Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3)

FREEDOM

VS. ALIENS

Book Three of the Aliens Series

T. Jackson King

Other King Novels

Human Assassin (forthcoming), Alien Vigilante (forthcoming), Aliens Vs. Humans (2015), Freedom Vs. Aliens (2015), Humans Vs. Aliens (2015), Earth Vs. Aliens (2014), Genecode Illegal (2014), The Memory Singer (2014), Alien Assassin (2014), Anarchate Vigilante (2014), Galactic Vigilante (2013), Nebula Vigilante (2013), Speaker To Aliens (2013), Galactic Avatar (2013), Stellar Assassin (2013), Retread Shop (2012, 1988), Star Vigilante (2012), The Gaean Enchantment (2012), Little Brother’s World (2010), Judgment Day And Other Dreams (2009), Ancestor’s World (1996).

Dedication

To the scholar Edward O. Wilson, whose books
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
,
The Social Conquest Of Earth
and
On Human Nature
have guided me in my meager efforts to explore a future where humanity encounters predatory life from other stars.

Acknowledgments

First thanks go to my beta reader, Alicia Solomon, for her work on this and other novels. Second thanks go to novelist Jean Kilczer for her cover design help. Third thanks go to scholar John Alcock and his book
Animal Behavior, An Evolutionary Approach
(1979).

FREEDOM VS. ALIENS

© 2015 T. Jackson King

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

Cover design by T. Jackson King; cover image by Algol via Fotolia license; back image of Carina Nebula, courtesy of Hubble Space Telescope

First Edition

Published by T. Jackson King, Los Alamos, NM 87544

http://www.tjacksonking.com/

ISBN 10:  1-63384-370-X

ISBN 13:  978-1-63384-370-7

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER ONE

Playing soccer on a grassy field in a cave inside the asteroid 253 Mathilde had seemed to Jack like a fun thing to do. Then rocks began falling from the ceiling and the ground vibrated under his feet.

“Max!” he called over the comlink tab pinned to his jumpsuit. “What the hell’s going on?” He looked at the twenty-eight people who, like him, had stopped playing soccer. Rocks now fell inside Mathilde, thanks to the one gee grav-pull field newly installed inside the cave. “Everyone head for your vacsuits and the Dock Cavern! Archibald, kill the gravity in here so we can move faster.”

His lifemate Nikola grabbed her carrybag even as Maureen the combat veteran ran past them headed for the airlock that connected their soccer cave with the Dock Cavern. Which held their fleet allies and the giant rotating torus in which lived 12,000 people. The comlink spoke.

“Thermonukes!” Max yelled from the
Uhuru
. “Five frigate ships blip jumped into local space just above Nikola’s scope building. They launched five thermonuke torps at the surface!”

“Jack!” called his sister Elaine as she arrived on a floater flatbed. “Get on! It’s faster than running or weightless jumping.”

He followed Nikola onto the floater just as Archibald ran up to the tripod and globe housing of the grav-pull gravity generator and cut power to it. Around them other people used floaters to rescue people who had not kicked off toward the airlock.

“Why is this place not cracked open?” he yelled to Max over the comlink tab.

His engineer buddy cursed in Polish. “They seem to be three megaton thermonukes, not the biggies like our fleet thermonuke torps.”

Watching as Maureen reached the inner hatch of the airlock, Jack felt shock, worry and then anger. His heart beat fast as he realized five 50 megaton thermonukes would have broken open the 53 kilometer wide globe of Mathilde like a rotten eggshell. But who was attacking them? The Brazilians on the Moon and the Chinese on Mars were part of the anti-Alien alliance he’d created just six months ago, before their nine ships had left Sol system and headed out into interstellar space. And since Max had not said the frigate ships were Alien, that left just one source.

“Max! Those have to be Unity spaceships. Where’s the
Uhuru
? And the rest of our fleet and Gareth’s fleet?”

They arrived at the open airlock hatch and ran through it as Maureen gestured to Hurry Up! even as her gray eyes looked ready to kill someone. Jack, Nikola, Elaine and Maureen began pulling on their vacsuits even as other soccer players arrived and crowded into the room, calling for news.

“Quiet!” he yelled, closing up the front of his vacsuit, then grabbing his helmet globe. “Five frigates have attacked us with small thermonuke torps! Head for your ships or your homes in the torus!”

“Our ship is in the Dock Cavern!” Max grunted hurriedly as if he was doing three things at once. “Gareth’s ship is here, with our fleet. The rest of Gareth’s fleet is out on system patrol. As is Hideyoshi’s Mars fleet. No Belter ship was nearby when these frigates arrived! Denise called to say she’s on the way here, as is my Blodwen. Gareth is leaving the torus and heading for his ship with some of his crew. I’m powering up our Battle Module. We’ll be ready to go after these bastards as soon as you folks get here!”

With helmet sealed and internal vacsuit comlink activated, Jack followed Nikola, Maureen, Elaine, Archibald and two dozen other folks through the outer airlock hatch and into the yellow-lighted space of the Dock Cavern. He boarded the floater flatbed that Maureen had pulled through the airlock, made room for his crewmates, and took in the busyness of the Dock Cavern. A place three kilometers wide that was partly filled with docked or free-floating Belter spaceships, plus a few cargo transports that resembled giant soccer balls. The 200 meter length of the
Uhuru
rapidly drew close to him and his people as Maureen, cursing in Gaelic, hammered at the floater’s Control pedestal. He saw another floater already pulling up to the midbody Lander airlock. Two women were on it. A redhead and a blond. Denise and Blodwen no doubt.

“Max!” he called over his comlink as their flatbed bumped up against the one ridden by his ComChief and Sociologist. “Fire up the modulated neutrino comlink! Call Hideyoshi! Tell him I need him here yesterday!”

“Powering up!” Max said gruffly, as if not welcoming one more thing to do beyond bringing their fusion pulse drive to Pinch Mode and setting the grav-pull module to readiness for blip jumping the moment they exited the tunnel that led into the Dock Cavern.

Jack followed everyone into his ship’s large airlock. The outer hatch was tapped into fast closure by wild-haired Archibald. “Sealed!” the Brit physicist said. “Maureen?”

“Pressurizing!” yelled their Irish grandma who, at 78, had more energy than the seven of them combined.

The inner hatch opened quickly and they all piled into the Spine hallway, running fast in the one gee gravity that was a gift of the Alien-built grav-pull drive module. Jack caught up to Maureen just as the rad-tanned woman jumped through the Pilot Cabin hatch, heading for her Combat station seat up front. He ran past Max and took his Tech station seat at Maureen’s left just as Elaine dropped into her Pilot station seat. Behind them Denise filled the ComChief station, Nikola sat in her Chief Astronomer seat behind Jack, Blodwen sat behind Max in her Sociologist station and Archibald dropped wearily into his Physics station seat beside Blodwen. He waved a hand back to his ComChief.

“Denise! Link me up with Hideyoshi on the
Bismarck
! Max, move us out of this cavern and into the tunnel on thrusters! Maureen, get the hell out of that chair and back to your Battle Module! We’re likely to be firing our beamers just seconds after we reach open space. The rest of you keep your yaps shut!”

“Heading back!” growled Maureen as she jumped out of her seat and headed back to take direct control of the Fire Control panel that guided her antimatter and neutral particle beam emitters in the Battle Module. Which lay at the rear of the
Uhuru
.

Jack tapped on his Tech panel and set it to Combat mode, tapping on the touch controls for the two spine-mounted railguns and the hydrogen-fluoride laser pods that lay on the port and starboard sides of the
Uhuru
.

“Connected!” called Denise. “Live AV up front.”

Jack fixed on the worried-looking face of Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto, leader of the Mars fleet of grav-pull ships and a man with more combat experience than anyone other than Maureen. “Admiral, there are five enemy frigates in space above Nikola’s Big Eye scope station. Which one of our spysats says is a glowing radioactive pit. Along with four other pits from thermonuke torps! That puts the enemy near Mathilde’s north pole and on the side opposite from our Dock Cavern tunnel. I’m taking the
Uhuru
out and heading to our south pole vector,” he said hurriedly, mouth feeling too dry. “I need you and the
Bismarck
here now! We need your antimatter beamer, particle beamer and lasers to hit those ships from the side opposite to our approach. Can you do it?”

The man’s thin black eyebrows creased together. “We are one-third of the way around Sol system from you. Even at eighty percent of lightspeed we cannot be there sooner than a half hour.”

Jack pointed at the Alien-built drive module that sat next to Max. “Use your Alcubierre drive shell module! You can be here within two minutes. And your arrival will not leave a tell-tale graviton pulse. I want us to both appear suddenly and fire on them before they can aim their own particle beams at us!”

The man nodded abruptly. “Will do. Give me the spatial coordinates for where you want the
Bismarck
to arrive.”

“Nikola!” he yelled, then lowered his voice. “Transmit the coordinates for your scope station plus two hundred kilometers altitude to the admiral.”

“Sending!” she said, sounding breathless as if the run up the Spine hallway had left her short of breath.

Jack looked back at the man who had never failed to follow his orders. “In two minutes we will arrive opposite these five ships. Kill them! By whatever means available!”

“Jack!” called Maureen from a holo that popped up above his Tech panel. “Second round of thermonukes fired! Aimed at the equatorial region of Mathilde. This place can’t take much more pounding like that.”

He knew that. The lives of 12,000 people rode on the pending actions of him and Hideyoshi. Among them the lives of his Mom and Dad, who lived in the rotating habitat torus that occupied the rooftop portion of the Dock Cavern. Glancing through the porthole on the left of his seat he saw small pieces of rock free floating in the cavern. The fat spearhead shape of his Welsh ally’s ship
Dragon
now showed controlled movement as its maneuvering thrusters fired yellow flame, moving its blunt nose to point toward the exit tunnel. And toward his ship. “Max! Move us out of here.” He looked back at Denise, whose two red braids framed a face that looked younger than her nineteen years. “ComChief, keep the neutrino comlink open to Hideyoshi but open an encrypted AV Come-Back signal to Gareth! Do it fast!”

The woman blinked her jade green eyes, licked her pale lips and nodded. “Channel open!”

The front screen of the Pilot Cabin split into three segments. The left segment showed the five Unity frigates holding position above the north pole of Mathilde, with the yellow-white gases of the second round of thermonuke explosions expanding outward from the asteroid’s surface. Hideyoshi’s image moved to the right. The middle filled with the broad shoulders and brown gaze of Gareth Davies. The man’s full black beard filled the lower half of his helmet.

“We’re right behind you!” the Welshman said.

Jack nodded, his mind whirling with spatial relationships, attack tactics and his plan to kill all five ships at once. Using the
Uhuru
, Gareth’s
Dragon
and the heavy cruiser
Prince Otto von Bismarck
. But they each had only two sudden-kill weapons in the antimatter and particle beamers. The
Dragon
would bring the weapon needed to kill the fifth ship. “Gareth, follow close beside me. We’re heading for a south pole vector, then curve around to come up beneath the enemy ships. Hideyoshi will arrive above them. Use your antimatter beam to kill one the ships!”