“Attack made!” Elaine called hurriedly. “Ignacio is sending AV imagery of their target by way of the neutrino comlink.”
“Denise, put it up on the front screen,” Jack said, his heart beating fast. The time when the fleet would move to battle was fast approaching.
The AV broadcast disappeared. Ignacio’s image of the solo Gyklang ship appeared.
The Alien ship resembled a giant turnip, with its roundish globe sporting a pointy ‘root end’. But it was no vegetable. The root end was actually the nose of a neutral particle beamer, while at its opposite end sprouted four hydrogen-flouride laser projectors, each aimed to cover a different quadrant. They were fixed in position. Jack knew from prior battles in Sol system that the weapons placement gave the Gyklang ship a lot of offensive bite. Fortunately, the root end beamer was melted while the four laser pods were blackened and out of action. Four black slashes across the upper end of the turnip ship were leaking white air and water. Its movement was wobbly but controlled. He had no doubt the attack by Ignacio and Vigdis had caused it to send a neutrino Help! signal. He tapped his armrest’s comlink that connected him to every fleet ship.
“Fellow captains, take a look at our sucker bait,” he said, making sure the front screen vidimage went along with his comments. “Hideyoshi, Gareth, everyone, let’s head for a vector close to NooHik and on the side facing its moon. Let’s arrive in a triangle formation with our base facing the planet. Our apex ship will keep watch outward, just in case some Gyklang ship is at a higher orbital than our arrival vector.” Jack tapped on his Tech panel. “I’m sending you all the ship formation I want us to adopt. Our front line will be six ships deep, followed by five, four, three, two and one ships. Our Higgs Disruptor ships are that front line. Bismarck, Zhukov, Dragon, Ferocious, MacArthur and the Uhuru are the lead ships.” He looked down at the holo of Maureen at her Battle Module station, then back to the front. “Let’s try to salvage grav-pull drives from whatever ships we find above NooHik. So save your antimatter beams for defense against Hunter-Killer torps, mobile mines, laser platforms and Fire-and-Forget missiles launched by any enemy. Comments?”
“My shogun,” Akemi said from the Orca. “How do we handle the native fusion ships? If any are orbiting above their home world?”
“We watch them closely in case they make a suicide run against us.” He hoped the ChikHo natives would not attack, but that was up to the leader of each spaceship. “If a ChikHo ship comes at us, slice off their fusion drive module with your particle beam. Other questions? Comments?”
“I do,” called Minna of the blond braids. “When do we use our new Magpulse bombs? There’s only one per ship.”
Jack knew that. While they had the specs for how to build more, that would have to wait for their return to Mathilde. “Captain Minna, everyone, save your Magpulse bomb. Use your beam weapons and torps. We’ve fought these Gyklang before. We know how to handle them and their tactics. But the next system is run by Hunter aliens with the species name Boolean. They are new to us. Let’s save our Magpulse bombs for our invasion of the 55 Cancri system.”
Many captains nodded their understanding. As did Hideyoshi. Who waved at him. “Fleet Captain Jack, may the Bismarck have central line position? We are the only ship with both a Higgs emitter and two neutral particle beamers. If your ship Uhuru takes position beside us, our Higgs beam can cover anything coming your way.”
Jack liked the admiral’s suggestion. But his Belfast grandma would not. “Admiral of the Mars fleet, thank you. Yes, the Uhuru will come along your port side once we exit Alcubierre. But I’m sure our Combat Commander Maureen will do a fine job with our pair of antimatter and particle beamers. It was her idea for our new ship design to include the Battle Module as a mobile turret able to aim in nearly any direction.”
Maureen’s holo image nodded emphatically. He ignored her Belter finger gesture for their Mars ally. Elaine chuckled softly. As did Denise, Nikola, Cassie and Blodwen. They all were seated where they could see his holo of their battle queen.
The neutral expression of Hideyoshi made him wonder if the former Unity admiral had learned Belter finger-talk during his handling of POWs from the First Belter Rebellion. “Your ship’s Battle Module is indeed highly mobile and outstandingly accurate in its targeting,” the man said. He looked to one side of his Command Bridge. “My Weaponry Chief Lieutenant Lopez shares my view. When does the fleet go Alcubierre?”
Jack fixed on Elaine. “What does your Sensor panel show?”
She looked away from the Maureen holo to her own Pilot station panels. “Graviton emissions from the Gyklang ships near the ChikHo home world show ten are heading out on grav-pull for the outer cometary disk. As are the five ships above planet four, or ScreeHik. That leaves just five above NooHik against our fleet.”
Jack liked odds of four to one in his favor. “Admiral, everyone, we FTL jump in-system once the outgoing Gyklang ships reach the inner cometary disk at 15 AU. That will give us nearly two hours to kill the home world ships and make our AV appeal to the Flock Leaders of the ChikHo.” He looked right, past Maureen’s empty station, to his pilot. “Elaine, give us and the fleet a laser comlink alert once the Gyklang ships reach that line.”
“Will do,” she said. Though she no doubt worried about Ignacio’s position as sucker bait for the outgoing Gyklang ships, she knew as well as Jack did that his Basque brother and their Icelandic battle maiden could FTL jump in-system if too many Gyklang ships arrived at the site of the wounded turnip ship.
“Good.” He faced his fellow captains. “Fleet, load your launcher tubes with Fire-and-Forget missiles. Keep your thermonuke torps at the ready. And save your geo-penetrators for use against any base on the moon. Uh, Denise, do we know the ChikHo name for their moon?”
“Yes,” she said, her tone assured. “Anonymous has been scanning the incoming AV broadcasts. He found one that showed a fusion ship heading for the moon. Which the ChikHo call Sotop. Elaine’s Sensor panel shows a neutrino source on that moon. So there is a base there, but it could be either a ChikHo base or a Gyklang base.”
Well, they would arrive far from the moon base. It should not be a threat unless it sent a grav-pull ship their way. Which did not match Elaine’s Sensor data. “Show us that image. The one of the ChikHo ship headed for their moon Sotop.”
“Going up front,” Denise said.
A new split-screen image appeared.
Against the blackness of space Jack saw a long tube of silvery color. It had a small globe at one end while its stern showed the yellow-orange flames of a fusion pulse drive. Just above the flames were a series of tubes that spiraled up from the base. Clearly they were the magfield generators for the fusion drive. At the ship’s slim midbody were two small domes, each with a tube projecting. They looked like laser projectors, though whether they were HF or carbon dioxide or some other gas laser variant he could not tell. Interesting that the local people had armed their fusion ships despite their domination by the Gyklang.
Jack looked up at the images of his allies. “People, it will be a few hours before we head in-system. Give your crew a meal break and necessities break. Once we are in-system, our activities will be anything but routine!”
He heard the acknowledgments from the twenty other ships. That was reassuring. But his gut was churning, his sweat had drenched his jumpsuit and he was thirsty. For more than water. That corral scene of captive ostriches had hit him hard. Unsnapping his seat restraint locks, he stood up, turned and headed for the hatch to the Spine hallway.
“You going to empty that bottle of scotch?” Max asked as Jack came to the back row of function seats.
He grinned. His battle mate knew him too well. Better even than Nikola, who, though, was gaining in her ability to read his moods. “Nope. Hard stuff is for later. I’m aiming to pull out a bottle of Europa Light Ale from the cold locker in the Refectory. Want one?”
“Of course.” Max unlocked his own straps and stood up. “And I need a break from t
hat grav-pull drive panel. Alien tech, though logical in its operational parameters, is still weird. Too many queries of ‘do you really want to do this’ type!”
Jack chose not to remind his Polish buddy that he had been the one to write the operational software for the grav-pull drive. Right after they had stolen it from the Rizen ship hulk that was orbiting above Charon. Max had done wonders with deciphering that Alien tech. Just as he and Archibald had later done with figuring out the Alcubierre drive pedestal they’d salvaged from a Hackmot ship in Sol system. If his buddy could not figure out an Alien tech device, well, then, it would take five Nobel Prize winners in physics to do any better!
“So tell me, Max, how do you cope with a woman like Blodwen who is as smart as you?”
The man choked, then slapped Jack’s back. “The same way you cope with Nikola! The woman is always right. Right?”
Their mutual laughter echoed down the hallway.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The fleet arrived at 10,000 kilometers above the night surface of the world NooHik. Quickly they moved into the triangle formation ordered by Jack. At the same moment the true-light imagery of the world below filled the front screen, with the small icon heads of his fellow captains running in a line across the top. Five silvery dots sparkled to one side of the world, where the light of Daystar shown past that horizon. Jack pulled his Tech panel over from its armrest position to above his lap. A few taps served to activate its Tactical Display image, which matched the Sensor feed from Elaine that now went up to one side of the true-light image.
“Five Gyklang ships coming over the western horizon of NooHik!” she called sharply. “One space station orbits below us at five hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface. But . . . damn! There’s thousands of infrared signals out there! Mine field!”
At the same moment that Elaine spoke, Jack saw five yellow beams shoot out from their fellow front-line ships. The Higgs Disruptor beams were set for a five kilometers footprint with an effective range out to 9,000 klicks. They looked like old searchlight tower beams sweeping through the darkness of space.
The red dots that showed on Elaine’s Sensor map become white sparkles as the atomic structure of the stealthed mines lost its integrity and protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and fermions all shot away from each other. Briefly he recalled an old fiction story that said someday humans would possess ‘disintegration rays’. Well, the Higgs Disruptor beams did not dissolve matter. They just negated the ability of atomic and subatomic particles to adhere into normal matter. Which looked like disintegration to him.
Jack looked to the holo of Maureen. “What is your Threat Assessment of the space ahead?”
She looked up from her Fire Control panel. “I see Hunter-Killer torps on random-walk vectors. I see laser platforms, stealthed spysats, EMF sensors and mobile mine fields. Based on the UV, infrared and far infrared emissions put out by even the quietest stealth device.”
A layered defense of the planet it was. Jack wished his fleet possessed the Identify Friend or Foe codes that would make these devices ignore him. And ignore the gravitomagnetic signatures put out by the normal gravity maintained by their grav-pull drives. Which emissions were now being received by the five Gyklang ships just coming over the western horizon. Those ships were beyond their weapons range at the moment. But soon, they would attack his fleet. Or blip jump away to join with the other Gyklang ships now heading out-system.
“Captains Minna and Akemi, make an Alcubierre jump to the far side of those enemy ships! Ferocious, go with them to sweep the vector ahead of them with your Higgs beam!”
“Departing,” replied their Finn captain.
“Incoming torps!” cried Elaine.
“Lasers to the defense!” Jack said. “The moment these three random walk torps are dead, we all jump to within weapons range of those five ships!”
Green streaks shot out from his front-line ships.
The three thermonuke torps died while still far distant.
Distantly there now appeared the three ships he’d sent ahead. They had arrived on the far side of the Gyklang ships.
“Blip jumping all ships!” called Max.
The front screen imagery shimmered as the grav-pull drive’s gravitational lensing distorted incoming light.
The Uhuru and seventeen other ships jumped like bumblebees swarming to a common nest. While they had a common vector, the brief imagery of each ship flickered into and out of view as the grav-pull drives pulled them toward a gravity nexus that always preceded them.
In less than a minute they all exited grav-pull.
Ahead lay the five Gyklang turnip ships. The root tip neutral particle beam emitters were all aimed their way, as if they had anticipated Jack’s maneuver.
“Sideways!” yelled Jack over the inter-ship neutrino comlink. “Move sideways!”
Every fleet ship blip jumped sideways, up, down, any vector but the straight-line true-light image now being received by the enemy ships.
Five blue particle beams shot out from the Gyklang turnip balls. Simultaneously green laser beams speared out from the panda-grizzly ships toward the Ferocious, Wolverine and Orca. They missed.
“We’re hit!” yelled Aashman from the Mongoose.
“Damn! Us too,” grunted Gareth from the Dragon.
Both ship images showed black smoke in their cabins.
“Firing!” growled Maureen. “Fuck secrecy! I’m using our antimatter beam!”
Other ships of the fleet did the same. As did the three early arriving ships.
Blue whiptails sliced through the five turnip ball ships, cutting the laser-studded upper half apart from the particle beam lower half.
Black threads of antineutron antimatter touched the fragments of three ships, turning them into yellow-white blossoms of total matter-to-energy conversion. Two ships that had been cut in half lost air and water in a white fountain that stopped quickly when automatic hatches closed off corridors now open to vacuum. The upper ship halves showed the yellow of chemical thrusters as they tried to regain maneuvering control.
Two dozen green laser beams struck the laser mounts on the top of each ship half, melting them. The half globe fragments shook under the fleet lasers. The pincer attack Jack had planned now overwhelmed the enemy ships.
“Incoming AV signal!” yelled Elaine, sounding surprised.
Before them appeared the 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. The Alien’s thick arms had hands with four claw-fingers. Behind the Gyklang lay four other panda-grizzlies, cut by shrapnel from some kind of onboard explosion. Like humans they bled red. 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 saw the Alien was gasping between words. Clearly its air was thinning rapidly. And while it bled from a belly wound, it did not appear in danger of dying soon. Meanwhile the second surviving Gyklang ship fragment blew up under the impact of dozens of particle beams and lasers.
“Cease-fire all fleet ships!” He unlocked his restraint straps, grabbed Old Roy from where it lay next to his seat, and stood up with the Viking long sword pointed at the Alien. “You and your crew are my meat!” Jack said, recalling his encounter with the Gyklang at comet 2004 VN112. “We humans claim the ChikHo system as part of our Hunt territory! Your cubs and mate are my meat too.”
“Nooo!” screamed the panda-grizzly, its tone rising into frequencies beyond what Jack could hear. “My cubs and mate live on the island of Dutop. You allowed the escape of our colony ship in your Sol system. Why not allow our cubs and mates to leave this system?”
“All Gyklang still living on your ships are my meat. My dead meat. We eat you as we ate the crew of your ship Sharp Roar!” Jack paused, then gestured to Denise to activate their neutrino comlink. Looking
down to his Tech panel, he tapped the controls for his ship’s dual railguns. Then he looked up and showed his teeth. “Death is coming for you! As for your colony down-planet, we will decide its fate after we speak with the Flock Leaders of the ChikHo. Perhaps we will spare them. Perhaps not.”
“We still fight you!” the Gyklang roared.
“You fought us. You failed. We claim meat ownership of you and your ships,” Matt said bluntly, knowing his neutrino-broadcast words were likely being heard by other Gyklang ships. “As for your air, our ball bearings will ventilate every habitable part of your ship.”
The yellow-orange light of the Gyklang AV signal dimmed. The grizzly slumped back onto a padded bench. “You spared ships of the Yiplak, Nasen and other Hunters of the Great Dark. Why not this ship?”
Maureen looked at him from the holo, her eyebrows lifted. Clearly she wanted to vaporize this Hunter. At the top of the front screen the other ship captains all listened to the Gyklang AV signal and Jack’s replies. He again showed his teeth to the grizzly.
“It was convenient to spare them,” he said. “No longer. 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. Any Gyklang who wish to live should leave this system now!”
The Gyklang signal faded away. But just before it did Jack saw the grizzly lift one paw-hand and lay its four claws atop a control panel.
On screen that ship fragment brightened into a yellow-orange globe as its fusion reactor lost its magfield containment. Likely due to the kill switch touched by the Gyklang leader.
“Jack,” called Elaine. “The graviton tracks of the Gyklang ships heading out-system have reversed course. Those 15 ships are heading back to NooHik. The six ships on comet disk patrol are moving toward the wounded ship.”
Well, that was that. Of the 27 Gyklang grav-pull ships operative in the system, 21 were still operational. Time to see what the locals thought of the battle above their world. “Denise, put out an AV broadcast of me and our fleet ships.” He waited a moment and faced the motion-eye above the screen. “Flock Leaders of the ChikHo, my name is Jack Munroe. My job is Father Leader of my fellow humans. Our flock of fighting ships is 23 strong! We are here to kill your Gyklang masters and to see if you and your people wish to join our Freedom Alliance!”
Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) Page 24