Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (18 page)

“How long ago did this reptile extinction happen?”

“About 65 million Earth years ago,” Jack said.

“Ah,” said Benaxis. “That would be about 34 million Home years ago. Our last major extinction impact was Bodum. It happened two million Home years ago.”

Jack wondered if the 300 kilometer wide impact crater that adorned the equatorial continent of Home was Bodum. He was still amazed at the survival of the Melagun omnivores on a planet subject to more frequent bombardment by megaton-level impact events than Earth had experienced. The number of small, medium and a few large impact craters that dotted the surface of Home reminded him of ancient black and white images of people with faces pockmarked by the smallpox bacterium. While Home had two shallow oceans, one in the north and one in the south, its four major continents all showed the results of being a shooting gallery in a star system filled with ten times the amount of comets and asteroids that were present in Sol.

“Are these impacts the reason your people are spread out across so much of your world?” Jack asked, looking aside at the Alien whose front shoulder was head height to him.

The six red neck tentacles that served as hands and fingers for the Melagun moved frantically. “Yes. Our species evolved just after the Bodum event. We had lived in an equatorial warm zone that moved from being forested to an open grassland. Our former reliance on easy to reach tree fruit that became rare forced us to develop sharp rock tools, then a sling made from plant roots. It gave us the ability to eat the meat of small ground dwellers. And to ward off attacks by the Columbottles.”

Jack had seen holo images of the few Columbottle predators still in existence. In what looked like zoos. They resembled a giant Melagun with dozens of sharp canines, twelve tentacles and deadly horns at the shoulder and knee joints of the critter’s six legs. It was also a fast mover on a world where hurrying too fast put you at risk of broken limbs. He gave thanks the Columbottles were solitary predators not given to being social. If they had been social the way lion prides were on Earth, the smaller Melagun might not have survived being a food source for such giants. But the ancestral Melagun, like the
homo habilis
hominids of Earth 2.4 million years ago, had coped. And flourished. And spread across their world. They even had habitats atop the floating ice packs of their north and south poles.

“Did your lifemate enjoy visiting with our females?” Jack asked.

The Alien turned his squarish head to fix large brown eyes on him. The cavernous mouth opened a bit, showing white teeth that included sharp incisors at the front. Benaxis gave a snort that Jack had learned was the Melagun laugh. “She did indeed. The patterns of robe weaving that you humans have created are now sweeping through the popular AV broadcasts.” Benaxis looked down at Jack, then up. “You wear a cloth panel made by your Nikola over your undergarment.”

Jack smiled. The Saltillo-style
serape
that Nikola had loom-woven for him back home on Mathilde was a close enough match to the robes worn by all Melagun. They wore robes both for warmth and as social caste markers. While the heat level of the inner ring where he, Nikola, Max, Blodwen, Elaine, Ignacio and others lived was adequate, it was cold by Earth temperate zone standards. Kind of a late fall temperature. He reminded himself that late fall temps were equal to tropical temps for the Melagun, with their planet lying so far from Tau Ceti.

“I do. I like the version with the central head opening.” Jack gestured at the north pole ice pack of Home. “Do the Melagun who live at your northern ice field wear robes different from what you now wear?”

Benaxis shifted on his elephant-like feet. The lack of toenails or fingernails on the neck tentacles of the Melagun had fascinated Blodwen. “They do. Their robes are full body enclosing. They also wear cloth pads on their feet. While we Melagun evolved to withstand our cold winters, even our body cannot tolerate hard ice temperatures for very long.”

Jack thought it amazing that the people of Home evolved under a worldwide average temp of just 10 degrees centigrade. While the heavily populated equatorial regions rose to 30 degrees centigrade during the planet’s summer period, the poles dropped to minus 30 for long months. He smiled, unable to resist the idea of Aliens who were an evolutionary mix of Inuit Eskimos with sturdy Viking Norsemen. “Understood. My Earth temperature knowledge is limited. My family are Asteroid Belters, used to living in vacsuits for long periods of time.”

Benaxis hooted low. “My sympathies. While we wear such vacuum resistant clothing while on duty aboard the
Polar Ice
, none of us enjoy it. Your . . . your family unit sounds remarkable.”

He grinned, wondering what his Mom and Dad would think of him hanging out with a giant hippo Alien who wore a red robe big as a rug in an Earth or Mars home. “My family is normal for those humans we call Belters.”

Benaxis glanced quickly at Jack. “Your Belter history sounds like that of our Purple Robes. They will travel anywhere across our world in search of a financial profit.”

Jack gritted his teeth. Comparing his Belters to the Robber Baron financiers of the Unity was not pleasant to hear. Then again, human history was one of exploration often funded by merchants looking to make a profit. Perhaps one of the Prime mercantile families on Ceres Central would build a fleet of starships to send out on trading expeditions to distant stars. Once he and his allies had established their Freedom Alliance. So far the only members of the alliance were the Nuuthot, the Mikmang and now the Melagun. He gestured at the world they were observing.

“Guide Benaxis, will your people send a vessel to our Sol system? You might find such a trip to be . . . educational and profitable.”

The Alien shifted on his six blocky feet. “Our Chief Guide has spoken of doing just that, once the Pink Robes construct an Alcubierre drive shell module. The prospect of finding other planetary homes for our people is something that has excited everyone. Even the sedentary White Robes are agitated!”

So the Melagun version of philosophers were tempted by interstellar travel? Well, it made sense given the species fixation on surviving harsh weather and unpredictable asteroid impacts. The science of astronomy had developed not long after the invention of fire, from what Blodwen had shared of her talks with the Melagun scientists who wore Yellow Robes. It made sense. Being able to track an incoming comet or asteroid gave your tribe a chance to travel away from its predicted impact site. Building a defense against such celestial dangers had fallen to the Pink Robes, or industrialists of Melagun society. They had built the first rockets to intercept incoming objects, followed by the first orbiting of space telescopes to give better warning of danger. The first spaceships had been created a hundred Home years ago. Benaxis’ ship
Polar Ice
was the ninth generation of space vehicles, each one larger and better armed than the preceding generation.

“That is good to hear,” Jack said, turning away from the world below them. “You can send a modulated neutrino message to our people on my home of Mathilde. They have built a receiving station for all interstellar visitors on our large comet world of Sedna.”

“The place where you twice fought these HikHikSot social carnivores?” Benaxis asked as he turned to walk down a wide hallway with Jack.

“The same,” Jack said, looking ahead alertly so he would not bump into the rear of other Melagun hippos who shared the hallway with them. “We Belters felt it a good place to set up a location for visits from members of the Freedom Alliance. Like the Mikmang and Nuuthot peoples. You recall the vidcast imagery of them that we shared with you?”

“Yes,” rumbled Benaxis. “Amazing the forms that life takes in our universe.”

Jack could not agree more. “Very amazing. Anyway, when we depart Tau Ceti we will leave behind a Predator Alert satellite device. It will alert any visiting predators to the fact that Tau Ceti is part of the human Hunt territory.”

Benaxis bugled low, a tone of frustration. “We Guides understand the necessity of declaring our system is part of the Human Hunt territory. But we do not like it.”

Jack sighed, walking a bit faster to keep up with the six-legged gait of his friend, guide and mentor in all things Melagun. “We don’t either. But it is the system that now exists in this part of the galaxy. Either we claim your system as part of our Hunt territory, or other social predators will arrive, make Combat Challenge and seek to add your system to their Hunt territory.”

“We would never submit to such!”

He had no doubt the Melagun, with their history of dogged survival, would resist any predator invasion. “Neither did we humans. It is a bad system. But natural selection has led to the spread of space-going social carnivores like the Nasen, HikHikSot, Gyklang and others we shared with you. Until we can undermine this ancient system, the best way we know to protect juvenile peoples like you Melagun is to claim your system as part of our Hunt territory.”

“We understand,” Benaxis said, slowing as they reached a hallway intersection. “When will your fleet depart our system?”

“In three days time.” Jack stepped left into the side hallway. “I go now to plan our departure with my lifemate, our friends and my fellow Belter fleet captains. May your Home always be Safe!”

“The same for your Earth,” Benaxis rumbled, turning to the right to head for a droptube that would deliver him to the Home-normal outer ring of the Refuge space station.

Jack walked slowly down the wide, padded hallway, wondering how soon the Melagun might build an armed fleet of FTL starships. Once they did, humanity would have a powerful ally in the fight against the interstellar cannibals who now ruled the Orion Arm.

♦   ♦   ♦

Lunch was a picnic in a forested park of the inner ring of the Refuge. Organized by Archibald and Maureen, there were baskets and pots of cold and hot food sitting in the middle of the large pink tablecloth that someone had scavenged from their stateroom. With a sigh he sat down between Nikola and Cassie. Around them sat Elaine and Ignacio, Max and Blodwen, Maureen and Gareth, Archibald, Denise and his allies Minna, Akemi, Júlia, Aashman and Kasun. All were dressed in sweaters or
serapes
over their ship leotards given the coolness of the park. While family groups of Melagun also played a kind of kickball elsewhere in the park, they had a densely treed part of the park all to themselves. Which suited Jack. While he loved his ship, and his Tech devices, being confined in a long metal tube for days on end was not his preferred mode of living. He smiled as Cassie handed him a bowl of marinara spaghetti sauce filled with chunks of meat from a Melagun herd animal that resembled a six-legged pig. There was also a non-meat sauce bowl for Aashman, their sole vegetarian among the 23 ship captains. Jack spooned out meat-filled sauce onto the angle-hair noodles that Maureen had steamed in the kitchen of the habroom that she now shared with Gareth.

“Looks tasty,” he said, catching Maureen’s eye. “Is the sauce your recipe or Archibald’s?”

“My recipe!” called the Brit from Cornwall.

Cassie gave him a lifted eyebrow look, which could mean their physicist had had lots of feminine help. Or that his sister was simply tired of frequent boasting by the man who had invented the Higgs Disruptor and had worked with Max and Matthias Binder to reverse engineer the Alcubierre star drive of the Rizen ship hulk. Jack looked to Max, the man who had figured out how to work the gravity-pull drive they had salvaged from that hulk and then had written the thousands of lines of code that told the Alien machine to Go Jump in the direction desired by Jack and other captains. His buddy was ignoring his fellow engineer, instead leaning aside as Blodwen whispered something into his ear. Jack really liked how the Welsh lass had brought his buddy out of his depression at the death of his former lover Monique d’Auberge. Her bloody death at the hands of the Rizen lion-hippos had set Jack and Max on the path of fighting the attempt of multiple Alien predators to claim Sol system.

“You better start eating that before it cools off,” Nikola said from his side.

He grinned, then leaned to his right and gave her a loud, smacking kiss on her left cheek. “Wow! How did I ever survive without my Chief Astronomer?”

Nikola blushed, then closed her eyes, shaking her head. “Lords of the universe, please protect this man from the black holes he keeps stepping into!”

She hadn’t liked his kiss? His tease? Or—

“Brother, eat!” murmured Cassie from his left. “And count yourself lucky to be mated to a woman with the patience to watch stars  move across the sky. You require a lot of patience.”

He stuck his plastic fork into the red sauce covered spaghetti, twirled it the way he saw other folks doing it, then lifted the concoction into his mouth. Chewing, he gulped it down. Then reached out for the squeeze bottle of French
cabernet sauvignon
wine. Lifting it up he squeezed some into his mouth, then laid it down on the short purple something that was the Melagun version of grass. While quite able to use photosynthesis to grow, the Melagun grass, like the berry bushes, had adopted a purple color. Like a few Earth trees he had seen during his Remote Tutor studies.

“Tastes good. Congratulations to you, good Archibald. And Maureen. You two set a fine meal!”

Their Combat Commander glanced his way from where she sat across from him and his ladies. She lifted a black eyebrow. “And you keep getting lucky in Alien encounters. Remind me not to play poker with you.”