Earth Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series 1) (30 page)

“Good. Elaine, put a max light filter on your scope. And darken the cabin’s portholes.”

Around him his orders were fulfilled. Above his Tech panel the holo of Maureen showed her with a sour expression. “Jack! She stole my fun!”

So detonating a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb was Maureen’s idea of fun? No wonder his grandpa Ephraim had liked her. Just what they did together during combat breaks, neither he nor his Mom knew. A situation Jack thought would be good to preserve, if only for his Mom’s peace of mind.

“There!” cried Elaine.

A 50 megaton thermonuclear explosion in space is a wonder to behold. And so different from an atmospheric blast. For one thing, all shapes are spherical. First comes the infrared heat shell that matches the interior temperature of the sun. Then comes the gamma and neutron radiation front, its shell showing purple and green sparkles as it strikes tiny stellar dust particles. Next comes the yellow-white of the total matter-to-energy conversion globe, which stretches out to a diameter of ten kilometers.

The detonation at 493 kilometers from the nearest colony ship would have no physical effect on any of the twelve ships. But its radiation barrage was a different matter. While the standard spaceship EMF field would deflect all charged particles, the neutrons and gamma rays produced by the gigantic blast would shoot right through any EMF field. Only dense hull plating and an outer shell of water would stop the rads from sleeting through the thousands of Aliens in Cold Sleep. Hopefully the on duty Alert crew in each ship had heard his broadcast and were also in protected mode.

“Jack!” yelled Max. “Look! Gravitational lensing around all twelve ships! But . . . it’s not the grav-pull lensing. It’s more like what the digitexts call an Alcubierre drive shell lensing. We . . . we are seeing the formation of pocket universes around each ship. Shortly they will disappear.”

Which they did, two seconds later. The oblong ship images blurred, showed nearby starfield images warping, then the twelve gravitational teardrops shot away on varied vectors. All headed out of Sol system. His heart thumped and his lips felt dry again. The thermonuke blast had done it!

“Congratulations Captain Jack!” called Kasun of the
Leopard
.

His other five ships said the same, with high excitement showing among some. Ignacio clapped hands loudly.

“Bravo! Bravo! Our matador defeats twelve bulls!”

Jack shuddered. Their three battles inside the Gathering Hall had been close enough to the real blood, real sweat and true danger that a Spanish matador used to face in the bull ring. Before the Unity outlawed the sport. Along with American football, Mongolian horse racing, and sport fishing worldwide.

The
Orca’s
Akemi looked at him intensely. “Captain Jack, our Schmidt scope says the surviving predator ships are dispersing from Sedna. They . . . they are also showing this weird gravitational lensing which your Max just called Alcubierre drive shell lensing.”

“Any ships still present above Sedna?” he asked Elaine and Akemi.

“None,” Akemi said, her tone flat.

“Same for me, brother,” Elaine said, her brown eyes showing the strain of Stage Two.

He nodded slowly. Then looked at the images of his six captains. “My allies, we now move to Stage Three. Captain Akemi, laser link our grav-pull drives and take us back to a low orbit above Sedna. Our emergence spot should be directly above the Entry Dome.”

“Jack,” called Max.

“Yes?” He turned to look back at his friend, ally and the man who had stood by him since before the Rizen attack.

Max’s face showed a grin. A big grin. “We can make one.”

“Make what?”

“A faster-than-light stardrive. Now that I’ve seen the Aliens use an Alcubierre drive shell lensing, I’m sure I can make the Rizen stardrive work for us. If we can get that Rizen ship shell back from the Unity.”

Jack grinned. “Well, we captured the son-of-a-bitch ship. We can tell the Deimos Yards to hand it over. But not until Stage Three is finished and we are heading home.”

“Yes!” cried Elaine and Denise in unison.

“You children!” called Maureen from her holo. “First things first. Take care of Menoma and his Sedna base. Then we can argue with the Unity over who owns what!”

Jack sobered. Maureen was all too right.

“To Sedna!”

CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

Their seven ships hung above Sedna a hundred kilometers out, with the Entry Dome now located mid-ways between light-rise and light-dark on the planetoid’s pockmarked surface. Jack quickly inspected the scope image of the reddish-brown ball. He saw no change in the methane ices and tholin sludge that had coated their boots going to and leaving from the dome. Briefly he wished they had gathered a few kilos of the tholin to feed the ship’s hydroponic garden. But that did not fit their tight schedule. Jack knew the Unity had likely sent a ship out their way, but at least it did not know about Sedna. Just 1999 DG8, where the thermonuke had exploded. Until the colony ship thermonuke blast.

“Captains, please stay alert for any sudden grav-pull blip jump arrival by any Alien. While it is great to see the orbitals empty except for ship debris, we have yet to detect the HikHikSot ship of Menoma.”

“Captain Jack,” called Júlia of the
Caiman
.

“Yes?”

“My ComChief and Drive Engineer have been working on that flat-topped comlink pedestal we salvaged from the Hackmot ship we boarded,” she said. “My ComChief says she thinks we will have it powered up and able to emit modulated neutrinos within a short time.”

“Excellent.” The ability to listen in on Alien com chatter was not something Jack had expected to come their way. While Max’s assertion that he could make the Rizen Alcubierre stardrive work, once they salvaged it from the hulk was encouraging, having access to neutrino communications right now could help their current efforts. “Let me know as soon as it is operational. I want to know what Menoma is saying to anyone else who may still be in-system.”

Elaine tapped her Pilot’s panel. “Good point, Jack. While all the local Aliens seem to be gone, surely there are some comet outposts whose Aliens are only just now learning about the departure of their colony ship.”

“We can take care of them!” said Denise loudly.

He smiled. Denise was shaping up nicely as a proto-commerce raider. “True, ComChief. But right now, first things first. Which is the ending of this base and the forced departure of Menoma and Howler and any other HikHikSot who were in their ocean habitat.”

On the image strip above the front screen, Ignacio raised his hand. “My captain, any chance we can stick around Sedna and salvage more grav-pull drives from the ship hulks out here? I count seventeen hulks that seem intact enough for their grav-pulls to have survived.”

Salvaging more grav-pull drives was a big temptation. But taking care of Sedna, and then any Unity ship sent their way, had to be first priority. “Maybe, Ignacio. Are you and your cousins willing to stay behind to salvage while the rest of the fleet heads Sol-ward?”

“Yes! We have plenty of air, water and deuterium-helium three fuel for the fusion drive. Our Lander is in fine shape. Shall we do so?”

“Let me think about it. Right now, Stage Three is pressing. Captains, attend to my AV broadcast.” Jack glanced back at Denise. “ComChief, now.”

“Channel Four is live for you, Captain Jack.”

He looked up at the motion-eye above the screen. “Menoma. Howler. Any other HikHikSot still present in the Gathering Hall, the habitat or present on the surface of Sedna, you have one minute to depart. After that, your base will be charged particles.”

Their geosync orbit above the Entry Dome held steady. None of the ship debris powered up. No one blip jumped in to attack them. The EMF receiver was silent, except for the normal background hiss of Jupiter’s radio emissions at 40 megahertz and lower, plus distant stellar microwave noise.

“ComChief Denise, shut off my AV broadcast. Combat Commander Maureen, prepare to launch our torp.” He tapped a code into his Tech panel, causing a microwave signal to head down to the Entry Dome. “Program the torp to home in on my MicroTracker signal at 37 kilohertz. Set for delayed detonation ten seconds after punch through on the dome.”

In the holo above his lap, Maureen brushed curls off her forehead. “Programmed. Launching. Max yield set.”

“All ships, set visual light filters in case the fusion ball breaks the surface!”

A brief shudder passed through Jack’s seat as the torp exited the ejector tube and curved downward. He followed the yellow-orange of the torpedo’s exhaust as it headed straight down, guided by the MicroTracker nodules he had left in the elevator tube. Wherever the tube was in the shaft that led down to the Gathering Hall and the ocean habitat, the torp’s armored nose would punch through the dome shell, through the tube compartment and then wait ten seconds. He had timed their descent from the surface down to the hall, and made a guess at the descent velocity of the elevator compartment. That guess said the cold ocean lay twelve kilometers below the hard ice shell surface of Sedna. The torp would explode either just above the hall, or on contact with liquid water if that happened sooner than the time delay he’d set.

“Detonation!” cried Maureen.

On the front screen the Entry Dome collapsed suddenly. Then black fissure cracks spread out from it in all directions. Next came blue water ice and purple methane ice bergs as the blast energy pushed upward kilometers of Sedna’s surface crust. Soon—

“Look!” cried Elaine, pointing.

On the screen a white waterfall rushed upward, as if someone had sliced off the top of a streetside water hydrant, something no one used in microgravity. But Jack had seen pictures of them, from his Grandpa’s vidcrystal record of Tennessee images.

“Elaine, do a spectroscopic analysis of that water vapor! Tell me if it contains any metallic components.”

“Analysis underway, Jack.” Elaine held silent a moment. “Yes! Filter spectrophotomery detects steel alloy vapor!”

Captain Akemi clapped hands in her image above the screen. “My
shogun
! Wonderful! The base of our enemies is destroyed!”

Relief flooded through Jack. He had been worried that the hall and habitat might have been mobile, like an Alien submarine, able to move about in Sedna’s subsurface ocean. Not so it seemed.

“Thank you all for your efforts to bring about this moment! Prepare for orbital departure. Vector target is comet 1999 DG8, as we discussed on our elevator ride. If the Unity has sent anything out this way, it will be at that comet by now.”

“Will the Unity try to signal us?” Max asked as he moved the Main Drive to Pinch mode and set-up for a fusion pulse departure from Sedna.

“Unlikely,” Jack said. “Elaine, how long will it take for the EMF rads of this detonation, and the earlier one at the colony ships, to reach Earth?”

“Uh, ten point six hours to reach Earth,” she said, tapping her Astrophysics panel. “But 1999 DG8 is much closer to Sedna. The rad signal will cross the 15 AU distance to the comet in about two hours.”

His sister was right. Any Unity ship sent their way would now be at that comet. And the two thermonukes they had just detonated would be a Come Hither signal guiding them to Sedna. Unless his fleet got there in time to block them.

“Max, cut back from Pinch mode. We have to get to that comet faster than fast. And the grav-pull drive is four times faster than your fusion drive.” He looked up at the six captains. “Captain Akemi, will you take the lead again, and transmit the grav-pull start by laser link to all our ships?”

“Yes, my
shogun
. How close do we arrive to the comet?”

The rad signal would be detected at 1999 DG8 before they got there, even with their fleet traveling at 80 percent of lightspeed thanks to the grav-pull drives. “Set emergence for one AU out from the comet. With immediate scope filters set for infrared and fusion drive emissions. I suspect any Unity ship at the comet will have set out for Sedna before we arrive.”

Ignacio waved wildly. “What about us, my captain? Do we stay and salvage or go with the fleet?”

Five ships plus
Uhuru
should be able to handle any kind of Unity warship. “Stay, good Ignacio, my brother. Salvage any gravity-pull drives you can find. Bury your crewman in the red snows of Sedna as you proposed. Oh, and have your medical crewman take imagery of all Alien bodies, along with body samples for your cold locker. Someone on 253 Mathilde will kiss you for grabbing that data.”

“Yes! We’re moving out now.”

Akemi held up three fingers. “Three seconds to grav-pull blip jump to this comet.”

“Maureen, secure whatever needs securing,” he said to the holo in front of him.