Jack smiled, both to himself and for the motion-eye that was conveying his image and that of his Pilot cabin crew to every ship in Minamoto’s fleet. “Excellent suggestion, Fleet Admiral! That will allow us to have maximum defensive coverage of all vectors upon blip jump arrival above Copernicus Crater. Please arrange your fleet as you suggest.”
Elaine looked over at him. “The Unity fleet is moving as one unit to place themselves below us and parallel to the ecliptic plane.”
“Pilot, refer to them as Mars fleet,” he said firmly. Minamoto’s expression showed restrained approval. “As for our Moon arrival tactics, you and I have discussed them earlier. However, just so my Belt ships and crews can be aware, along with your Mars fleet ships and crew, I will summarize.”
Denise moved behind him. “Captain Jack, my panel shows laser link time-lock among our thirteen ships, as initiated by Captain Akemi.”
He ignored the important but minor interruption. “You and I are agreed that our joint fleet objectives are threefold. First, defeat the Unity fleet in orbit about the Moon and remove it as an effective fighting force. Second, during combat our thirteen ships will blip jump as a unit at first, then split into three ship groups if needed to pursue Unity warships. Third, if the ship of Menoma the Manager makes an appearance during the battle, you will leave the Uhuru to combat it. Though feel free to use your railgun and neutral particle beam weapon against any gravity probes the Alien ship may launch!”
“Agreed,” Minamoto said, reaching to snap his seat restraints into their locks. “Our Mars fleet is ready to engage the grav-pull drive upon the command of Captain Hagiwara. May you and your crew lead us all to victory!”
Jack smiled with restraint. The man’s acknowledgment that final battle command rested with him and the Uhuru was also previously agreed. But restating it now made the parameters of the upcoming space battle clear to all ships and crews.
“Thank you, Fleet Admiral! The same wish to you, your ships and your crews. We will depart shortly after I speak with Captains Ignacio Aldecoa and Júlia Araujo. Off AV.”
The man’s image vanished to be replaced by Elaine’s live light scope image of a distant Mars and the black space that surrounded them all. Across the top glowed the six images of his Belter captains. He gestured to them.
“Ignacio, my brother, welcome back! And congratulations on salvaging those fifteen grav-pull drives at Sedna!”
The swarthy man grinned back, his black mustache curling to either side of his mouth. The man, who wore a new black boina beret, pointed at Jack. “My brother, you wear your own boina! Happy are we who go hunting together!”
“Very true,” Jack said. “Did you lay to rest your cousin Sabino Ibaiguren?”
Ignacio’s levity softened as his black eyes glistened. “Yes. My cousin rests among the snows of Sedna. Where once the Entry Dome stood and the Gathering Hall hid. I thought it right to place him atop the site where we all fought together.”
“Exactly right,” Jack said, turning to focus on his Brazilian captain. “Júlia, when we exit grav-pull above the Moon, can you contact your fellow countrymen at Copernicus Crater and ask them to not use their anti-space lasers against us? Let them know how Mars has joined us, with the reward of being free from central control. There is no reason the Brazilians on the Moon cannot likewise claim independence, once we cut the Unity back to an Earth-only base.”
“Of course,” Júlia said, her brown face spreading into an infectious smile. “I will do my utmost. While also spreading havoc among the Unity ships!”
Jack grinned at her and at all his allies. One last detail. He looked past his sister Cassie, who kept quiet since she was not involved in ship operations. He fixed on Max. “Is the antimatter beamer installed and ready to use?”
“Thirty minutes ago!” said Max with a happy look. “Maureen has already tested out its movement. Its emitter is parallel with the neutral particle beam emitter so we can zap a ship with both beams at the same time if desired!”
That explained why Maureen was missing from the combat station seat between him and Elaine. Just as well. He nodded at his oldest sister, then looked up at Akemi. “Captain of the Orca, initiate our unified grav-pull departure!”
“As you command, my shogun!”
Before Jack the red-brown of Mars blurred, blurred again, then vanished among a gravity-distorted mix of light images. Across from him Elaine spoke.
“Earth and the Moon are nearly opposite from Mars, close to solar conjunction. Distance to target is about two point five AU. Time to target, twenty-two minutes!”
Jack tapped his Tech panel to set up the HikHikSot trick he had planned earlier. Whenever Menoma appeared, he would be ready. And so would his fleet and the Uhuru!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The blur of blip jumping stopped. In a flash Jack perceived the vitals of their spatial relationships.
The Moon lay below them with Copernicus Crater located just north their equatorial orbit.
Between the Moon and Jack’s fleet moved five GPS satellites put up by the Brazilian Autarchy.
More seriously, Elaine’s Search-and-Detect NavTrack sensors threw up on the right side panel an overhead plan view of the Moon, his fleet’s thirteen ships and other neutrino-emitting ships. Twenty yellow spots showed up in a cluster toward the Moon’s eastern horizon, while the red spots of Jack’s fleet showed in high noon position. At an angle behind them lay distant Earth. Minamoto’s Bismarck and his five destroyers hung just below Jack’s fleet in the same arrangement as when they’d left Mars.
He saw no sign of Menoma’s ship.
Jack pointed. “They’re ahead of us in orbit but lower by three thousand klicks, in station-keeping mode near the light-dark divider arc. We’re both moving east toward the dark side. Vector distance is—”
“Four thousand six hundred forty-two kilometers and closing,” Elaine said. “Our grav-pull vector speed is overtaking them. Though they will alert to our gravitomagnetic pulses at any moment.”
No doubt about that. “All ships! Fire HF lasers on ships ahead! Maureen, zap the closest heavy cruiser with your neutral particle whiptail! Now! Before it changes vectors!”
“Target locked. Firing!” called the woman who had fought ship-to-ship during their first rebellion. “Our side laser pods are also firing.”
Jack liked that Maureen now fired the first shot of the Second Belter Rebellion.
On the live light scope image he saw the lightspeed snap of the blue particle beam as it reached out, found the moving Unity cruiser, and sliced through the midbody of the enemy craft.
“Yes!” cried Cassie.
The front screen also showed two dozen green laser slashes striking among the ten closest ships. “Hits!” Elaine yelled. “Four other ships destroyed by the fleet’s combined laser fire!”
“AV signal from Admiral Minamoto!” called Denise.
“Put it up front!” Jack said, noting that the other heavy cruiser, the only Unity ship outfitted with a neutral particle beam like that carried by the Uhuru and Bismarck, had its nose pointed toward the Moon’s eastern horizon. The ship would have to do a nose-to-tail flip in order to bring its weapon to bear on Jack and his fleet.
“Captain Munroe,” called Minamoto from his purple-lighted Command Bridge. “My staff have reminded me that the Articles of War as cited in the Seventh Protocol of the Concord of Mars require opposing ships to give each other an opportunity to surrender. Can that be done now without imperiling our joint fleet?”
Jack had thought the need to strike first was obvious in view of how the Mao Tse-tung had fired on him without AV parley. But Minamoto’s crew likely saw the people on the Unity ships as hapless captives caught between two political groups.
“Yes! Do you know the name of the surviving heavy cruiser’s admiral? And the ship name? Maureen, hold fire unless you see the cruiser starting to pinwheel. If you do, fire immediately!”
“Yes my captain,” said her holo image above his Te
ch panel.
Minamoto’s intense expression told Jack he had done right to offer parley. “The ship is the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, under the command of Admiral Renée Courtmanche. She graduated from the academy three years after I did.”
“Denise, open an AV line on Unity Fleet Channel Six.”
“Open.”
On the live light image of the Unity naval fleet the fifteen survivors had gone to fusion pulse thrust with an up vector to reach the same orbital arc occupied by Jack’s ships. The four closest ships now fired HF lasers at his fleet, missing them by several hundred meters.
“Admiral Renée Courtmanche of the ship Cromwell,” Jack called. “You have ten seconds to surrender your ship and your fleet to the combined Belter and Mars fleets under the command of Jack Munroe, with the support of Fleet Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto. Respond or die quickly.”
Three seconds passed before the image of an older European woman appeared on the front screen just below Minamoto’s. She wore Unity Naval blues with an assemblage of golden stars and service ribbons. Her Command Bridge showed the flashing purple lights of Thrust-Gee. Her expression was one of anger mixed with disgust.
“Amateur! If you surrender to me instantly I will allow your crews to survive in the lithium mines of Moon’s south pole!”
“Jack!” called Elaine. “The Unity ships are all starting a flip-over so they can decel and end up behind us at a higher orbital!”
He looked to Minamoto’s image above the screen, which had been joined by the images of his six Belter captains. “Hideyoshi, I tried. One of us has to take her out before her nose particle emitter comes to bear on us. Your decision?”
The man who had spent nearly forty years in the Unity Naval Command bit his pale lips, then nodded abruptly. He looked to his left. “Weapons! Fire our neutral particle beam at the front end of the Oliver Cromwell. Quickly! Before we eat vacuum!”
On the live light portion of the front screen Jack saw a blue beam flare out from the Bismarck’s nose emitter and impact on the Cromwell’s nose.
“Target slagged,” called someone on Minamoto’s bridge.
“Elaine,” Jack called. “What are the classes of the remaining ships? Any with a particle beam?”
“No!” she said, tapping her Astro panel. On the overhead plan view panel of the Moon and the two fleets, a vertical column suddenly appeared with numbers and class names. “The fifteen ships include the heavy cruiser Oliver Cromwell, which is still under power, plus four destroyers, eight frigates and two corvettes.”
“Incoming AV signal!” cried Denise.
Admiral Renée Courtmanche appeared, her short blond curls sweat-soaked and red spots of blood showing on her blue dress uniform as someone else’s blood droplets sped past her. Black smoke and the flash of power circuits sparking filled her purple-lighted bridge. Her bridge crew not in seats were moving about under the Thrust Gee her ship had gone to in order to come in behind and higher than Jack’s fleet. A classic orbital ploy . . . which was pointless when used against ships with grav-pull drives.
“Bastard!” she cried. “Everyone past my bridge is dead. But we have power. And lasers. And Menoma the Manager is coming to our aid!” Her AV image disappeared.
Jack looked to Júlia just as the woman looked aside to her ComChief. “Is there any signal from the modulated neutrino comlink?” he asked.
“Not yet, my Captain,” Júlia said. “Do we resume laser fire?”
“Yes! All ships fire HF lasers on enemy ships!” Jack glanced to Maureen’s holo. “Grandma, use your blue whiptail against those destroyers! They all carry thermonuke torps. Fire now!”
“Weapons,” called Minamoto as he looked left. “Join our particle beam fire with that of the Uhuru! Take out the two destroyers farthest from us. And fire our lasers on the frigates!”
“Target Locked on the two closest destroyers,” Maureen said hungrily. “Firing!”
“Torps launched!” cried Elaine. “From the four destroyers and the Cromwell! Range to us is two thousand three hundred and twelve kilometers and closing!”
Jack sucked in his breath. Then he tapped his Tech station and took control of the Uhuru’s two side HF laser pods while Maureen switched her particle beam fire from the two destroyers to the fifteen torps launched by the five ships. A job made harder by the onboard Attack and Evade expert programming that shifted the torps vector line sideways, up, down and diving, even as all torps grew closer at eleven kilometers a second. He set the pods to infrared heat Detect and Fire at the closest approaching objects. Which added their laser fire to Maureen’s particle beam fire.
“Two destroyers gone!” cried Elaine. “The Cromwell is cut in half by the Bismarck! One corvette and three frigates are venting air and falling out of orbit! Six torps still approaching. And . . . Jack! Menoma’s ship has just appeared behind us and on our same orbital vector!”
Enough! Jack looked up to Akemi, whose own small bridge showed frantic activity by its strapped-in crew of four. “Akemi! We go to grav-pull drive now! Synchronize by laser link time-lock! New position is ahead of the enemy fleet and just above their fusion exhaust! Then we blip jump on them in Pod Attack Formation Beta Seven! Use laser fire on the remaining nine ships!”
The seven ship captains whose images filled the top of his front screen began to blur, then disappeared as Akemi’s Drive Engineer told every ship of Jack’s fleet to simultaneously use their grav-pull drives to blip jump three thousand kilometers ahead of their current position. It took barely the time to gasp a breath before the gravitational lensing stopped and normal space reappeared on the front screen. His captains also reappeared. As did Menoma’s ball embedded in a flat rectangle ship, which had followed them to their new position. It fired a blue neutral particle beam at one of Minamoto’s destroyers.
“The George Washington is gone!” grunted Minamoto, his expression grim.
“Akemi! Lead our combined fleets into Pot Attack Formation Beta Seven against the surviving enemy ships! We will handle Menoma!” Jack looked at the holo wavering above his lap. “Maureen! Fire your particle beam at Menoma now! Force him to blip jump before he can fire again on one of our ships! Max! Blip jump us to Menoma’s current position!”
“Pod Attack now!” cried Akemi as her Orca, the other five Belter ships and Minamoto’s surviving five ships all blurred into grav-pull blip jump, heading for the remaining nine enemy ships. Coming up on the Unity ships from the rear should help them. But Jack thought the tornado funnel of Akemi’s lead ships would do a great job of enveloping the clustered Unity ships.
The gray-white Moon and the blackness of space both blurred as the Uhuru went after Menoma’s ship.
They emerged from blip jump into empty space, the location where Menoma’s ship had been just seconds before. But as the HikHikSot alien had earlier boasted, his ship automatically blip jumped when targeted by a neutral particle beam.
“He’s between us and the two fleets!” cried Elaine, her Astro panel throwing up a side screen image that showed the orbital positions of all ships. “His ship shares our motion vector.”
The front screen live light image showed Menoma’s ship with its snarling face of a cheetah-leopard, two claw-paws flanking it on the flat rectangle hull. It hung still in space.
Maureen’s holo image spoke. “Do I zap him now with the antimatter beam?”
“No!” Jack said, “not yet. Gotta talk with him first.” He turned in his seat. “Denise! Adjust your broadcast settings so the visual part of the signal transmits far-red light at 730 nanometers.”
The redhead looked puzzled? “What? Do what?”
“You heard me. Now!”
“Complying my captain.” She tapped in the new AV parameters on her comlink panel
“Now, broadcast this on Charon Standard Channel Four,” Jack said. “Menoma! I dare you to face me in a personal Challenge combat!”
Would the Alien go after Akemi and Minamoto? Or would he choose to face Jack, the human who ha
d destroyed his base on Sedna and then had broken the Rule of the Watering Hole?
“Incoming AV signal!” Denise said suddenly.
Menoma’s cheetah image suddenly appeared on the front screen. “Your efforts are useless,” the Alien said in a throaty-cough. “Your Unity government has agreed to an alliance with us. Sol is now part of HikHikSot territory! Surrender, escape to your Kuiper Belt, or die under my beams!”
Jack clapped both hands, causing Menoma’s yellow whiskers to flare widely, his triangular ears to perk up and his golden yellow eyes to show what might be the Alien version of surprise. “We live! The Challenge is still open! As Destanu of the Rizen once said to me—Shna tok torn, shna opp sem! Are you a tiger or a sheep?”
“A tiger!” Menoma’s pawhand moved forward.
“A sheep!” Jack yelled, trying to keep their two-way broadcast going. “You used other Alien predators to fight humans! Instead of using your own ship to face me or another human in a true Challenge! But why did you not come to us and seek a hand-to-paw Challenge? The way Destanu of the Rizen did? His Challenge was at least honest in that it pitted his physical abilities against ours. Are you HikHikSot afraid of personal pain?”
Menoma’s posture tensed on the bench that served him for support. “You know nothing of the Rules of the Great Dark! Or the proper role of Challenge. My people discovered your system. We deserve to take you into our home territory! You Humans will benefit and we HikHikSot will ease your Earth’s over population.”
“You mean you will require us to provide you with an annual meat protein tribute of dead humans!” Jack said, counting the seconds of the dual Come-Back link.
“We prefer live prey,” Menoma said throatily, his pink tongue passing swiftly over pale brown lips. Behind him a white-tufted tail whipped from side to side. “But we also mentor subject peoples. Your Geneva leaders have been given the design for our grav-pull drive. No longer will your fellows have to waste days in traveling about your star system.”
Earth Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series 1) Page 27