Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (32 page)

The fleet arrived at 10,000 kilometers above the night surface of the world NooHik. Quickly they moved into the triangle formation ordered by Jack. At the same moment the true-light imagery of the world below filled the front screen, with the small icon heads of his fellow captains running in a line across the top. Five silvery dots sparkled to one side of the world, where the light of Daystar shown past that horizon. Jack pulled his Tech panel over from its armrest position to above his lap. A few taps served to activate its Tactical Display image, which matched the Sensor feed from Elaine that now went up to one side of the true-light image.

“Five Gyklang ships coming over the western horizon of NooHik!” she called sharply. “One space station orbits below us at five hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface. But . . . damn! There’s thousands of infrared signals out there! Mine field!”

At the same moment that Elaine spoke, Jack saw five yellow beams shoot out from their fellow front-line ships. The Higgs Disruptor beams were set for a five kilometers footprint with an effective range out to 9,000 klicks. They looked like old searchlight tower beams sweeping through the darkness of space.

The red dots that showed on Elaine’s Sensor map become white sparkles as the atomic structure of the stealthed mines lost its integrity and protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and fermions all shot away from each other. Briefly he recalled an old fiction story that said someday humans would possess ‘disintegration rays’. Well, the Higgs Disruptor beams did not dissolve matter. They just negated the ability of atomic and subatomic particles to adhere into normal matter. Which looked like disintegration to him.

Jack looked to the holo of Maureen. “What is your Threat Assessment of the space ahead?”

She looked up from her Fire Control panel. “I see Hunter-Killer torps on random-walk vectors. I see laser platforms, stealthed spysats, EMF sensors and mobile mine fields. Based on the UV, infrared and far infrared emissions put out by even the quietest stealth device.”

A layered defense of the planet it was. Jack wished his fleet possessed the Identify Friend or Foe codes that would make these devices ignore him. And ignore the gravitomagnetic signatures put out by the normal gravity maintained by their grav-pull drives. Which emissions were now being received by the five Gyklang ships just coming over the western horizon. Those ships were beyond their weapons range at the moment. But soon, they would attack his fleet. Or blip jump away to join with the other Gyklang ships now heading out-system.

“Captains Minna and Akemi, make an Alcubierre jump to the far side of those enemy ships!
Ferocious
, go with them to sweep the vector ahead of them with your Higgs beam!”

“Departing,” replied their Finn captain.

“Incoming torps!” cried Elaine.

“Lasers to the defense!” Jack said. “The moment these three random walk torps are dead, we all jump to within weapons range of those five ships!”

Green streaks shot out from his front-line ships.

The three thermonuke torps died while still far distant.

Distantly there now appeared the three ships he’d sent ahead. They had arrived on the far side of the Gyklang ships.

“Blip jumping all ships!” called Max.

The front screen imagery shimmered as the grav-pull drive’s gravitational lensing distorted incoming light.

The
Uhuru
and seventeen other ships jumped like bumblebees swarming to a common nest. While they had a common vector, the brief imagery of each ship flickered into and out of view as the grav-pull drives pulled them toward a gravity nexus that always preceded them.

In less than a minute they all exited grav-pull.

Ahead lay the five Gyklang turnip ships. The root tip neutral particle beam emitters were all aimed their way, as if they had anticipated Jack’s maneuver.

“Sideways!” yelled Jack over the inter-ship neutrino comlink. “Move sideways!”

Every fleet ship blip jumped sideways, up, down, any vector but the straight-line true-light image now being received by the enemy ships.

Five blue particle beams shot out from the Gyklang turnip balls. Simultaneously green laser beams speared out from the panda-grizzly ships toward the
Ferocious
,
Wolverine
and
Orca
. They missed.

“We’re hit!” yelled Aashman from the
Mongoose
.

“Damn! Us too,” grunted Gareth from the
Dragon
.

Both ship images showed black smoke in their cabins.

“Firing!” growled Maureen. “Fuck secrecy! I’m using our antimatter beam!”

Other ships of the fleet did the same. As did the three early arriving ships.

Blue whiptails sliced through the five turnip ball ships, cutting the laser-studded upper half apart from the particle beam lower half.

Black threads of antineutron antimatter touched the fragments of three ships, turning them into yellow-white blossoms of total matter-to-energy conversion. Two ships that had been cut in half lost air and water in a white fountain that stopped quickly when automatic hatches closed off corridors now open to vacuum. The upper ship halves showed the yellow of chemical thrusters as they tried to regain maneuvering control.

Two dozen green laser beams struck the laser mounts on the top of each ship half, melting them. The half globe fragments shook under the fleet lasers. The pincer attack Jack had planned now overwhelmed the enemy ships.

“Incoming AV signal!” yelled Elaine, sounding surprised.

Before them appeared the image of a panda bear crossed with a grizzly. Only this grizzly had black fur with white stripes, three pink eyes across its forehead, a wide muzzle filled with white canines and shoulders like a wrestler’s. The Alien’s thick arms had hands with four claw-fingers. Behind the Gyklang lay four other panda-grizzlies, cut by shrapnel from some kind of onboard explosion. Like humans they bled red. This Alien snarl-talked.

“We Gyklang ask you, Human top predator, to spare our mates and cubs. We are your meat, yes. But spare our cubs.”

Jack saw the Alien was gasping between words. Clearly its air was thinning rapidly. And while it bled from a belly wound, it did not appear in danger of dying soon. Meanwhile the second surviving Gyklang ship fragment blew up under the impact of dozens of particle beams and lasers.

“Cease-fire all fleet ships!” He unlocked his restraint straps, grabbed Old Roy from where it lay next to his seat, and stood up with the Viking long sword pointed at the Alien. “You and your crew are my meat!” Jack said, recalling his encounter with the Gyklang at comet 2004 VN112. “We humans claim the ChikHo system as part of our Hunt territory! Your cubs and mate are my meat too.”

“Nooo!” screamed the panda-grizzly, its tone rising into frequencies beyond what Jack could hear. “My cubs and mate live on the island of Dutop. You allowed the escape of our colony ship in your Sol system. Why not allow our cubs and mates to leave this system?”

“All Gyklang still living on your ships are my meat. My dead meat. We eat
you
as we ate the crew of your ship
Sharp Roar!
” Jack paused, then gestured to Denise to activate their neutrino comlink. Looking down to his Tech panel, he tapped the controls for his ship’s dual railguns. Then he looked up and showed his teeth. “Death is coming for you! As for your colony down-planet, we will decide its fate after we speak with the Flock Leaders of the ChikHo. Perhaps we will spare them. Perhaps not.”

“We still fight you!” the Gyklang roared.

“You fought us. You failed. We claim meat ownership of you and your ships,” Matt said bluntly, knowing his neutrino-broadcast words were likely being heard by other Gyklang ships. “As for your air, our ball bearings will ventilate every habitable part of your ship.”

The yellow-orange light of the Gyklang AV signal dimmed. The grizzly slumped back onto a padded bench. “You spared ships of the Yiplak, Nasen and other Hunters of the Great Dark. Why not this ship?”

Maureen looked at him from the holo, her eyebrows lifted. Clearly she wanted to vaporize this Hunter. At the top of the front screen the other ship captains all listened to the Gyklang AV signal and Jack’s replies. He again showed his teeth to the grizzly.

“It was convenient to spare them,” he said. “No longer. We came to control our home world by constant fighting among ourselves. And by making food out of any lifeform on our planet. Now, you and yours will feed us. Any Gyklang who wish to live should leave this system now!”

The Gyklang signal faded away. But just before it did Jack saw the grizzly lift one paw-hand and lay its four claws atop a control panel.

On screen that ship fragment brightened into a yellow-orange globe as its fusion reactor lost its magfield containment. Likely due to the kill switch touched by the Gyklang leader.

“Jack,” called Elaine. “The graviton tracks of the Gyklang ships heading out-system have reversed course. Those 15 ships are heading back to NooHik. The six ships on comet disk patrol are moving toward the wounded ship.”

Well, that was that. Of the 27 Gyklang grav-pull ships operative in the system, 21 were still operational. Time to see what the locals thought of the battle above their world. “Denise, put out an AV broadcast of me and our fleet ships.” He waited a moment and faced the motion-eye above the screen. “Flock Leaders of the ChikHo, my name is Jack Munroe. My job is Father Leader of my fellow humans. Our flock of fighting ships is 23 strong! We are here to kill your Gyklang masters and to see if you and your people wish to join our Freedom Alliance!”

He gestured to his ComChief. “Cut off that AV broadcast. Send a Come-Back signal to Ignacio and Vigdis. Tell them to FTL jump to join us here above NooHik.”

“Signaling,” Denise said softly, the sound of her tap-tapping sounding loud to Jack. “Acknowledged by the
Badger
and the
Hawk
. They will be with us shortly.”

He looked to the captains whose ships had been hit by the Gyklang particle beams. “Gareth? Aashman? What’s the story on your ships?”

The leader of the Second Belter Fleet looked up, his forehead shiny with sweat. “Everyone’s alive. Angelique tells me Matthias’ suit was punctured by shrapnel when one of our deuterium oxide tanks blew up. Our medoc says he’s got a punctured kidney. She’s removing the fragment as we speak. Our mechbots and crew are sealing the hull ruptures.”

The brown face of Aashman looked grim. “One of my Sikh crewman was less fortunate. Samdīp Khalsa Singh was in our Lander, ready to head out on grav-pull salvage, when a particle beam sliced through that part of the
Mongoose
. He’s vapor. And we are going to need time to weld steel bars across the gaping hole the particle beam cut in our hull.” Behind the Hindu moved three bearded Sikh crewman in vacsuits, each wearing a blue turban under their helmet. Their expressions were sorrowful. The man who had taken the decoy role at their first battle with the Gyklang blinked quickly, as if emotion were about to overwhelm him. “Singh was an
amritdhari
of the highest level who always kept his
kes
clean and protected.”

Jack understood Aashman’s point, having asked about how a Hindu devotee of Vishnu had come to command a ship crewed only by Sikh men. His clean-shaven fellow captain had chosen to wear a red turban as a sign of being a lion protector, or
singh
, of his crewmates. And of those they chose to protect. Aashman had always shown respect for every Sikh custom. Which Jack would also do.

“Please know that the name of Samdīp Khalsa Singh will be added to the memorial stele at 253 Mathilde.” Jack’s gut churned from the loss of another human, a person with a family, a heritage and hopes of his own. While the
Mongoose’s
Sikh crewmen could have left their ship and stayed in the Asteroid Belt as free-will crew willing to serve another ship master, they had chosen to join his anti-predator crusade. Licking his lips, he waved to his Hindu ally. “Your ship will be guarded by other fleet ships in coming battles. Can you blip jump? Make FTL?”

“Yes!” the man said loudly, then winced as he realized his error. “Fleet Captain Jack, the
Mongoose
is able to fight in all future battles. Once we have the gap welded over with beams we can maneuver as needed.”

He nodded. “Understood.” Jack looked to the captain of the
Leopard
. “Captain Kasun Guardiya, please guard our ally while he is making repairs. We have two hours before further combat.”

The Sri Lankan gave Jack a folded palm salute. “We will guard our brave ally and his crewmen. May the Lord Buddha smile upon them.”

Jack saw the sensor image of his fleet gain two new red dots. Which meant that Ignacio and Vigdis had arrived.

“Incoming signal,” called Elaine. “From the planet below.”

The true-light image of the world NooHik moved to the left side of the front screen while Elaine’s sensor track of system emissions moved to the right side. Leaving the middle for the new AV broadcast.

A group of seven ChikHo ostriches took form. They stood in a line within an orange-lighted room. Based on their height, Jack thought four males and three females now fixed on him. To one side stood a black-feathered ChikHo, operating a pedestal panel. No one else was present in the large room, although woven tapestries hung from the curving walls. Images on the tapestries showed ChikHo battling yellow-skinned predators who resembled jaguars, based on their gold and black spots. Other images showed cities made up of large domes and elevated ramps that gave access to the domes. One image showed the long tube of a ChikHo ship heading for the white globe of their moon Sotop. The central ostrich lifted his short wing-hands and spoke.