Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (4 page)

He nodded slowly. “Blodwen, you make sense. While the East and West coast elites of old America endorsed the Communitarian Unity, the South, Southwest and Midwest portions of America never liked it. Nor did Australia, Japan, South Africa, Israel and other nations that now exist as member states of the Unity.” He looked back to Hideyoshi. “Admiral, have your decryption people been able to access the NavTrack computers of the two frigate fragments? Do we know who sent those ships after us, what spaceport they left from and who told them about 253 Mathilde?”

The man turned grim. “We do. Just before everyone arrived here from the outer system, I got their decryption results. Those five ships took off from the South Pole Naval Academy base. There’s a training field there which we, uh, the Unity uses for pilot training.” Jack sympathized with the man’s painful admission that his old military school was the source of the attack. “Fleet Admiral Santiago Narváez gave the orders to travel to Mathilde and attack it. The source of the Mathilde data was not given in the net-posted orders in the NavTrack computers.”

Well, the new data was helpful in view of the dozens of spaceports scattered across Earth. “Admiral, does the Unity have a ship building factory at the South Pole? One able to construct the grav-pull drives used by those ships?”

“Yes.” The man paused and looked aside to his chief assistant Zhāng. “Both myself and the Fleet Commander were taken on trips to the factory while still students. So we could learn the interworking of ship drives, ship armaments, ship eco-controls and the intelligent computer systems used to integrate them all into a combat spaceship.”

Jack welcomed the news that at least one vital Earth target was now known. “But how did the Unity learn about Mathilde? Have the Unity Security Services infiltrated us on Ceres, or Vesta? Or elsewhere in the Belt?”

“Jack,” called Elaine from where she sat next to his Basque buddy Ignacio. “I think I have the answer to that.”

A chill went down his neck and back. How the hell could his sister know something that had been hidden from the Unity ever since the end of the First Belter Revolution in 2072? His tough sister, who had chosen a career as a cargo transport pilot and secondary work as a medoc, seemed troubled. Her amber eyes looked wet. “What’s your answer?”

“Cassie. And Howard.”

Damn!
He’d worried about his younger sister’s safety all during their star-roaming. But his worries had been focused on the danger from riots and civil strife. “Explain.”

She looked down, as if deeply sad, then took hold of Ignacio’s large hand. As if she needed his strength. She looked up and took a deep breath. “Her boyfriend Lieutenant Howard Goldin knew of Mathilde and its importance to our anti-Alien crusade. My guess is that Howard was, was . . . interrogated, or tortured, into revealing Mathilde as our base. And if he revealed that, there is no doubt he confessed to Cassie being your spy. And likely to her being our sister.”

Fuck!
The Unity’s effort to reclaim control over Sol system did not surprise him. They had taken his decision to leave Earth in their control as a license to mount a covert effort to retake control over all of humanity. But now, it seemed likely that Goldin was dead and his sister was being held captive on Earth. He hoped. “You’re right. Our people on Ceres and Vesta knew who the Unity loyalists were when we jailed former Governor Aranxis. Along with the Unity’s covert operatives. So it couldn’t be those people. This complicates things.”

His sister wiped her eyes, nodded and then laid her head on Ignacio’s burly shoulder. His Basque brother met his look. “My captain, it hurts me to say this. But your sister Cassandra may well be held as a defense against us attacking the South Pole Naval Academy.”

A human shield? That would explain why his parents had not heard from Cassie in months, and why she had not replied to his coded digitext message that he’d sent to her smart-talker phone. A hand touched his shoulder.

“Jack, she loves you,” Nikola said softly. “And she’s loyal to you, to us, to everyone on Mathilde. She may . . . may try to suicide before she can be used against you.”

Hollowness filled his gut. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. His head ached and his mouth went dry. The thought of losing spunky Cassie was almost too painful to bear. But Hideyoshi had coped with the death of four crewmen when the
Bismarck’s
belly laser pod had been vaporized by a neutral particle beam during their attack on the HikHikSot colony ships. And Ignacio had lost two of his cousins, Sabino and Milpeades, in the fight against Alien predators. If they could cope, so would he.

Jack looked to the leaders of his First Belter Fleet. “Captains Minna Kekkonen of the
Wolverine
, Ignacio Aldecoa of the
Badger
, Akemi Hagiwara of the
Orca
, Júlia Araujo of the
Caiman
, Aashman Dasgupta of the
Mongoose
and Kasun Guardiya of the
Leopard
, will you join me and our fellow fleets in ending Unity control over Earth? Will you help me bring the chance of true freedom and liberty to peoples too used to others making decisions for them?”

“Yes!” “
Hai
!” “
Bai
!” and similar agreements burst out from the men and women who had traveled light years into the predator-filled blackness of interstellar space. They had stood by him even when their fleet of nine ships was outnumbered by predator grav-pull ships. And they had shared beers, bourbon, cigars and steaks with him in between those deadly battles. Their loyalty was solid. As was the loyalty of Hideyoshi and his Mars fleet and Gareth’s own Second Belter Fleet. Well, their future course was set. Earth they would attack. Bureaucrats they would kill. And the factory that had built the ships which had nuke-bombed his home world would be vaporized.

“Captain Jack?” called his particle physicist, the Brit Archibald Wheeler. “When do we eat?”

Jack laughed, choked, coughed and laughed again. As did Nikola, Hideyoshi, Minna, Elaine and everyone gathered around their table. He fixed on the
Bismarck’s
boss. “Admiral, can your Auto-Chef feed us? Something better than soy steaks?”

The man who had renounced his Unity oath of allegiance in favor of Jack’s wild idea of attacking predatory Aliens showed relief, then a full grin. “Nope. But the cooks in the Mess Hall outside of this room can feed us. And I have a few bottles of bourbon and scotch that one of my ensigns found in a market on the Mathilde torus habitat. You want some?”

“Oh yes!”

Jack smiled at Nikola, who gave a sigh and looked less worried. She knew he would worry about the safety of his sister Cassie. But she also knew that once he set his mind to a course of action, nothing short of death would stop him. And nothing would. Not the bureaucrats of Earth. Not the Alien Hunters of the Great Dark. Not even the unknown nature of Alien peoples who might not even understand what liberty and freedom meant.

Well, once they had tamed Earth he would make his best effort to spread the Belter gospel of personal liberty, freedom of choice and independent thinking to every Alien he and his team would meet!

He looked down and began sawing into his rare steak, pretending to a confidence and assurance he knew was expected of him as fleet captain. Jack hoped those watching him would believe in his cause and in the necessity of taming Earth. Killing predator Aliens was one thing. Killing fellow humans was different. Soon he would learn how deep the loyalty of his partners ran.

CHAPTER THREE

The three fleets blip jumped into space just above Earth’s North Pole, an expanse of whiteness inhabited only by the nearly extinct polar bears, a few birds and fish of all sorts. While its oil resources had long ago been drilled into by various nations, no one lived atop the small year-round ice cap that floated atop the polar sea. As for their orbit two hundred kilometers above those icy blue waters, they were alone. For the moment. Various spysats shared their polar orbital vector, but nothing deadly. No doubt that would change once they drew near the equatorial regions. Jack thought that the automated mine fields were in various equatorial orbits, but the stealthy Hunter-Killer torps could move on their own and change orbits as they wished thanks to small onboard fusion pulse engines. He looked to the front screen of the Pilot Cabin, which was half-filled with the faces of 31 captains and one admiral.

“My allies, move into our Pinwheel Plasma Torch formation but with our fusion drives off for the moment,” he said over their laser comlink, repeating what had been agreed on at their fleet battle conference. “We need Higgs Disruptor ships preceding us, following us and to either side of our formation in case we are attacked by mobile armaments. Admiral, please take the lead in our orbital track. Gareth, please aim your Higgs Disruptor to our stern. Captain Heloise Beauchamp of
Ferocious
, please take port position. Captain Colin Forsyth of
Marshal Georgy Zhukov
, you have the starboard side.” He noticed the screen’s true-light image of Earth now grew a split-screen to one side that showed their orbital track and every ship’s position. “Everyone, stay alert! We could face ICBMs launched from anywhere on the surface below, or there may be some stealthed laser platforms that share our polar vector.”

“Moving to the head of our formation,” said Hideyoshi in the calm, professional manner that Jack envied.

Gareth, his thick black beard half-filling his bubble helmet, gave Jack a thumbs-up gesture. “Covering our rear!”

“
D’accord
,” said Heloise, a young Belter commerce raider who had spent the after briefing time chatting up Denise about her family, the teen’s life on Charon and their earlier battles against Alien predators like the Hackmot.

“As you command,” grunted Forsyth, an older Australian with twenty years of Unity Space Force service. He had been one of the first in the Deimos fleet yard to join Hideyoshi’s call to form a Mars fleet.

Jack looked past Maureen’s empty Combat seat to Elaine at her Pilot/Navigator seat. “What does your Sensor panel show? Any sign of active graviton emissions? Any moving neutrino sources? Any sign of offensive sats?”

She shook her head. “IR, UV, gamma ray, x-ray, neutrino and other EMF emissions are all natural. No gravitomagnetic signals from grav-pull drives. We are passing over the Svalbard archipelago and will hit the Scandinavian coast in three minutes. Looking ahead, surface neutrino emissions match one-to-one to fusion power plants in northern Sweden and Norway. No sign of fusion pulse ship drives anywhere within this hemisphere. Though the spysats we and
Bismarck
launched on arrival will soon let us know what’s happening on the North American side of Earth.”

Jack looked back at Denise in her seat in the middle of the cabin. The woman was focused on her neutrino comlink and standard radio/laser comlink panels. “ComChief, any active AV broadcasts by Geneva? Or Brussels? Or by the Dictat himself?”

She squinted, then shook her head. “Nope. Just the usual early morning talk-talk shows, advertising for the newest home computer system, and various types of fake contest shows.” She looked up, her manner assured and calm. “Do I call someone for you?”

That was the question. Should they just go ahead and attack the spaceports that passed under their orbital track, like the former NATO launching base at Chièvres Air Base field just east of Casteau, Belgium, or talk first to the Dictat in the hope he would see reason? Jack looked away from Denise and to the holo of a busy Maureen that floated above his Tech panel. “Maureen, what active spaceports lie between Norway and Geneva?”

The woman looked up from her Battle Module panels. “There is one we are just now passing over. It’s the
Andøya
Rocket Range on Spitsbergen Island, within the Svalbard group. But the island has been demilitarized for nearly two centuries. Only non-lethal rockets are launched from this site.”

No need to hit that location. “What about further south. Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and so forth?” he asked.

“Well, a minor launch site is located at Kiruna, Sweden in its northern Lapland province. The
Esrange
is affiliated with the old European Space Agency. It launches sounding rockets but mostly does space research,” she said, looking down at one of her panels. “No evidence of orbital launches or anti-satellite launches.”

“Good. We’ll give them a pass. What about further south?”

“Captain Jack,” interrupted Max from his Drive Engineer seat to the right of Denise. “All fleet ships are in pinwheel formation. I’m keeping the fusion drive at Pinch Mode. So we can emit an exhaust flare within seconds. If needed.”

Jack looked back at his buddy, who seemed happy to have Blodwen seated behind him. Archibald, sitting next to Blodwen, had his eyes closed and seemed to be sleeping in his vacsuit. Nikola, seated just behind Jack, gave him a smile. “Thanks! We may need to go active on that as we get closer to the equator.” He turned back and focused on Maureen, who looked impatient. “Yes?”