed suit, a large hole showing in its fat midbody.
“Yes!” cried Maureen as she shook a fist.
The front screen images shifted to show an incoming vid signal. Aashman’s brown face, sweat shining from his forehead, grinned manically. “The cobras are dead!”
Jack could see that as spysats reported real-time imagery from both sides of the comet, and multiple captains live-reported their actions.
Every Earth ship had survived, although Mongoose and Caiman showed laser damage to their hulls. The three Alien ships were all dead in space.
Or so Jack thought. An incoming AV signal from a turnip ship said not every Alien was dead.
Before them took shape an image of a panda bear crossed with a grizzly. Only this grizzly had black fur with white stripes, three pink eyes across its forehead, a wide muzzle filled with white canines and shoulders like a wrestler’s that ended in striped arms with four-fingered hands. Behind the Alien lay two others, cut by shrapnel from an onboard explosion. They bled red like Humans. And like the three other Alien species they’d encountered. This Alien snarl-talked.
“We Gyklang ask you, Human top predator, to spare our mates and cubs. We are your meat, yes. But spare our cubs.”
Jack could see the Alien was gasping between words. Clearly its air was thinning rapidly. And while it bled from a shoulder wound, it did not appear in danger of dying immediately.
“Before we answer, how did you know that this ship, our Uhuru ship, was pack leader?”
The three pink eyes blinked in unison. “The Watering Hole leader sells such data. On you. On your predator ways. On your home planet. Whatever we and others ask for, it sells to us.”
One answer. Which led to more questions. “What is the name and species of the Watering Hole leader?”
“You head that way, based on our backtrack of your vector. Learn it there,” the grizzly grunted.
“Tell me now. Or your mates and cubs are our meat.”
“No!” screamed the Gyklang grizzly, its tone rising into frequencies beyond what Jack could hear. “The leader is Menoma, species HikHikSot, home star . . . Delta Boötis B by your star names. Your answer?”
Jack showed his teeth to the Gyklang. “Are your mates and cubs present on your ship? Or the other two ships?”
“Only my mate is on our ship Sharp Roar,” the grizzly said. “All other mates, and all our cubs, are at the Watering Hole. In our colony ship. Like the colony ships of our competitors. Your answer!”
“Your mate is my meat.” The grizzly howled long and low. “All Gyklang still living on your ships are my meat. My dead meat. As for your colony ship, we will decide its fate when we reach the place we call Sedna. Perhaps we will spare them. Perhaps not. How do you wish to die?”
“Fighting you!” the Gyklang roared.
“You fought us. You failed. We claim meat ownership of you and your ships,” Matt said bluntly, knowing that his broadcast words were likely being heard by other Alien predators. “As for your air, our ball bearings will ventilate every habitable part of your ship. And your other ships.”
The yellow-orange light of the Gyklang AV signal dimmed, as if the transmitter were losing power. The grizzly slumped back onto a padded bench that seemed to serve it as a rest support. “You spared ships of the Yiplak and Nasen. Why not our survivors?”
Maureen looked at him, her eyebrows lifted. At the top of the front screen the other six ship captains all listened to the Gyklang AV signal and to Jack’s replies. He showed his teeth, then faced the grizzly and drew a finger across his throat.
“It was convenient to spare them,” he said. “No longer. Every lifeform who hunts us will know just how we came to control our home world. By constant fighting among ourselves. And by making food out of any lifeform on our planet. Now, you and yours will feed us. As my hand motion signals to you.”
The Gyklang signal faded away. But just before it did Jack saw the grizzly lift one paw-hand and draw its four claws across its thick neck, rupturing the arteries feeding blood to its brain. Behind him he heard Denise choking as she tried to not vomit.
Jack sat back in his seat, eyes closing, knowing that his crew and his allies would follow his words to the letter. The four new ships would ransack the unpowered hulks of the three Gyklang turnip ships, their crews armed with vacuum-prepped revolvers and hand lasers in case the railgun barrage of ball bearings did not remove every air pocket and they found a few survivors. The gravity-pull drives of each Gyklang ship would be removed and stored for later Belter volunteers who chose to join his Hunt pack. As would any Alien comlink device since Jack wished to know how the Aliens talked among themselves without using radio. And the vidrecord of this combat encounter, minus the Watering Hole section, would be sent Sol-ward to Charon Base, Enceladus, Europa, Mars, the Moon and to the Geneva HQ of the Unity Space Force. It should unsettle the Unity public, and make fearful Governor Aranxis at Ceres Central.
Meanwhile, he would try again to wipe clean his memory of a helmet filled with red blood. That image, joined with the physical feeling of his Viking long sword as it punched through the suit of the rockrat who’d attacked Cassandra, still haunted him. As did the memory image of the Rizen, Yiplak and Nasen bodies that he
had salvaged from their ships.
Red death is all too memorable.
Uhuru’s telescope showed comet 1999 DG8 as a bluish object that rotated rapidly around its smallest diameter of 43 kilometers while its opposite ends stretched 110 kilometers apart. Its shape resembled a skinny watermelon. Its water ice surface looked dark, as if carbon dusted. A table to the right of the image showed the comet completed a rotation once every four hours. Jack looked past Maureen’s empty combat station to Elaine and her Pilot station with its Astro panel.
“Distance? Any sign of Alien presence?” he asked, wondering if their assault on comet 2004 VN112 had been communicated to other Aliens.
Elaine looked at him, a sister to brother look that held empathy for the pain he had felt during the last combat. “It’s at 63 AU from Sol and outbound to its aphelion at 81 AU. We’re three AU out from it, approaching at 20 percent lightspeed but with the fusion Main Drive off. So we’ll reach it in two hours,” she said, then glanced down at the Astro armrest-panel. “As for Aliens, none showing yet. Let me adjust the scope’s CCD to highlight the iron and steel parts of the spectrum.”
Jack, Denise and Max watched with Elaine as the front screen image of the comet went from yellow light normal to a red-brown melon image. The north pole was at the long end of the spinning melon, on the left side of the screen. A purple spot glinted. Four similar purple spots showed above the surface of the comet.
“Aliens are there,” she muttered, adjusting her panel controls to increase the resolution of the scope at the changed spectrum. “A structure on the north pole surface is likely a habitation blockhouse like we’ve seen on other comets. The four specks are . . . switching back to normal light now that I’ve got the scope parameters fixed.” She nodded at the screen. “There! Fancy how they covered their hulls with ice blocks to shield their metallicity.”
Jack saw ships that resembled a spinning top, with a fat disk at the center and a tubular ring running around the disk’s waist. The north and south poles of the ship slimmed down to sharp points. The disk slowly rotated, its equatorial ring showing nodules with spikes. He tapped on his Tech panel, bringing up a holo of Maureen from her action post at the rear Battle Module. “Maureen, that looks like a weapons ring to me. What think you?”
In the holo she frowned. “Yeah, the ring resembles the weapons ring that encircled the waist of the Nasen javelin ships. But this ring is fixed to the disk’s mid-body. Maybe it gets power feed from the two polar posts? Or just target guidance with broadcast power?”
Jack recalled a lecture from Archibald Wheeler on the negatives of broadcast power. “Naw, I think the posts are actually neutral particle beam projectors. Two of them! The ring likely supports lasers in those nodules. This disk-ship can shoot both horizontally and vertically at the same time!” Jack realized the Alien disk-ship was going to be a bear to confront. “Fiber optic cables could do for the targeting guidance. That’s what we rely on in our ships. And internal power to the weapons is likely by power cables, not broadcast. Iridium-copper cables can handle high power feeds. Broadcast stuff is too vulnerable to anti-EMF emissions from an opponent.”
Elaine nodded slowly. “Okay. But why are all four ships in varying orbits? And why do they have these ice blocks affixed to their hulls? Makes it hard to see the underlying predator image.”
“They expect us,” Denise said, her tone concerned. She looked his way. “That is why none of their ships are on the comet surface. And why they are jacketed with ice blocks. To make detection of them from a distance not easy.” She paused, then lifted an eyebrow at him. “Captain Jack, these Aliens got word of our attack on the Gyklang Aliens and the fact of our vector this way, toward Sedna. But how? I did not detect any radio broadcasts or coherent maser emissions from the Gyklang ships.”
He sat back in his seat, then relocked his restraint straps. “My guess is the Aliens have some kind of fast or instant comlink that does not depend on masers, radio or long distance laserfax. Maybe one of Aashman’s engineers can figure out which piece of Gyklang bridge debris is their comlink. For now, though, we have to act as if every Alien we meet knows our entire Kuiper Belt combat history. Like that grizzly said to me, this Menoma leader guy sells that info to other Aliens. Denise, you sending this stuff to the rest of the fleet?”
“Yes, along with our discussion,” she said softly, looking fatigued.
He was tired too. Rotating duty station alerts helped somewhat in that his crew got at least six hours of sleep every twenty-four. But the need to always be on Alert in case they ran into new Aliens on the Hunt while they traveled between comets had worn them down. Whatever happened at this new comet, Jack knew they all had to do intensive R and R before they arrived at Sedna. But now, they faced a new battle. A battle against opponents who expected them.
“Maureen,” he spoke to the woman’s holo. “You got any ideas on how best to attack this four-ship group? They never cluster, and every side of the comet is covered by at least one ship, all the time.”
Their Belfast granny scratched her head, then snapped her fingers. “Got it! We shoot a thermonuke torp at the blockhouse, loaded with E-and-E software so it is hard to hit with a laser or neutral particle beam shot. The disk-ships will pick up its rad profile and know it’s a thermonuke. So they will cluster to combine their shots in the hope one of their laser shots will get through to the torp. While they are clustering we blip jump in, surround them and destroy their ships. Once the ships are dead we can knock out the blockhouse.”
Jack admired the clarity and simplicity of Maureen’s plan. But their last attack had taught him the value of input from other commanders. “Excellent tactic! Let’s see what thoughts Minna has on that attack plan.” He looked back to Denise. “Gal, send a Come-Back to Minna so we are in laser comlink with her, with a full AV feed of our recent chat to the other ships.”
“Complying,” Denise said, her attitude very focused for a nineteen year-old person.
Maureen fixed him with her gray eyes, then nodded abruptly. “Agreed. Minna’s a sharp raider. Maybe she can improve on this plan. In the meantime, I’m setting up the software for my scorpion-tail whipsnap!”
“Thanks.” Jack looked to the front screen where a vidbox now took shape above the comet imagery. Minna’s steely blue gaze fixed on him.
“Captain Jack? You called—oh, I see the reason. Let me look at Maureen’s plan.” She glanced to one side of her own ship screen, turned thoughtful, then faced him again. “I like very much the idea of tossing the thermonuke at the blockhouse, thereby forcing the defending ships to cluster. I volunteer Wolverine as the lead ship to blip jump in and release one of our thermonukes.”
“Incoming AV signals from all ships,” Denise said breathlessly.
At the top of the Uhuru’s front screen there now appeared side-by-side images of his five other captains, with Ignacio waving as his black mustache wiggled with his shouting.
“Me! Me!” Ignacio bellowed. “The Basque have always excelled at sneak attacks.”
Jack waved acknowledgment to Captains Akemi, Kasun, Aashman and Júlia, then addressed his first allies.
“Minna will lead the attack by being first to blip jump in on a vector different from our Sol approach,” Jack said firmly. “She launches a thermonuke torp with E-and-E software. Set the warhead to alternate options of either contact detonation, or ship vicinity detonation if any disk-ship gets within ten klicks of the torp.”
Minna smiled briefly. Ignacio, who had pulled his boina off, crumpled the small beret in his hands, his look anxious. “And we on the Badger?”
Jack smiled big at the stocky man. “You and your cousins will launch a railgun barrage of ball bearings on a vector to intersect the cluster of disk-ships. Your belly railgun is operational, isn’t it?”
“Yes!” cried Ignacio happily. “We added the railgun after the repairs from the Yiplak laser strikes. It’s a single barrel, unlike your double barrel mount. But it will get the job done.”
On screen Minna frowned. “My Basque ally, you realize the railgun targeting vector will be uncertain until the disk-ships begin to cluster?”
“Of course,” Ignacio said, gesturing to the side at a cousin out of view of the motion-eye that showed his bridge. “But we Basque grew up taking rifle shots from horseback, as we raced through the Spanish king’s private forests. And the Badger got plenty of practice with Unity cargo ships as they sought to hide among our asteroids.”
Maureen, who had been listening and watching the interplay from her Combat post, clapped hands to gain everyone’s attention. “Ignacio, of course you and yours are fine shots. But I recommend your railgun make multiple shots at variant vectors. That way we increase the chances of hitting one or more of the disk-ships.”
On the front screen Minna smiled briefly, then turned deadly serious. “Captain Jack, Wolverine will coordinate our blip jump arrival with Badger. We’ll send you a laser comlink signal just before we jump out of our current vector. Acceptable?”
“Very acceptable, Minna. And you too, Ignacio. Now, we spend the next two hours prepping for a fight against an enemy who expects us!”
Jack focused on the four other ship captains as Minna and Ignacio dropped from the front screen. “My allies, we will attack these Alien ships as a pod of killer whales might attack. Captain Akemi, you have the scope imagery, spectrum data and the shape of the first stage in our attack. Will you prepare a five-ship attack plan that makes best use of our weapons and abilities?”
Maureen’s holo image looked surprised, then she shrugged. “Jack, I’ve already done a basic surround-and-attack simulation. Shall I send it to Captain Akemi?”
“Yes, do so.”
“Arigato, shogun-san,” said the Japanese ship captain. “The thermonuke torp first stage is very promising. I will work with your esteemed Commander Maureen to develop a second stage ensemble attack plan. Yes?”
“Hai,” he said, using the little Japanese he knew. “Please proceed ladies. I am sure that Captains Júlia, Kasun, Aashman, Ignacio and myself will eagerly welcome whatever you come up with.”
Earth Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series 1) Page 15