Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (20 page)

“Nikola, share with us the data regarding Gliese 832,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed forward.

A rustle behind him said his lifemate had pulled her Astro panel over her lap. Tap-tapping sounded. “Gliese 832 is a red dwarf of M1.5V class. It’s about one-half the size and one-half the heat output of Sol. Distance to it from Sol is 16.16 light years. Distance to it from Tau Ceti is 14.501 light years.” She paused, tap-tapped again, then hummed to herself. “Records say it has three planets orbiting the star, with two of them in the liquid water ecozone. The outer third planet is a gas world half the size of Jupiter. Gliese 832 is 11.76 light years below the galactic ecliptic as measured from Sol. Elaine, I’m sending you the X, Y and Z coordinates with galactic motion corrections.”

Well, that was succinct. He glanced past Maureen to Elaine, their Pilot and Medoc and a woman quite capable of not allowing the image of her lover Ignacio to distract her from her job. “Pilot?”

She finished pulling on the yellow headband that kept her brown curls out of her eyes, while focusing on the NavTrack panel that had been pulled over her lap. “All parties strap in. Coordinates loaded. Transmitted to the fleet.” She looked his way, amber eyes all so serious.

He gulped. Being watched by 22 other ships, his older sister and everyone else in the cabin still felt strange. He recalled with pleasure his youthful days when he used a beat-up, third-hand Hopper to carry oxy tanks, water bladders, self-heating food packs, vidgames, Tech parts and cigars to asteroid miners who spent most of their life finding, surveying, assaying and then registering their finds with the Vesta Central Hall. Well, those days were deep in the past. He cleared his throat.

“Chief Astronomer, what is the estimated trip time?”

“Three and a half days, give or take a few hours,” said his love in her trademark musical voice.

“Arrival location at Gliese 832?”

“Thirty AU out and above the star’s ecliptic plane,” Nikola said calmly. “I chose an emergence site north of the ecliptic even though the Long Baseline Stellar Interferometer has not documented any cometary debris ring like our Kuiper Belt. It’s safer that way. And we are less likely to be noticed by anyone in the system.”

One last matter. “Nikola, any info in the Nasen stellar holo about the people who live at Gliese 832?”

Her boots began an impatient tapping on the deck floor. “Nope. Just the same five datums we knew about Tau Ceti. Which are the system location, the year of its discovery, the presence of space-going ships, the fact that the local people have not reached their outermost planet and the system’s classification as a ‘juvenile’ species location.”

Well, that was that. They would learn more when they arrived on the outskirts of Gliese 832. Which required that they engage their FTL drive. “Max, establish laser time-lock with the drive modules of the other fleet ships. Then take us into the Alcubierre space-time manifold.”

“So soon? I was just starting to nod off.”

Jack could not hold back his grin. Nor did the other ship captains. Even Hideyoshi showed a wry smile. “The ladies are done sooner than soon,” he said. “Time for you to unleash the wonder you and Archibald banged together.”

“If you insist.” Jack heard his buddy tapping on the Alcubierre drive pedestal that stood between Max and Denise. “Reactor power feeding to the Alcubierre module. Space-time manifold established. Space to our rear is expanding and the space to our front is shrinking. Launching!”

Jack felt his friend’s excitement in the last word.

Ahead the images of people, stars and galaxies grew hazy, then jagged, then vanished completely as the gravitational lensing that happened during Alcubierre space-time transition bent incoming photons into crazy pretzels. Until finally the external light, radiation and space-time limitations vanished with their entry into a bubble of space-time independent of the normal universe. Their ship, and the other fleet ships, shot toward their target star at a speed of four light years per day.

He reached down the right side of his seat, searching for the water bottle he always kept there. Nothing.

Someone tapped his left shoulder. “Looking for this?”

Nikola. She did enjoy playing games from his rear blind side. “Thank you,” he said, reaching up with his left hand. It closed on empty air. A clattering sounded from down the Spine hallway.

“Your turn to cook dinner for this crowd,” Nikola said tartly in her Woman Superior manner.

The trouble with being the center of attention of his fellow crewmates was that he could not hide any reaction. So he groaned.

“Thought it was Cassie’s turn. To cook. And Archibald’s turn to run the Auto-Cleaner.”

“Nope.” He felt a thud against the back of his seat. “Get a move on! If you are going to brainwash the Gliese Aliens into joining our Freedom Alliance, you could start by learning how to cook. Better, that is.”

Jack unsnapped his seat locks. Stood up. Faced his lifemate Nikola, his sisters Elaine and Cassie, their redhead Denise, bemused Blodwen, sardonic Max and Maureen of the impatient look. He saluted them.

“Orders accepted!”

His run for the hatch leading to the Spine hallway was just fast enough to avoid any impact to his bottom from the ladies he passed.

“Cook those steaks rare!” yelled Maureen.

Catching his breath he slowed his pace. Rare they would get. Would be interesting to see how carnivore hungry his mates were.

♦   ♦   ♦

Three and a half days later the fleet exited the Alcubierre space-time bubble at 30 AU north of the ecliptic plane of the star Gliese 832. Jack immediately checked the front screen’s true-light imagery, including the faces of the 22 other captains. Thanks to atomic timing crystals, each ship had arrived within 50 kilometers of the other ships. He saw the faces of Hideyoshi of the
Bismarck
, Gareth of the
Dragon
, Minna of the
Wolverine
, Ignacio of the
Badger
, Akemi of the
Orca
, Júlia of the
Caiman
, Aashman of the
Mongoose
and Kasun of the
Leopard
. Plus the captains of the other Belter and Mars ships. Each captain waved at him, nodded or looked attentive as was their personal manner.

“Nikola,” he called back over his shoulder, “deploy your Big Eye. Then tell us what it says about this system and its planets.” He looked at Elaine. “Pilot, put up a Sensor image of the system that shows all the emissions we track.”

“Right.” He heard the tapping of Nikola’s fingers on her Astro and giant reflector scope panels. “The inner planet one is located in an elliptical orbit that ranges from 0.134 AU out to 0.192 AU. It’s a superterran planet with a mass 5.4 times that of Earth. Its atmosphere is heavy in carbon dioxide. Which has turned it into a cloud-covered, Venus-like world too hot for normal folks to live on. But it has three moons orbiting it, one the size of Triton. That outer moon has an oxy-nitro atmosphere. It’s habitable. The year of planet one is 35.68 days.” She paused, tapped her Astro panel and a true-light image of the three planets in the inner system now occupied the center of the screen. “Planet two was located by the interferometer fifty years ago. It’s ten percent larger than Earth, has a gravity equal to Earth, has a light spectrum that shows an oxy-nitro atmosphere with lots of water vapor, and it’s located at 0.25 AU out from Gliese. Its year is 75 days. It has a small, airless moon that is one-third the size of Earth’s moon. My Big Eye imagery shows an icy north pole and icy south pole on planet two. We have to get closer for more planetary details. Last is planet three, the gas giant.” She paused, tapped more, and Jack saw a third half-disk become highlighted by Nikola’s cursor. “The system’s only gas giant is half the size of Jupiter, has two dozen small satellites around it based on the infrared spectrum from my scope, and it’s located at 3.4 AU. Way outside the habitable zone of the star. Oh. Its year is 3,416 days, or a bit over nine Earth years.”

“My turn?” called Elaine, sounding impatient.

“Of course,” Jack said, keeping his focus on the front screen imagery that was being shared with other fleet ships by way of a laser Come-Signal sent out by Denise.

His sister looked up and spoke to the sound-activated software of the ceiling speaker. “Autonomous, overlay my system Sensor feed atop the reflector image of the system. Display non-fleet grav-pull ships as yellow spots. Fusion pulse ships are green. Neutrino sources are white. Process!”

“Processing,” said the dry voice of the
Uhuru’s
primary computer. “Completed.”

“Interesting,” rumbled Max.

Maureen snapped her fingers. “Good. No grav-pull ships besides ours.”

Jack felt the same. There were no artificial graviton sources beyond their fleet. But there were nine green spots that marked fusion drive ships, while fifteen white spots showed on planet two with a single neutrino source on its moon. Reactors no doubt. Fusion ship locations were three above the large moon of planet one, four above planet two and the rest were transiting between the two planets. The front screen also showed UV, infrared, far infrared, gamma ray, x-ray, graviton and neutrino emissions. All from natural sources. What was artificial were the maser and lidar emissions from planet two and the moving ships.

Elaine looked at him. “That’s the total Sensor feed. Folks are busy running between planets one and two, and chattering on planet two. No ship or neutrino emissions from planet three. That’s it.”

“Thank you Pilot.” Jack looked back to his SETI translator and specialist in Animal Ethology. “Denise, what do you pick up for AV channel broadcasts? Maser traffic? Radioastronomy emissions? Any other active EMF sources in Gliese 832?”

His linguist genius looked down at her Comlink panel, then up to him, her expression thoughtful. “Captain Jack, my instruments are showing 137 AV channels at signal strengths from 5 kilohertz up to 300 gigahertz. Other EMF emissions at 1,100 gigahertz are likely microwaves. There are maser emissions from planet two that are suggestive of a worldwide diginet.” She looked back down at her Comlink panel. “There are also radio wave emissions from planet three which are natural. Uh, I’m setting Autonomous to scanning these AV channels for signal strength and imagery as a means of locating ‘popular’ AV channels.” She pulled one red braid into her lips and began chewing on it.

Jack looked at the modulated neutrino comlink pedestal that stood next to Denise’s seat. Then he looked at Maureen.

“Combat Commander, do you see any threats to the fleet?”

The woman turned from a Tactical Display holo simulation that floated above her lap to Jack. Her manner was calm. “Nothing obvious. Those nine fusion ships may be armed, but there is no cometary belt to toss ice balls at planet two. So they could be unarmed. If we move closer I suggest keeping above the ecliptic plane. Most planet-bound folks think horizontal, as in along the ecliptic plane.”

Jack nodded, then faced his allies. “People, stay off the neutrino comlink. Hold off on any use of our grav-pull or fusion drives. These folks on planet two may have giant scopes able to pick up our drive flares. Or the neutrino emissions of our reactors and drives. Let’s scan their AV broadcasts for a glimpse of their people shape.” He looked back. “Denise?”

“Got three really strong AV channels,” she muttered. “Anonymous, put strongest image broadcast on the screen next to the scope and sensor imagery.”

“Complying.”

A new split-screen took form to one side of the scope imagery. In it were gathered several dozen four-legged creatures who resembled the shaggy coated musk oxen Jack recalled from his Open Library studies. The creatures stood outdoors in a grassy bowl surrounded by a horseshoe of hills. The sky was pale blue, the ground cover was green and up on the ridgeline stood a single oxen, looking down at the gathered herd. Jack noticed this solo creature held a shiny orb in its mouth. While its teeth were the squarish molars of herbivores, the purple tongue had split into five narrow segments that worked like fingers. They grasped the metallic ball, which was pointed at the herd. He wondered if the orb was a vidcam. But what was strangest was a yellow-white fleshy mass that lay atop the creature’s blocky head. The mass was wrinkled, convoluted and had two spine-like antennae raised above its mass. The mass, which looked soft, rested between two yellow horns that rose above the ear flaps of the oxen. While the Alien had two eyes arranged for binocular vision plus the long jaw common to plant-eating herbivores, the movements of the observer and the herd oxen were not those of nervous cattle. Instead, they seemed alert and focused on something coming at them from off screen.

“Look!” Elaine cried as a yellow creature that resembled a tiger streaked into the dead-end valley and took aim at an outlying member of the herd. A member with white streaks in its brown fur.

The speedy four-legged predator had long white canine teeth and resembled the saber-toothed tiger of Earth’s ancient past. Before it could reach its elderly oxen target, the herd moved.

“Stampede!” Nikola called from behind Jack.

The thirty or so Alien oxen rushed forward as a group, heads low, horns pointed toward the tiger. They came in a crescent that moved to surround the Alien predator.