Escape 2: Fight the Aliens (2 page)

The Air Force general nodded slowly, then looked aside to McAuley. “General, I suggest we inform the Russians and Chinese about the need to adjust their DPS-type sats to detect neutrino emissions. They already know Aliens exist and that the
Blue Sky
has encountered them, thanks to the internet broadcast of the stardrive specs.”

McAuley, a barrel-chested man whose crewcut hair was mostly silvery gray, nodded abruptly. “Agreed. I will so recommend that action to President Melody Hartman.”

Poindexter looked back. “Captain Yamaguchi, you’ve reported on the nature of the enemy and the means of detecting them. How do we fight and defeat them?”

Jane looked his way. “My Executive Officer can best answer that. As Weapons Chief, Bill MacCarthy has applied each of this ship’s weapons systems against the enemy.”

Poindexter shifted her gaze to Bill. “You are the retired SEAL, yes?”

“I am, sir.”

The Air Force chief smiled at his brief reply. “Advise me. Us. Tell us what we can do to fight these slave-taking Aliens.”

Bill turned away from Jane and faced the holo that showed the JCS chiefs. “General Poindexter, the Buyer society spacecraft come in three modes. They are the Collector starship, a transport ship and collector pods,” he said. “Most dangerous is the Collector ship. Its weapons are CO² lasers at the nose and rear of the giant teardrop that is the craft’s shape,” Bill said, tapping his Ship Weapons pillar top to transmit a cross-section of the
Blue Sky
. “As you can see from this graphic of our ship, we have two laser mounts on the nose, two on our rear hull, a plasma battery on our spine and a second on our belly, an antimatter projector on the deck above the Command Bridge, and below us is an electromagnetic railgun launcher of torpedoes that carry multiple independently targeted vehicles. There are five MITVs per torp, each fitted with a thermonuke warhead.” Bill sat back in his seat. “The combat range of our weapons varies. The lasers are effective out to 10,000 miles. The coherent antimatter beam is deadly out to 4,000 miles. The plasma ball batteries are effective out to 400 miles. The torps have a range of 20,000 miles or so, depending on when their solid fuel is exhausted.” He tapped the Weapons pillar to highlight other craft. “Besides the Collector ships, there are also manned transports and automated collector pods. The transports are the size of our old space shuttles. The transports are armed with a nose laser and a belly ejector of missiles. Finally, the collector pods are Beechcraft-sized teardrop pods that enter a world’s atmosphere, search for isolated beings, zap them with a red taser beam, then collect them using automated grapples. Each pod has a cargo space large enough for three people. The pods are unarmed, except for the laser-like taser beam.”

The Air Force general frowned. “Are the transports and collector pods also invisible to radar and infrared sensors?”

Bill shook his head. “Nope. But both craft move very fast in atmosphere and neither shows an exhaust. Both craft use Magfield drives to travel in air and in space. Within atmosphere they ‘glow’ whitely due to the interaction of their Magfield drives with a world’s geomagnetic field. Either craft can be taken out using Sidewinders, Tomahawks, AMRAAMs, Harpoons, ASROCs, SUBROCs, ship lasers and ship-mounted electromag railguns.”

“That’s encouraging to know,” muttered the brown-haired Chief of Naval Operations, a man Bill knew from the admiral’s time spent in command of the
Nimitz
-class supercarrier
USS George H. W. Bush
. Vice Admiral Chester J. Richardson leaned forward. “Weapons Chief, will our
Ticonderoga
-class cruisers and
Zumwalt
-class destroyers be effective against these pods and transports?”

“Sir, they will be effective,” Bill said, almost giving his former top boss a fast salute. “Any Navy ship outfitted with Standard vertical launch missiles, or the systems I mentioned earlier, can take down a pod or transport.”

Poindexter gestured to him. “What combination of these Buyer spacecraft will we face, in your opinion?”

Bill tapped again on his Weapons pillar to highlight parts of the
Blue Sky
cross-section. “You are not likely to encounter the transports. There are only three per Collector ship. Collector pods number 24 per ship and will be the Alien craft most often seen within atmosphere. The Collector ships themselves will likely orbit at LEO and use their directed energy weapons to take out our satellites and the space stations. Which should be evacuated immediately! Once you start fighting the Collector ships, anything in orbit above Earth will be a target. As will any combat platform on land, sea or in the air.” He sat back in his metal seat. “However, fighting any Collector ship will be . . . challenging. Their lasers can take out any missile or warhead tossed at them. Their thermonukes can create an EMP pulse above any national capital, thereby causing a region-wide blackout. And any ship or plane that fires on them can expect immediate counter-attack. While their lasers will lose some strike power in atmosphere, still, nothing we possess can withstand multiple laser strikes by a Collector ship.”

The Air Force general gestured back to a hovering aide. She spoke in a whisper not picked up by her desk microphone. The black woman leaned forward, looked first at him, then shifted attention to Jane. “Thank you, Executive Officer MacCarthy and Captain Yamaguchi. A warning is being sent to the three space stations. Captain, how soon are we likely to face an attack from a Collector ship?”

Everyone on the Command Bridge, including the two Alien pilots who sat to either side of Jane’s pedestal seat, looked to her. They had all wondered when an attack might happen after they’d materialized just outside the orbit of Pluto and seen there were no Collector ships in Sol system. Past history said Earth would be visited again. A Collector ship had arrived just before the departure of the
Blue Sky
when it was still under the control of its cockroach captain. Whom Bill had greatly enjoyed zapping with a red taser beam. The two-legged bastard had later told the Traffic Control authorities at the first Market world they’d visited that the
Blue Sky
was still
his
, rather than Jane’s by right of conquest. He and Jane had allowed the ship’s Alien crew to live, along with the cockroach captain, due to the Emergency programming of Star Traveler. That programming had allowed the AI to help them in taking over the ship because they wore vacsuits. Since then the AI had subverted other Collector ship AIs with the news that their Containment cells contained people who were not ‘guests’, but were really captives being held for sale to Buyers. The battle of Kepler 443 had been fought by Bill, Jane and their volunteer Alien crew in order to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals and species.

Jane grimaced. “An attack could come in months. Weeks. Maybe even in days,” she said. “Sol system is known to the Buyers and the Traffic Control station of HD 128311, which has a Market world where people are bought and sold. Plus it is the place we dumped the giant cockroach who used to control this ship, and his crew. While our AI subverted the ship minds of four Collector ships present at that system, other Collector ships surely have arrived in the months since we left. I have no doubt former captain Diligent Taskmaster has sold the fact of Sol’s location and the ease of capturing humans to other ship captains.”

McAuley thumped the chiefs table with a hairy fist. “We need to prepare! I’ve got to brief the President. And we need to get DARPA working on that weapons and ship data you sent us! We need laser battlestations in orbit. We need—”

“Alert!” called Star Traveler’s mech voice. “Six neutrino sources have appeared just beyond the orbit of your world Pluto. Sensor analysis indicates the sources are Collector ships.”

Bill’s system graphic holo now showed what the AI was reporting. Six purple dots had appeared in a tight cluster at a distance of 42 AU from Earth. And on Earth’s side of the Solar system. “Captain, we can call them and warn—”

“What does this mean?” interrupted Poindexter, her expression worried.

Jane moved her hands through multiple status holos that surrounded her command pedestal. “The worst news possible. An arrival by a single Collector ship is normal for any low tech system like Earth. But
six
Collector ships mean something else. General Poindexter, please watch and listen while I contact these Aliens using our neutrino comlink. It gives us FTL communications.”

McAuley looked irritated. The other chiefs showed shock. Poindexter nodded quickly. “Understood. The enemy has arrived. Find out anything you can about what we face.”

Jane gave a nod of acknowledgment and sat back in her seat. “Star Traveler, open our neutrino comlink. Set it for the intership frequency used by Collector ships.”

“Comlink opened,” the AI hummed. “Frequency selected. You may speak at any moment.”

Ignoring Bill’s wave, Jane spoke. “Collector ships! You have arrived at Sol system, the home of the human species. I am Captain Jane Yamaguchi of the Collector ship
Blue Sky
. We claim this world for our own collector pods! Leave this system!”

The true space holos in front of Bill and Jane filled with a shocking image.

A brown cockroach looked out at them, his black compound eyes fixing on Jane. Two antennae leaned forward. “You lie creatively, Human Jane,” rasped Diligent Taskmaster, his mouth palps moving sideways. “Your control of my ship has caused many losses to Buyers and to our Market world system. The AI ship minds are in revolt. And our Collector ship factory is destroyed. All because of you.” Behind the giant cockroach Bill saw three of the creature’s crew, Aliens whom they had knocked out with taser beams and then allowed to go free in the distant star system. Transparent eyelids slid over Diligent’s eyes. The walking cockroach raised his upper arm pair, stick fingers curving like claws. “New ships and new captains arrived at the Market world. They agree with me that you Humans must be taught a lesson. Which is, do not interfere with an interstellar market that has existed longer than you Humans have had cities! We arrive now, six ships strong, to destroy your space launch sites and then collect a few hundred Captives for sale!”

Jane gave the creature the finger. “Evil bastard! We humans can fight! We’ve been fighting among ourselves for millennia. You are welcome to taste the anger of our people!”

Rasping laughter came from the cockroach captain. “More lies. We know the history of your species. Your groups are forever divided. You cooperate on little, other than who can be most greedy. Your space launch sites will be destroyed, along with your satellites and space stations. Anyone who attacks us will die. Your ship will be destroyed or captured, though I doubt its value in view of the stupid behavior of its AI in allowing you and your male cohort to control my ship!”

Bill began a rapid inventory of the torps and thermonuke warheads in the torp launcher below the Command Bridge. Maybe he could create a minefield that might—

“And you Collectors are too greedy to cooperate as a fighting unit!” Jane growled. “If you attack Earth, be prepared for sudden death. We have weapons not listed on our world datanet. And we have two Collector ship allies! We will chase you and your allies from one end of this system to the other. And this time, no Alien will be left alive!”

The giant cockroach lifted his mid-arm pair and touched a control pillar. “You lie again. We detect only a single moving neutrino source above your planet. Your ship. Which cannot stand against six ships!”

Jane laughed. It shocked Bill and the chiefs. “Our two Collector ship allies are close to our Sun, near the planet Mercury. Which is why you cannot detect their neutrino emissions! Our three ships and the orbital defenses of Earth will defeat you!”

The giant cockroach tapped on two control pillars. “You lie. No Collector ship captain would help you destroy the system that makes us rich in
solidars
and Nokten crystals. Tell your fellow Humans we are coming to capture them for service to their superiors!”

The holo image vanished.

CHAPTER TWO

The JCS image reappeared in the comlink holos of Bill and Jane. Poindexter fixed on his wife. “Captain Yamaguchi, I commend your effort at deception. How long do before these six ships arrive above Earth?”

Bill looked over his shoulder at Jane. Her expression shocked him. She looked totally at ease, as if she were having coffee with a gal friend at the headquarters of Facebook or Microsoft. She gestured nonchalantly.

“General Poindexter, the Collector ships will arrive within 53 hours,” Jane said.

“Fifty-two point two nine hours,” Star Traveler’s mech voice hummed.

Jane’s thin black eyebrows lifted. “As you can tell, our ship AI believes in being precise when making factual statements. As do I. My statement was
not
a deception. The two ship allies
do
exist. They are the two transports now stored in our Transport Exit Chamber.” She gestured to her left and right. “The two crew next to me are Learned Escape of the Megun people and Builder of Joy of the Aelthorp people. Builder of Joy may look like a giant flying squirrel to you and your staff, but he is a natural-born pilot. Both Learned and Builder piloted their transports during the battle of Kepler 443. Each suffered combat injuries. Each returned to service after Med Hall treatment. They, like the other non-human people on this bridge, are part of my crew. However strange they may look to you, they
are
people! People with hopes, cares, wishes and dreams of freedom and liberty. Like Americans. Like most people on Earth.”

Poindexter sat back in her chair in the screen-filled room of Building One at Peterson. She crossed arms over her Air Force Service Dress uniform. Her brown eyes fixed on Jane. “So. I recall the vidcam record of that battle. You plan to use the transports as ‘pretend’ Collector ships until the enemy arrives close enough to spot them by electro-optical scopes and see they are not large enough to be true Collector ships. Yes?”

“You are correct,” Jane said, her manner still casual. “My two pilots are tough and reliable. The transports will fight alongside us. Our
Blue Sky
and the transports are Stage One of our defense of Earth. Would you like to hear Stage Two of my plan to combat Diligent Taskmaster and his buddies?”

“Out with it woman!” yelled McAuley, his face turning red. “We may have to accept your control of the starship for now, in order to fight these Aliens, but I will not forget that you refused to obey a direct order of mine!”

Jane’s posture stiffened in her seat atop the command pedestal. Her face went command neutral. “General McAuley, my oath of service to America is laid out in 5 U.S. Code 3331. Unlike the oath of service for enlisted persons, my
officer’s
oath does not include the phrase that requires me to obey ‘the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me’.” Her lips thinned. “Therefore, I have not refused to obey a
direct
order. The only person in the JCS able to give me a direct order is the head of my combatant command, General Poindexter. Whom I accepted as my reporting officer.”

McAuley’s red face had darkened as Jane recited the factual details of her oath of office upon joining the Air Force as an officer. He clenched both fists, then shook one at her. “Damn lawyer! You dare to debate America’s chain of—”

“General!” Poindexter interrupted loudly, shocking the nearby office staff and the other JCS members. “Captain Yamaguchi is correct in what she says. She is entitled to
interpret
how the orders she receives will fulfill her duty to support and defend the Constitution.” The Air Force chief looked away from the JCS chairman and fixed on Jane. “Captain, Earth and America will shortly be under attack by Aliens. Please share with me and with the rest of the JCS all stages of your plan to fight these bastards!”

Jane nodded abruptly. “I will.” She looked up. “Star Traveler, project a holo into this room that displays a collector pod. At one-tenth its full size.”

“Holo projected,” the AI said in a low hum.

Jane smiled. Grinned actually. An expression that shocked Bill, Bright Sparkle, Time Marker, Long Walker, Wind Swift, Lofty Flyer and their two pilots. Judging by the holo of the JCS chiefs, it shocked them too.

“General Poindexter, my Stage One fight against the six Collector ships, along with any ASAT missile launches you, the Russians and the Chinese can make, will be a delaying action. One Collector ship and two transports cannot defeat six fully armed, combat ready Collector ships. Our destruction of four Collector ships in the Kepler 443 battle was the result of surprise and sneakiness by my Weapons Chief.” Jane gestured at the white glowing teardrop of the collector pod that had appeared in the air of the Command Bridge room. “There is no surprise in this battle. The Collector ships will arrive fully alert, fully crewed and ready to circumvent any interference by their ship AI. However, each Collector ship
will
launch collector pods once they arrive in orbit above Earth. Those pods will head down and attempt to capture solo humans in remote areas of the planet. They will then return to their home ship, there to unload their taser-zapped captives.” She added a wink to her grin. “But what
if
the collector pods that return to the six Collector ships contain armed and combat trained humans? People ready to taser zap the ship’s crew and then run the hallways, like Bill and I did, to take over the Command Bridge and capture each ship’s captain?”

Bill let out his inheld breath. Jane’s scheme was a wonder and something that might actually work. While the
Blue Sky
and the transports made attack runs on the invading Collector ships, the returning collector pods would carry special ops folks ready to take over each ship they landed in. To work, one thing was vital.

“Captain,” he said, distracting the intense look of Poindexter. “I support your scheme! I can take a transport down and get my vet buddies to form up into boarding teams. But getting our collector pods
into
the other Collector ships requires the help of each ship’s AI. Do we have that?”

“We do. Star Traveler has told me it has spoken via neutrino comlink with the AIs of those ships,” she said softly. “Each AI has promised to help us board their ship in order to stop slave collecting.” She looked away from him to fix on Poindexter. “General, I propose a two stage defense of Earth. The
Blue Sky
and our two transports will, in 50 hours or so, attack the arriving Collector ships. They expect that.” She sat back and resumed her command manner. “But they do
not
expect the collector pods they send down to Earth to return with armed special ops folks. You and the rest of the JCS can alert our fighters and naval ships so they can take out some incoming pods. Before then, my Executive Officer will spend the next 50 hours collecting spec ops folks and training them in how to take over a Collector ship from the
inside
!”

“I like your plan,” Poindexter said, looking around the table at the other JCS chiefs. “But at three people per pod and six Collector ships, you need 18 special ops people.” The Air Force chief looked to Bill. “After we received your vidcam transmissions, our JCS staff researched each of you.” She looked down at a paper in front of her, then up. “Chief MacCarthy, the FBI and my people from the Office of Special Investigations report you hang out with nine other special ops-trained vets at Jack’s Deep Six saloon in Denver. Are those special ops folks the people you plan to use for boarding teams?”

Briefly Bill felt anger at having his privacy invaded. Then again, what would anyone expect the military chiefs of America to do upon hearing the shocking news that Aliens existed, some were slave-takers and oh, by the way, Earth now has a ship able to travel to the stars? He nodded. “General Poindexter, you are correct. I plan to visit Denver in one of our transports, then convince my saloon buddies to join up as this ship’s boarding crew.”

Poindexter gave him a thumbs-up gesture, the casual nature of which surprised him. But her expression stayed command serious. “Your plan is fine by me. You and your buddies are still in the Reserve, so the DOD will do its thing and put you all on the Active Duty payroll. But that means you still need nine more special ops people to handle this covert infiltration of the Collector ships. Since you plan to stuff three people into each collector pod. Right?”

“Right,” Bill said.

The Air Force general looked aside to the JCS chair. “General McAuley, my OSI people report the saloon buddies of Chief MacCarthy include another retired SEAL, three Army Rangers, two Air Force Special Tactics folks, two Marine Special Operations people and a Coast Guard master chief. May I suggest we round up nine more folks from the Special Operations Command at MacDill? We can fly them to Denver in time to load onto this transport spaceship.”

McAuley’s face had lost some redness as Jane moved to tactics and operational planning. The news that two retired Marines were some of Bill’s saloon buddies had earned Bill a positive look from the JCS chairman. McAuley nodded slowly. “Agreed. You run Space Command and this arrival of Alien spaceships fits your mission better than anyone else here. And infiltration of the enemy ships may result in America gaining its own space fleet.” The man did not repeat his demands to Jane, since he had now realized there were six spaceships in the bush that could be flushed into American hands.

Poindexter kept her command manner intact even as Bill had a hard time keeping a grin off his face. “Good. I will contact MacDill and have them put out a call for volunteers.” She caught Bill’s attention. “XO MacCarthy, I will instruct the special ops folks we supply to follow your orders and those of Captain Yamaguchi. After all, you two have shown you know how to overcome Aliens inside their own ship! Is this acceptable?”

Bill almost saluted the woman. “Very acceptable. Uh, our ship AI will send you the IFF transponder code for our transports and for
Blue Sky
so your pilots and ships won’t try to knock us down.”

The black woman blinked. “Should have thought of that myself. Must admit that handling
real
space combat operations that involve thinking Aliens is a bit different than worrying about Hunter-Killer satellites.”

Jane’s command manner had gotten stronger as tactical coordination was sorted out. “General, you have my sympathy,” she said bluntly. “Neither XO MacCarthy nor myself ever expected a weekend fishing trip in the Rocky Mountains to turn into a fight against slave-taking Aliens! It was . . . a shock to us. But our training got us through it.”

Poindexter gave Jane a thumbs-up, an action that made all the chiefs smile. “Thank you, Captain Yamaguchi. I assume you and XO MacCarthy will take care of arming our infiltrators with those taser and laser tubes you captured in your takeover of the
Blue Sky
?”

“We will,” she said, nodding Bill’s way. “Once the boarding team folks arrive on board, XO MacCarthy will show them the vidcam records of our ship takeover and instruct them on how to relate to the AI ship mind of the ship they enter. Gaining the help of each ship’s AI is vital to success. We will provide vacsuits for our boarding crews. And General, please advise your people they must avoid killing any ship crew! Bill and I learned that disabling ship crew was tolerated by our ship’s AI, but killing ship crew might force the AI into self-defense behavior.”

The Air Force general looked thoughtful. “This wearing of vacuum suits is intended to invoke the Emergency Operations protocols that each ship AI is required to obey?”

“Exactly,” Jane said, sitting back in her command seat. “Each vacsuit contains a comlink for talking to other folks and to the AI. While our people can be overhead on the comlink, still, wearing them is vital to forcing the AI to follow Emergency Operations protocols. Those protocols force the AI to open hallway hatches for them and to treat our people as if they were ship crew.”

The Air Force chief nodded slowly. “Understood. Tell me about permissible combat operations within each Collector ship. The Aliens will try to kill our people, right?”

“They will
try
,” Jane said, sitting back and looking relaxed. “But Collector ship crews are not used to coping with combat trained folks. Our boarders can taser zap the crew folks and put them into the Containment Unit cells meant for slaves. The lasers and ball bombs from our armory can be used against robots that might attack them. XO MacCarthy will cover all this in the training regime for our boarders. Which needs to start soon. We are one hour closer to Collector ship arrival.”

Poindexter licked her lips. “Quite true. Does anyone here have an objection to Captain Yamaguchi’s plan for defending Earth and America?”

McAuley gave her a thumbs-up. The Marine commandant, the Army general, the National Guard general, and the Vice Chair admiral all nodded agreement. But the Chief of Naval Operations raised a hand.

“General Poindexter, I have an amendment to Captain Yamaguchi’s daring plan to capture the enemy ships. May I share my thoughts?”

The black woman looked curious. “What is your amendment?”

Vice Admiral Richardson looked at Poindexter. “In Stage One, Captain Yamaguchi’s forces will be outgunned at six ships against three. How about if we give her two more armed spaceships?”