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

Jack led the way through the Pilot Cabin’s hatch and into the long Spine hallway that ran the length of their ship. “Me too. Like all of us, I’ve got relatives still living on Earth. But we have to teach this Unity Congress a final lesson. They are
not
in control of Sol system! And they will never again run the lives of freedom-loving peoples.”

Once again his days of living a normal life had come to an end. It had been barely two weeks since they had returned from their interstellar jaunt to the star systems occupied by the Nuuthot, Mikmang, Nasen and HikHikSot Aliens. He and his fellow captains had been planning to leave on a second deep space trek to find allies for their fight against the predatory Hunters of the Great Dark. Humans alone could not overturn an ancient galactic system that said only predators could travel star-to-star, with conquered ‘herbivore’ peoples becoming slaves and tasty meals for those interstellar cannibals.

Now, it seemed they had to ‘tame’ Earth before they could head out to liberate Alien peoples ruled by social carnivore Aliens. He grit his teeth. Tame Earth he would!

CHAPTER TWO

Jack followed Hideyoshi into the Admiral’s Mess on the
Bismarck
, a room easily big enough for 30 people. Thirty ship captains plus most of his crew sat at the oval table in the middle of the room. At the far end was a large wallscreen, which currently showed the true-light image of a blue and white Earth, with the Moon at one side. To their left, standing beside an AutoChef device, stood a female crewman in Mars red. Hideyoshi sat down at the near end of the table. Jack walked past him to sit between Maureen and Nikola. He looked at his one ally with formal military training.

“Admiral Minamoto, please advise me on the number and affiliation of ships in orbit about Mathilde, or in our Dock Cavern,” he said, gripping his hands together to stop the nerve tremors that he always felt before a big gathering of people.

The man who had been born in Japan, then had gone on to graduate decades ago from the South Pole Naval Academy on Earth, pursed his lips. “Fleet Captain Jack, as you ordered, all three fleets are now concentrated at 253 Mathilde. My Mars fleet includes the heavy cruiser
Bismarck
, four destroyers,
eight
frigates and three corvettes. Fleet Commander Zhāng Dingbang,” he said, nodding to a slim Asian woman sitting at the far end of the table, “convinced the three frigates formerly guarding Ceres Central to join our Mars fleet. And during our interstellar absence she arranged for our Mars engineers to outfit every ship with neutrino comlinks and antimatter beamers in addition to their usual weaponry.” He paused, looking around the table. “Captain Gareth Davies’ fleet includes ten Belter commerce raiders, led by his ship
Dragon
. Those ships are close to frigates in size.” The man brushed back his black hair, the hairline of which seemed to recede further after each space battle. “Which leaves your first Belter fleet of seven ships, including the
Uhuru
. Which is of a size that matches our destroyers. We therefore possess a total of 33 combat ready ships.”

“At a minimum,” interrupted Maureen, her tone assertive. “Within this Dock Cavern are three globular cargo transports, one of which was outfitted with a grav-pull drive so it could resupply the colonies on Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan and Charon. Plus there are three other commerce raiders here whose captains prefer hiring out to Ceres Central business interests.”

Jack knew well the strength of the Prime mercantile families on Ceres. He nodded, then fixed on the black-bearded Welshman. “Captain Gareth, did your assistant Helena Antonov manage any upgrades to your fleet during our absence?”

Gareth gestured to the Slav woman who sat with him and his group of eight other Belter captains. “Yes. She can provide the details.”

Antonov, whose face was a mix of Central Asian features that included slanted eyes and sharp cheeks, gave him a wry smile. “Fleet Captain Jack, our Mathilde engineers managed to outfit every Second Belter Fleet ship with neutrino comlinks, including my
Grizzly
. And two more ships are outfitted with Higgs Disruptors. They are
Hawk
and
Ferocious
,” she said, nodding to the women captains of the two commerce raider ships.

“Fleet Captain Jack,” called Hideyoshi.

“Yes?” he said, wondering what else his ally could add.

The stocky man gave him a restrained smile. “Speaking of other armaments newly added, Fleet Commander Zhāng had our Deimos engineers rework the particle accelerators on two of the stay at home Mars ships. To convert them to Higgs Disruptor beamers. They are the destroyers
General Douglas MacArthur
and
Marshal Georgy Zhukov
.” The admiral gestured to a middle-aged woman and older man who were the captains of the upgraded ships.

“Thank you,” Jack said, scanning the faces of the women and men who had earlier fought with him in the Second Sedna Battle, then had guarded Earth and Sol system while he sought to subvert predator rule over subject peoples. “I gather that means each of our 33 ships now possesses FTL neutrino comlinks and antimatter beamers, in addition to the prior weapons platforms of particle beamers and lasers. Excepting those six ships converted to Higgs beamers. How many fleet ships have been fitted with Alcubierre drive shell star drives?”

Hideyoshi held up five fingers. Gareth held up four. Which, when added to the seven ships of his fleet meant about half of the three fleets could make FTL jumps in and out of Sol system. So be it. “Fellow captains,” he said, catching the eyes of those ship captains who had stayed behind while his fleet,
Bismarck
and
Dragon
had gone star roaming, “this attack on Mathilde by Earth grav-pull ships is only the first attack in their effort to reclaim control of Sol system. Which control their Unity Congress voted to abandon, five months ago. Is there a new Dictat in charge on Earth? And does anyone have any idea on how the
hell
Earth learned of our base on Mathilde?”

“There
is
a new Dictat on Earth,” said Blodwen Llywelyn from next to Hideyoshi. The lanky Welsh woman crossed bony arms atop the metal table and fixed Jack with an intense look. “He is Lykourgos Deimos Katsaros, a banker who owns all Greek sea shipping and most of its space cargo vessels. While he grew up as a Democratic Socialist in common European mode, his election to the European Parliament twenty years ago brought him a hunger for power. Which he exercised as the Speaker of the Unity Congress. When we killed Dictat Maathias he moved to fill the Dictat seat per the rules of that congress. He is now their Assembly Leader.”

Jack winced. This news meant the man now in charge of Earth’s Unity government had guided the adoption of the Sol system control abandon legislation months ago. Legislation which had now been violated a second time, if one counted the earlier effort by Dictat Maathias to get the HikHikSot colony ship to take control of Sol system. “What have the official Earth AV broadcasts said about the results of the Second Sedna Battle? And our recent broadcast of the Nuuthot primates being eaten by the Krisot avian Aliens?”

The blond Sociologist bit her lower lip. “AV broadcasts of the last two weeks have asserted that Earth should join the interstellar society of predator aliens as a ‘subject people’ since we are new to interstellar travel. Dictat Katsaros said in one morning interview show that he was certain he could convince predatory Aliens to not demand a flesh-ransom from Earth.”

“Bastard!” yelled Maureen from his right side. “Jack, how soon do we kill this Communitarian idiot?”

How soon indeed? He wished, briefly, for the counsel of Autarch Viktoria Goncalves of the Moon and People’s Minister Ying Lo-pak of Mars. Those two knew something about politics. A matter which he had always avoided during his anthropologist training on Vesta. Jack fixed on the woman Hideyoshi had left in charge of the Mars fleet. “Fleet Commander Zhāng, what did you learn of Earth’s behavior beyond its atmosphere during our interstellar absence? Any efforts to subvert Brazilian leadership on the Moon? Or Chinese rule on Mars?”

The middle-aged woman, who showed a mild rad-tan from her decades of service in the Unity Space Force, leaned forward from the opposite end of the table. “The Unity Security Services have been too busy putting down local rebellions and major riots across Earth during the months you were gone. They have not made any moves against the leadership of the Moon and Mars. However, our links to Unity spysats in orbit above Earth have revealed their deployment of automated mine fields in low Earth orbit. There may also be stealthed Hunter-Killer thermonuke torps in orbit.” She looked at Hideyoshi, Gareth and the other captains, then back to Jack. “It seems someone did not like you orbiting above Geneva with a small asteroid ready to drop on the Unity Congress.”

Jack sat back in the flexible plastic chair that had padded armrests. The news was not a surprise. He had expected some defensive reaction by Geneva to his earlier threat to kill Dictat Maathias by way of orbital bombardment. What had surprised him was the five ship attack on Mathilde, coming as it did after the Second Sedna Battle which had resulted in the destruction of the HikHikSot colony ship and most of the twenty attack ships brought to Sol to enforce the effort of the cheetah-leopard Aliens to claim Sol system as part of their Hunt territory. Well, he had made certain no HikHikSot would ever again come within sensing distance of a human.

“Denise,” he said, looking to his ComChief. “You are our Animal Ethologist and Behavioral Ecologist. Any ideas on how to ‘tame’ Earth bureaucrats? So they give up trying to retake control of humanity?”

The nineteen year-old pulled at one red braid, looked around the table at people older than herself, then fixed on him. Her look was more mature than her years. Clearly she had moved beyond her focus on adventures in space as her reason to serve with his fleet. She gave him a shy smile. “Your Nikola is right. You really do prefer for other folks to take the first steps in floating ideas.”

Jack glanced aside to his lifemate, whose manner had been scientist serious since they had exited their Lander and entered the
Bismarck
as it floated inside the Dock Cavern. Her brown cheeks grew dark as if flushing. “Don’t look at me. Denise makes her own choices. As any woman should.”

He looked back to the woman who had spent the early part of their last interstellar trip working to generate an Alien language decoding program from a SETI linguistic analysis algorithm. Hard work she was not afraid of. Nor of teasing the boss. “Well? Ways to tame the Earth bureaucracy?”

She sighed. “Kill them. Kill them all. As an object lesson to the younger bureaucrats in Brussels and Geneva who will take their places. All animals act in habitual ways learned while growing to maturity. Humans are also animals, even if very smart ones.” She blinked jade green eyes. “This repeat of their attempt to make an alliance with predator Aliens says to me they are too fixed in their ways to change. So trying to ‘tame’ them is pointless. But their sudden deaths might ‘tame’ their replacements.”

Jack had been afraid of exactly that. His whole reason for battling social carnivore Aliens had been to protect humanity from conquest by those same Aliens. It seemed that before he could go to the stars and spread the idea of personal freedom among Aliens, he and his people would first have to ignite a desire for Bill of Rights style freedoms among Earth’s nine billion. Which meant undermining the existing Communitarian social ideology that now underpinned the Unity world government. He looked to Blodwen.

“You’re our Sociologist,” he said to her. “Once we kill some bureaucrats, how do we undermine the Communitarian Consensus ideology that has ruled Earth for the last sixty years?”

Blodwen grimaced. “You have to combine the killing of the current bureaucrats with an appeal to personal rights as being superior to the community needs.” She tapped a yellow datapad in front of her. The wallscreen at the end of the room went split-screen to show a list. “You all either read or studied about Amitai Etzioni, the Israeli-American of last century who published
The Spirit Of Community
in 1993. He became an advisor to former American president Jimmy Carter and to later presidents. While saying he supported individual rights, Etzioni was deeply worried about ‘excessive individualism’ and the need for ‘order’ in modern liberal societies.” She gestured to the wallscreen that showed a list of the man’s publications and key points of the Communitarian ethos. “He argued for limits on personal rights in favor of community integrity. He even endorsed biometric surveillance of individuals as ‘good’ for the community. Since his death early this century, the ruling elites of the former European Union, the United States of America and China have transformed his social philosophy into the cultural agenda that now rules Earth.” She looked away from the wallscreen and fixed pale green eyes on Jack. “The only way to undermine the Communitarian Unity of Earth is to reawaken nationalism among peoples grown used to getting rich, never having to worry about war and who enjoy a standard of living better than many of them knew in the last century.”

Her words brought to Jack’s minds the comments of his Grandpa Ephraim. The man had bitterly opposed the Unity dogma that personal rights and liberties were secondary to communal rights and needs. Born in Tennessee, his grandpa had celebrated the Fourth of July independence day of the former USA, even after such nationalistic celebrations had been made illegal by the Unity. Along with national patriotic songs like
La Marseillaise
, the
Gosudarstvenny Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii
and
The Star Spangled Banner
. Well, perhaps a new
Human Anthem
would arise out of the collapse of the Unity.