She gave him a thoughtful frown. “Yes, can do. Elaine, here are the revised X, Y and Z coordinates per the galactic coordinate system we’ve been following,” she said, tapping on her Astro panel.
“Got them!” his sister said as she worked on her NavTrack panel. “Denise, please transmit these new numbers to every fleet ship by way of our laser time-lock!”
“Transmitting,” said Denise as she leaned over her Comlink panel, her fingers lightly touching its surface.
Jack looked back at Max. “Drive Engineer, when we arrive please have your fusion drive at Pinch Mode, so we can use thrust-gee instead of grav-pull to change our vectors. I’m hoping we can arrive secretly, like we did here.”
Max nodded slowly, his gaze uplifted to monitor the status of the Main Drive control module that had lowered from the cabin’s ceiling. “Will do. In two days time. Until then, we eat, drink and tell lies about our Krisot battles, eh?”
Jack grinned. He faced back to the front screen and the images of the captains. “My fleet allies, we go to Alcubierre drive shell FTL within two minutes. Feed our laser time-lock signal to your own Alcubierre drive module so we will exit our space-time shell as a spread out cluster, rather than as beads on a string.”
“As you command!” said Minna sharply, her commerce raider manner in full display as she and everyone else thought about the prospect of violence upon arrival at Omicron2 Eridani.
The other ship captains concurred with Jack’s order, then the front screen returned to its scope image of soot-black space transected by the pale white belt of the Milky Way as it stretched from the left to the right side of the screen. Above and below the belt were yellow, red, white and orange stars. Around him came the breathing of Elaine, Denise, Maureen, Nikola and Max. His crew. His family. His battle comrades. Feeling the need for reassurance, he mentally visualized the upgraded Uhuru, as seen from space.
At the nose, just in front of the Pilot Cabin, was the torp ejector tube. Atop the ship’s spine rose the dual-barrel railgun launchers, while on the right and left sides of their double-triangle hull were the hydrogen-fluorine laser pods with their adaptive optics focusing. At the rear was the deadly Battle Module, the domain of Maureen and her whiptail emitters of antimatter and neutral particle beams. The ship’s underbelly housed the funnel of the fusion Main Drive. But the thing that pleased him most was their hull painting. The Uhuru resembled a leaping Jaguar. Snarling white teeth framed the Pilot Cabin, dark Egyptian-style eyes loomed above the cabin, long claws curled about the ship’s midbody lasers, and a tufted tail ran into the Battle Module. Gold and black jaguar spots covered the rest of the hull.
Jack felt his inner self become like the jungle jaguar. A stealthy, deadly killer who announced its presence only when the prey felt the jaguar’s teeth on its neck!
♦ ♦ ♦
“Exiting Alcubierre drive shell!” grunted Max loudly over his EVA suit’s comlink, a supplement to the ship’s automated gong sound that always announced major ship status changes.
Black space filled the front screen. An orange-red star glowed distantly while the small crescents of planets lay in the middle distance. The silvery hulls of his fleet shone dimly, as they hung hundreds of kilometers away from him and from each other. Ship captain images popped into being at the top of the screen as their laser tight-beam sped from ship to ship.
Green laser streaks and blue particle beams passed through that screen image, coming from below, from the ecliptic plane of Omicron2 Eridani.
“Incoming!” cried Maureen from her Battle Module, her holo appearing above Jack’s Tech panel. “Firing back! Auto-Track says there are five sources of laser and particle beam fire! At six thousand kilometers distance. Going to Evade and Escape maneuvering.”
The Uhuru shuddered as Max released the fusion drive flare to move their ship off of the spot sensed by the enemy weapons platforms.
“The neutral particle beam platform is dead!” yelled Maureen, her gray eyes flashing within her helmet. “Three ships of the fleet took it out. The other six are doing counterfire on the laser platforms! But they are evading. Crap!”
A second barrage of green-only laser beams streaked across the screen.
On the screen two fleet hulls brightened, then yellow sparks blossomed as something exploded on them.
“Ignacio’s Badger is hit!” cried Elaine as she worked her Sensors panel.
“The Mongoose is hit too!” yelled Nikola.
The front screen imagery enlarged on the two damaged ship hulls. Jack’s mouth went dry as he saw jagged hull breaches gushing out white air. The fusion drive modules of both ships showed black holes. Thank the Elder Gods for the EVA suits . . .
“Launching thermonuke torp at those platforms!” yelled Maureen, her expression deadly serious as she caught Jack’s eyes. “Permission to detonate and EMP pulse those bastards!”
“Granted,” said Jack, flexing his fingers inside his suit gloves. “Elaine, put a max light filter on our scope. And darken the cabin’s portholes.”
“Done!” his sister murmured.
Trusting to Maureen’s laser and neutral particle beam counterfire, he watched as a third barrage of green laser streaks passed through the dispersed fleet. No hull brightened.
“Detonation!”
From a thousand kilometers below the nearest fleet ship came the yellow-white glow of the thermonuke’s infrared heat shell. Then came the gamma and neutron radiation front, its shell showing purple and green sparkles as it struck tiny stellar dust particles. Next came the yellow-white of the total matter-to-energy conversion globe, flaring hot as the interior temperature of Sol. It stretched out to a diameter of ten kilometers. This 50 megaton blast was a partially shaped detonation, like an X-ray pumped laser. The radiation flare was aimed mostly downward at the four laser platforms that had escaped their counterfire.
“Nikola!” Jack called over their shared suit comlinks. “Give me an infrared image of those platforms.”
The front screen went split-image, with the two damaged fleet ships to the left, the distant orange-red star to the right and the enemy platforms showing in the middle. Four tiny heat glows showed, their radiative image older than the thermonuke rad front.
The four glows brightened, then went pin-point white as they exploded and their heat emissions went beyond what the infrared sensors could register.
“Spysat emissions!” yelled Maureen. “Three of them closer to the ecliptic plane. Range is nine thousand klicks. Firing our neutral particle beam! We’re joined by other fleet ships!”
Blue beams shot down from the Uhuru and six other fleet ships. In the middle of the front screen three infrared glows had replaced the dead laser platforms. The maser spysats were too distant to be damaged by their thermonuke rad front. But neutral particle beams were versatile weapons, able to traverse space even as the target tried to evade. And at nine thousand klicks the beam had widened to a three kilometer-wide footprint. Weaker but still deadly.
The three infrared images brightened to a yellow glow, then vanished.
“All enemy platforms dead!” growled Maureen as she looked at Jack from the holo above his Tech panel. “How the fuck did we get that unlucky!”
Jack had had the same thought during the short but vicious battle. There was not enough metal in any star system to place a weapons platform around the outer perimeter of a system’s ecliptic plane. Even at a million kilometers distance between each platform the total mass of such devices would equal the mass of a small planet. But reality was reality.
“Denise! What’s the status on the Badger and the Mongoose? Anyone hurt? Killed?”
“Ohhh,” hissed Elaine from her Pilot station. But her fear for her lover did not stop her from pulling up a Sensor display that showed the entire system of Omicron2 Eridani. Dozens of gravitomagnetic emissions showed on it.
The images of Ignacio and Aashman had disappeared from the top of the front screen after the second laser barrage. Jack hoped that only
meant damaged power systems. Or crew people too busy to respond to a Come-Back laser comlink from Denise. Two new images now flickered to life on the front screen.
“Badger reporting in,” said Ignacio, his helmeted face filled with anger and worry. “My three cousins are alive, though cousin Milpeades has a ship hull fragment embedded in his leg. His suit is being patched. But he needs a medoc badly. Uh, our Drive module is badly damaged. Not sure we can make fusion thrust.”
Black smoke was swirling through the Pilot Cabin of the Badger. Several power cables hung from the ceiling above Ignacio, their length blackened from overheating. But the man still wore his boina inside his clear helmet. And he gave Jack a thumbs-up sign.
The helmeted image of Aashman blinked at them from the front screen. The man’s expression was one of distraction. “Mongoose reporting. All five crew are alive and well.” The brown-skinned man paused, licked his lips, then focused on Jack. “Fleet Captain, one laser strike hit our Lander hold and blew the fuel tanks on the Lander. We have a mid-ships hole bigger than we can patch. Our fusion drive module is half gone, but the Compact Fusion Reactor cylinder is intact. Went to Safe Shutdown automatically. However, our control conduits are gone. We have no fusion pulse thrust until we can build new cables or emplace a wireless control system. And replace the exhaust funnel and magfield coils. Also, our Garden is vac-killed and we lost most ship atmosphere. Our EVA suit tanks are good for ten hours.”
Decision time. “Admiral Hideyoshi, your ship is closest to the Badger. Please take your Lander and remove Ignacio and his cousins. Your cruiser’s Med Station medoc can handle Milpeades’ injury. Ignacio, I will send our Lander to pick you up from the Bismarck. I want you here, with me!” Jack glanced over at Akemi, the black-haired daughter of a samurai family who was always first in loyalty to his anti-Alien crusade. “Captain Akemi, please use your Lander to rescue Captain Aashman and his crewmen from their ship. Since your ship has no room for other people, please bring the Mongoose people to the Bismarck. And since the Uhuru is bigger than the other Belter ships, we will take on Ignacio and other folks as needed. Our eco-systems are oversized for our current crew levels.”
“Jack,” called Max over the suit comlink. “Can . . . can our Lander also pick up Blodwen and Archibald from Captain Gareth’s ship? That would free up room on the Dragon for Aashman’s crew people. And I could use Archibald’s help in a scheme I have in mind.”
His Polish friend’s use of his first name without title alerted Jack to the fact that more people than Elaine had a personal interest in the survivors of this deadly battle. He fixed on Hideyoshi’s image.
“Admiral, can you handle Ignacio’s three cousins? And perhaps two or three folks from the Mongoose? Captain Aashman will join me here on the Uhuru. We have five empty roomsuites. Those are enough for Ignacio, Aashman, Blodwen and Archibald.”
“Of course!” said Hideyoshi from his Command Bridge. The man’s black eyes swept over Jack and his Pilot Cabin crewfolks. “Send your Lander to the Bismarck. I’m sure Captains Akemi and Gareth will deliver these people to my ship for transfer to your Uhuru.” The man paused, his thin black eyebrows creasing. “What do we do with the Badger and the Mongoose? Put Locator beacons on them?”
“Yes! There are working grav-pull drives on them which we cannot abandon. And maybe we can repair them with help from the local Aliens.” Jack glanced at the split-screen image that showed at least thirty grav-pull ships moving around in the inner portion of Omicron2 Eridani system. “The spysat maser signal and the thermonuke blast emissions will reach the innermost planet within eleven hours.” He scanned the images of his eight fellow ship captains. “We need to talk. We are down to seven operational ships. But each ship of ours has antimatter beamers, a weapon unknown to any of the Hunters of the Great Dark. I think we can take this system from whatever species controls it. So in three hours we meet here on the Uhuru to put together a new Battle Plan!”
Everyone agreed. And everyone turned to helping the recovery of crew folks from the two dead fleet ships. Jack looked to Elaine.
“Sister, your Ignacio will be here soon. Feel free to share your roomsuite with him.” Before she could react he looked back to Max. “Drive Engineer, Archibald will be joining us too. I hope you have some new weapons ideas! We are outnumbered four to one.” He paused, then smiled. “Perhaps the time you spent with Blodwen on the Sky Above station will give you some insight into scheming.”
Max blushed. Something Jack had never seen the man do. Even when Monique was alive. But the week they’d spent in the Nuuthot system, with crew leave on the Sky Above space station, had allowed Max the chance to get to know Blodwen. And for Elaine to have private time with his Basque buddy Ignacio. Perhaps the crew people from the other ships had found . . . emotional connections with other crew folks. He hoped so. His star-faring crusade was about more than just death and destruction of social carnivore Aliens. Humans did best when they were connected with other humans. And they were strongest when fighting for those they cared about.
The upcoming battles in Omicron2 Eridani were going to need every ounce of human drive, persistence, sneakiness and caring for them to prevail.
Behind him Nikola leaned close. “You did good, my love.”
He hoped so.
CHAPTER TEN
Three hours later fifteen people gathered in the Food Refectory of the Uhuru. Freed from their EVA suits, they were there for drinking, cigar smoking, curse sharing in Gaelic, Welsh and Polish, family tales telling and making visits to the room’s automated Cook Unit. They returned with steaks, baked potatoes, veggies, green grapes and bottles of hot sauce. Sitting in his sling-chair at a table now expanded to handle everyone, Jack scanned his fellow captains as they ate, reduced the level of his Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch bottle and cut pieces out of a cheese cake that had streaks of red raspberry through it. High energy food it all was. It was also the best meal they had had since leaving Epsilon Eridani. He looked to Denise, who sat to his left.
“We’re all here. Activate the back wall AV screen, please.”
Denise pulled at one red braid, looked up and spoke to the sound-activated ceiling speaker. “Autonomous, transfer reflector telescope imagery to Food Refectory wall screen. Also, add Elaine’s system Sensor feed to the side screen. Locate fleet ships on the side screen as red spots. Show other grav-pull ships as yellow spots. Fusion pulse drive ships are to be green. Process!”
“Processing,” said the dry, unemotional voice of the Uhuru’s primary computer.
Jack, the other eight ship captains, Maureen, Nikola, Blodwen, Archibald, Max and Elaine all looked to the Refectory’s rear wall. The flat screen filled with CCD imagery sucked in by Nikola’s giant 30 meter telescope.
The orange-red star Omicron2 Eridani, or Keid, glowed at the upper left of the screen. In the middle lay the faint half-moon shapes of the inner Earth-like planet, the first gas planet at 20 AU and the second gas planet at 30 AU. Between the inner world and the first gas planet a few tiny spots shone. They were the larger denizens of the system’s asteroid belt. It held a half dozen large asteroids that equaled Vesta and Ceres in size. The Kuiper Belt comets that lay between their fleet position at 40 AU and the outermost planet did not show, most of them being too small for true-light illumination.
“Jack,” said Elaine, “my sensors are showing 41 grav-pull ships spread across the inner system, with some ships located next to the two gas planets. Based on moving neutrino emissions, there are fifteen fusion pulse spaceships transiting from the gas planets to the inner planet. I assume those are local sapient ships.” She paused, then gestured at the side screen. “Notice the stationary neutrino source close to the Earth-like planet? Nikola’s scope says that is a small moon orbiting the planet. So the emission source is likely one or more fusion reactors on the moon’s surface. Could be an Alien base.”
He compared the overhead plan view map on the side screen with the true-light imagery of the actual star system. “Elain
e, I do not see any grav-pull signatures in the asteroid belt that lies at five AU. Is that grav-pull absence reliable data?”
“Of course!” His sister looked at him from across the table. Ignacio, sitting beside her, patted her hand. Her look softened, then turned formal as she realized how everyone was watching her, not the two screens.
Jack nodded, then looked to the right side of the table at Hideyoshi and Maureen. “Attack first? Hide first? Do something else?”
“Attack!” Maureen said, her gray eyes scanning around the table. “The enemy will know we are here once they pick up the spysat alert and our thermonuke blast rads. The sooner we attack, the better our chances for killing lots of ships.”
“Hide first to gather information on this system,” Hideyoshi said, placing his hands on the cold metal of the table. “We need intelligence before we act. In my opinion.”
“Why not do both?” asked Júlia Araujo, her Afro-Hispanic complexion shining under the ceiling lights. “Captain Jack, two of our ships could attack that concentration of grav-pull ships at the inner gas planet, while the other five ships blip jump into the asteroid belt. As we know from our own Belter history, the metal-rich asteroids are great shields from both passive and active sensors. Our neutrino emissions will appear natural if we do not move relative to nearby rock balls.”
“Good point,” Jack said, looking left at his Finnish captain. “Minna? Your thoughts?”
The blond-haired woman pushed her braids back over her ears, her expression thoughtful. “I do not like the presence of those laser and particle beam platforms out in the Kuiper Belt. If platforms are there, why not in the asteroid belt? And I’d bet those gas worlds have Hunter-Killer torps waiting in stealth mode for any unknown ship emissions.”
Júlia frowned. “But Minna, Jack, Hideyoshi, no space navy can cover every possible location in a star system. It’s just too big, and too empty,” said the woman who had started out as a maid to Governor Aranxis on Ceres Central, then attended the Unity Flight School on Deimos, after which she returned to the Asteroid Belt and became admired for her NavTrack computational abilities. “Why not blip jump straight to the inner world and issue a Surrender Or Die ultimatum to the Aliens in charge? They don’t know, for sure, that we have no other ships.”
Humans Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 2) Page 11