Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (5 page)

“Nothing until we pass just east of the Chièvres Air Base launch field in Belgium. That is a known launch site for fusion pulse ships, anti-satellite attack rockets and ICBM spysats.” She looked at him, her expression grim. “Plus there is the Brussels bureaucracy of the Unity. Located in downtown Brussels at several locations like
Rue de la Loi, Espace Léopold
and
Avenue de Beaulieu
.”

“Good.” He looked back to patient Denise. “To answer your question, we attack first.” In the holo Maureen gave a fist-pump. “We will take out the Brussels rules makers and the Chièvres launch field. Then we talk with Dictat Katsaros as we vector over Geneva.” He paused. “However, I will make a global AV broadcast right after we attack Brussels and Chièvres. Be prepared.”

“Acknowledged. Preparing.”

Jack tapped on his Tech panel that lay atop his lap, bringing online the Tactical Display of local space and the Fire Control tap spots for his ship’s dual railguns and side-mounted HF laser pods. While he would leave the Battle Module with its neutral particle beam and antimatter emitters to Maureen, he had every intention of joining into any combat that came their way. He glanced at his sister. Who wore a yellow headband over her thick brown hair. The woman’s sober warning that their sister Cassie was likely being held as a human shield was not distracting her from being busy with her Sensor and NavTrack panels. Aside from a brief wave at the front screen image of Ignacio, she had not allowed personal feelings to affect her duty. Which, he reminded himself, was exactly how he should behave during this confrontation with the rulers of nine billion humans.

“We’re approaching Brussels,” Elaine called over their vacsuit comlink.

Jack faced his ship allies. “All ships, go to Auto-Track and Defend status! We do not use thermonukes against ground targets. My ship, the
Dragon
, Zhāng’s destroyer
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
and Helena’s ship
Grizzly
will use our antimatter beams to take out the Brussels and Chièvres sites. Everyone else, monitor our orbital tracks for incoming mine fields, laser platforms and Hunter-Killer torps!”

Maureen grinned at him from her holo, her manner that of a mother tiger about to take out a threat to her cubs. “I’ve got the Maelbeek, Charlemagne, Berlaymont and Triangle buildings in my GPS sights! Which takes care of the Unity Council and Unity Commission offices. The other ships can handle other parts of downtown Brussels and Chièvres!”

Jack nodded to his Belter veteran, then fixed on the ship captains he’d named. “Gareth, Zhāng and Helena, you heard our tiger mom. We need two ships to focus on the Chièvres Air Base and its launch facilities. Who wants it?”

“Me!” cried Helena, her Slav face flushed with emotion.

“My ship already has those facilities in our Schmidt scope,” said Zhāng calmly, as behind her image moved a half dozen men and women wearing Mars red combat vacsuits. “The base is now launching anti-satellite interceptor rockets!”

Jack nodded to the woman, then fixed on Gareth. “That leaves you and me to extract the Unity bureaucrats from within the center of Brussels.” He looked to Hideyoshi and the other captains. “Note they are attacking first. Maybe they have a guilty conscience. Hideyoshi, Minna, Aashman, Júlia, Kasun, Ignacio and Akemi, take care of the incoming rockets. You folks with the Higgs Disruptors, activate them now! Sweep our vector clear of any stealthed platforms. All other ships, use your lasers and particle beams against any incoming threats!”

“Sweeping!” called Hideyoshi and the other Higgs captains. Six yellow beams with wide footprints sprang out to all sides of the fleet.

“Firing,” muttered Maureen.

The front screen grew a third split-screen, this one showing their own Schmidt scope images of high-rise buildings lying north of Leopold Park and west of Cinquantenaire Park. Elaine put blinking red spots on the four buildings targeted by Maureen.

Yellow-white globes of flame blossomed atop the roofs of the four buildings, then spread outward as the total energy release of matter-to-energy caused by the black thread of their antimatter stream ignited four small suns along the
Rue de la Loi
. He blinked. The destruction was total and instant. No doubt nearby buildings had blown-out windows, surface cars and buses were turned over and any pedestrian within three hundred meters had been knocked to the ground. Still, it was better than killing the million plus population of the ancient city.

“Firing also,” called Gareth from the
Dragon
. “Angelique has targeted the
Justus Lipsius
, Residence Palace and the EU Council Building.” South of Maureen’s targets there loomed a massively large yellow-white globe of flame. It filled the space between the
Rue de la Loi
and the
Steenweg op Etterb
avenue. Nearby buildings swayed in the air blast caused by the black antimatter thread, while the yellow and orange of small fires sprang up around the main blast as the infrared heat glow of the blast ignited flammable materials.

“Hitting Chièvres!” yelled Helena as the
Grizzly’s
black antimatter beam joined with the beam from Zhāng’s ship
Nimitz
.

A close-up true-light image of the spaceport filled another split-screen. Two fusion pulse spaceships standing at their lift-off gantries, plus four anti-satellite rocket launchers, became engulfed in yellow-white flame as the antimatter beams turned all matter they touched into pure energy with one hundred percent efficiency. A nearby hangar and an office building caught the edges of the antimatter flare and became one with a kilometer-wide ball of flame. They heard no sound from the ground level strikes of course. Just as there was no sound emitted by the six green laser beams fired at the oncoming anti-sat rockets launched from Chièvres. But in each case destruction was total.

“Four Hunter-Killer torps just went to fusion thrust!” yelled Minna from the
Wolverine
. “Targeting them!”

Minna’s blue neutral particle beam reached out to the western horizon of their orbital vector, slicing through the silvery sparkle of a thermonuke torp four hundred klicks away.

Blue beams from the ships of Kasun, Aashman and Ignacio also struck out, killing the remaining torps.

“Target status!” called Jack as he touched his Tech panel’s Fire Control to fire two barrels of steel ball bearings ahead of their vector toward Geneva. He figured the bearings would take out any mobile mines missed by Hideyoshi’s Higgs beam.

Maureen looked at him from her holo. “All offices of the Unity bureaucracy in Brussels are  now ionized electrons. Searching for possible mobile ICBM launch sites in Germany.”

Zhāng nodded abruptly. “The same for Chièvres. All offensive rocket launchers and the two fusion drive ships that were preparing to launch are now vaporized. All base control facilities are likewise gone.”

Jack scanned the split-screen showing Elaine’s sensor output. Their fleet of 33 ships was alone in space for the moment, with no sign of offensive sats within a thousand kilometers. He looked back to Denise. “Set me up for a global AV broadcast. Link into the worldwide internet. And override the geosync AV sats with our signal so everyone with a home or office receiver gets our signal.”

“Done, Captain Jack,” she said, tapping on her comlink panel, then resumed chewing on one red braid.

Feeling as nervous as Denise, Jack unsnapped his seat restraint locks, stood up and faced the motion-eye above the front screen.

“People of Earth, I am Captain Jack Munroe, leader of the multi-world fight against Alien carnivores who want to make the solar system their Hunt territory, and treat humanity as serfs suitable only for service work and table snacks.” He gestured back toward Denise. “View this AV imagery of the Nuuthot people of the star Epsilon Eridani as they are attacked and eaten by the Krisot predators! My allies and our ships killed the Krisot avians and returned Eridani to the control of its native peoples, the Nuuthot primates. Do not believe the claim that humans can be junior partners in an interstellar culture where only predator Aliens travel star-to-star! Humans must never be the slaves of Aliens!”

“Captain Jack,” called Denise. “The geosync sat that serves North America has gone dead. It killed itself. Switching to a nearby geosync sat controlled by the Russian Federation.”

Jack leaned forward in his vacsuit. “Our people and our ships come from the Asteroid Belt, Mars and the Moon. We stopped the HikHikSot Aliens when former Dictat Maathias sought to sell out Earth to those Aliens. But now, the Unity Space Force has attacked one of our Belter worlds with thermonuke torps, in violation of the Fourth Protocol of the Concord of Mars.” He paused, wanting the viewers of his broadcast to track with his points. “That attack was approved by Dictat Lykourgos Deimos Katsaros and ordered by Fleet Admiral Santiago Narváez of the South Pole Naval Academy. We hold them responsible for using thermonukes against human settlements. So we have destroyed the Unity offices in Brussels. But the individual nations of the Unity can break free of this terrible regime that wants you to be the servants of interstellar predators! Choose a return to personal freedom and liberty! Reclaim control over your national destiny! The free people of Sol system will welcome you as partners in defending humanity from interstellar cannibals!”

He gestured to Denise to cut off the AV broadcast. Turning, he walked back to his seat. “Any sign of chatter about this on the worldwide web? The NewTube? On business intranets?”

She peered at her comlink panels. “Yes! Five different internet talk shows have now switched to debates over your broadcast. They are live events, not recorded. And the business nets in Asia, Europe and North and South America are all chattering about the effect of our attacks on global and interplanetary trade.”

“Good!” He sat down in his Tech seat and relocked his straps. Tapping his Tech panel he called up the Fire Control touch points for the railguns and lasers. “It’s time to complete—”

“Incoming!” yelled Maureen from the holo above Jack’s panel. “Anti-sat missiles launched at us from southern Germany! From the former NATO bases at Ramstein, Stuttgart and Hohenfels. They’re approaching at one-fifth planetary escape velocity.”

Jack’s panel showed what Elaine now added to the front screen. Yellow lines that were the approach vectors for twelve missiles launched from the three bases. They were still a hundred kilometers below them but coming on fast.

“Everyone! Fire lasers! Those missiles could be nuke-tipped! Gareth, back us up with a wide Higgs footprint!”

The true-light image of the Earth below them suddenly filled with green laser streaks, blue particle beams and then a wide yellow beam emitted by the
Dragon’s
Combat Node.

“Nine dead!” called Elaine anxiously. “Ten! Eleven . . . yes! Twelfth one dead. Just thirty klicks below us. No warhead explosions.” She looked at Jack, her expression worried.

He sighed. “All ships, target practice time. Use your antimatter beams to destroy those three bases. Take out everything that stands above ground!”

“Firing!” Maureen grinned maniacally and added the
Uhuru’s
antimatter thread to the 32 other black beams going downward.

Yellow-white light glared from three spots in southern Germany, rising up through the snow-white cumulo-nimbus clouds like three thermonuke mushrooms. Only there was no radioactive fallout from their antimatter strikes. It was a point he had stressed at the fleet battle conference, that there was to be no thermonuke use against the surface of Earth. Their battle was with the Unity, not with the civilians of their home world.

“Entering the space above Switzerland,” Elaine said, sounding relieved.

“Denise, give me an AV link to the Dictat’s private office. Break through any calls he might be making.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “Autonomous, locate the AV frequency for the office of Dictat Katsaros, Geneva, Switzerland. Override any outside signal and project AV imagery and sound on the front screen.”

“Executing,” said the impersonal voice of the expert system computer that ran most functions aboard the
Uhuru
. “Accessed. Displayed.”

An image of a black-haired, muscular man of swarthy skin tone and irritated manner looked at them from behind a standard executive desk. The office occupied by the well-dressed man was located in Building S of the
Palais des Nations
Unity headquarters at the north end of Geneva. According to Elaine’s sensor backtracking of the Come-Back signal.

“Who dares to break into my private calls!” the man said in guttural French, which Autonomous automatically translated into Belter English. “You! You pirate! You will pay—”

“Shut up,” Jack said, keeping partial attention on the Tactical Display above his panel that tracked any incoming attackers.

The clean-shaven man shut his mouth, but the man’s brown eyes glared at Jack. The he started up again. “You are the pirate Jack Munroe. Well, we captured your two spies and found out what we needed to know. You Belter rebels will—”

“How do you wish to die?” Jack asked, raising one hand to the Fire Control screen on his Tech panel. “By antimatter? By laser? By orbital bombardment like we offered your predecessor, Dictat Maathias?”