Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (16 page)

His fellow captains nodded, gestured agreement or waved compliance with his orders.

“Vector to planet six is laid in on my NavTrack,” called Elaine. “Fleet ships are in laser time-lock synchrony. Drive Engineer Max, initiate our joint blip jump!”

“Initiating,” called Max.

Ahead, the front screen images of space, planets, stars and his fellow captains blurred, blurred again, then went jagged from the gravitational lensing that always preceded their use of the gravity pull space drive. By external reference they now moved at eighty percent of light speed. They were now inbound, aiming for a gas giant the size of Neptune. A planet that likely had protected the system’s fifth world from frequent bombardment by asteroids and comets. The way Jupiter had protected Earth during its 3.8 billion years of life’s evolution. But the debris disk of Tau Ceti had ten times the amount of asteroids and comets as were present in Sol system’s asteroid belt and Kuiper Belt. According to a backgrounder that Nikola had given him during their Alcubierre transit to a sun that was a near twin of Sol.

Whether its people were a twin of humanity remained to be seen.

CHAPTER TEN

Jack’s fleet arrived three hundred thousand kilometers out from planet six. For which he gave thanks as soon as he saw the eighteen small moons that circled the world Cold Gases. While most gas giants they had seen in their prior star visits had multiple moons, like Sol’s gas giants, the nature of those moons varied greatly. Worlds like Europa with thick ice shells overlying oceans heated by internal rocky cores were fairly rare. Most gas giant moons were either like Jupiter’s Io, torn apart by gravitational tides from its giant neighbor, or they were ice-covered rock balls like Neptune’s Triton, Larissa and Proteus. In the case of Cold Gases, it had three rings made up of ice particles, with eight tiny moons orbiting within those rings. The blue world of Cold Gases was a near duplicate of Neptune in its proportions of hydrogen, helium, methane and gas ices. The true-light image of planet six and its orbital denizens was now joined by laser link images of his 22 fellow captains.

Elaine inhaled deeply. “Our fleet is close to the orbital track of the planet’s twelfth moon,” she said. “It presently leads us by a million kilometers. No other natural object lies closer than that moon.” She paused, looking down at her panels. “Sensor imagery going up on the front screen. Stellar wind from Tau Ceti is modest and consists of charged particles moving slowly against us. Radio emissions are coming from planet seven, which is a Saturn twin. All other x-ray, gamma ray, UV and IR emissions are of natural origin. Uh, my neutrino sensor tracking of the five other Melagun fusion ships show them moving between planet four and their world of Home.” Jack focused on the front screen image of EMF sources recorded by Elaine’s sensors. “There are three tiny IR spots moving across the face of Cold Gases. My guess is these are spysats released by the Melagun space ship.”

“Thank you, Pilot.” He faced his allies. “Well, they surely know we are here now, even if they don’t have gravitomagnetic sensors. The orbit of
Polar Ice
is lower than ours, at 43,000 kilometers above Cold Gases. Which is below the innermost ring and all moons. It should come round to our side of the planet within thirty minutes. Sooner if they light their fusion drive.” Jack gave them a thumbs-up gesture, even though his vacsuit glove partly hid the gesture. “The
Uhuru
is descending to match the orbital track of the Melagun ship. Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto is in command of the fleet during my absence.” He fixed on the Asian elder. “Admiral, keep our fleet and our people safe! And please put out some spysats of our own.” Jack looked rearward. “Max, take us out of Pinch Mode and move us down on fusion pulse.”

His buddy reached up to the Main Drive Module that had lowered from the cabin’s ceiling. He tapped several places, then nodded within his helmet. “Accelerating.”

Jack felt the push against his back of one gee thrust-accel. With constant thrust they would make the lower orbital track within twenty minutes. He tapped on his Tech panel and brought up its Tactical Display. He had moved the Weaponry program to it from the armrest panel. While Maureen would handle their antimatter and neutral particle beamers from her Battle Module, he would manage the dual railguns on their ship’s spine and the two hydrogen-fluorine laser pods on the port and starboard sides of his ship. Jack gestured to Denise.

“ComChief, please broadcast my image and message toward the world Cold Gases. With auto-translation into Melagun speech,” he added.

“Of course,” said their too grown up nineteen year-old, sounding as if she were a seasoned space veteran instead of a refugee student of Animal Ethology and Behavioral Ecology who, long months ago, had stowed away on the first incarnation of Jack and Max’s ship. “Motion-eye is activated. Begin your message whenever you wish.”

Jack unsnapped his restraint locks, pushed aside the Tech panel and stood up. Wearing his red and white-striped vacsuit, he faced the front screen’s motion-eye. Looking at the blue haze atmosphere of Cold Gases, the white arcs of its ring systems and the small white half-disks of its larger moons, he raised one hand with palm facing outward.

“Greetings to Guide Benaxis of the Melagun people of the world Home,” he said. “My name is Jack Munroe. My title is fleet captain. My job is that of Guide to my people. I belong to a bipedal species who live around the distant star Sol, some twelve light years away from your home star.” He paused, thinking through his options. “We call ourselves humans. Like you Melagun we have spouses and children. We live in homes similar to your buildings. We engage in games of competition similar to your boulder-pushing event. And while we dominate all life on the planet of our birth, we accept that we live within an eco-system of many lifeforms. Just as you Melagun are now discovering that you live in a universe with other space-traveling lifeforms.” Jack gestured to his rear. “Behind me is my mate Nikola, who is an astronomer. My female siblings are also with me. They are Elaine and Cassie. Other humans that you see in this image belong to my herd of friends and allies. Like you, we work together to make possible our travel across the dark spaces between the stars.” He paused, thinking how best to wrap up. “As you can see by your sensors and satellites, we humans arrived here in twenty-three spaceships. We came with so many ships because there are interstellar predators out in the Great Dark, people who would conquer your star system and make a meal of your people. We stopped that from happening to our home system of Sol. We came here to warn you of this danger. But if you tell us to leave your star system, we will leave, never to return. Please respond.”

He looked aside to helmeted Denise. “ComChief, put that on a repeating loop. I suspect their spysats will receive my message and pass it along to
Polar Ice
. We will see how these people respond to my information and offer.” Jack walked back to his Tech station seat, sat down and strapped in. He pulled his panel over his lap, touched on the holo that appeared above it, and nodded at his Belter veteran. “Combat Commander Maureen, unless we are fired upon, please do not fire your weapons until I order it. However, your tactical guidance is always welcome.”

Their grandma with short black curls peered at him from within the holo. Her gray eyes looked down at her Fire Control panel, then up to him. “Your talk was a start. Cost us nothing. We’ll see how these giant hippos react to the fact that interstellar predators exist. And whether they think we are those predators.”

Jack grimaced, sighed, then sat back in his seat, his eyes fixed on the true-light images of the world Cold Gases and his fellow captains. Who, like his crew, wore vacsuits, helmets and were at Combat Alert status. While his ship could blip jump away from any solid weapon attack, a laser or particle beam attack would be known only by its arrival in the vicinity of his ship. Or by its impact on the
Uhuru
. He hoped this First Contact with a juvenile Alien species did not become violent. That would ruin any chance of making an alliance with them. But if this contact failed, there were dozens of other juvenile Alien species they could contact before raiding one or two subject people systems for grav-pull drives.

A tap on his shoulder drew him out of his musing. “Jack, here.”

A water bottle appeared over his right shoulder. He grinned. Nikola knew him too well by now. The fact he always got thirsty during any Alien contact or space battle was no secret to her. Jack grabbed the bottle, tilted it, and pressed it against the feeder tube at his helmet ring. He pulled the feeder tube into his lips and sucked hard. Icy cold water filled his mouth. He swallowed, sucked again, and swallowed. Only then did he realize the fast-beating of his heart was slowing down.

“Thank you, good lifemate.”

“
De nada
.”

Conversational Spanish was just one of the many ways Belters chatted with each other. Finger-talk worked best when in a strange or noisy place. Radio always worked. And someone who offered you water, food, air and a sleeping bag in their habdome was a friend indeed. He settled into his seat.

“Anyone got some lively music we can put on the ship’s comlink?” Jack said, hoping he had guessed right.

“Yes!” yelled Archibald from his Physics station seat at the far back of the cabin. “How about
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
by the Andrews Sisters?”

Jack winced. Songs from the World War II period of the last century had been popular among the research scientists and their families at Charon station. To him, they were a bit ancient. He much preferred the songs of the early Rock Era.

“How about a Grateful Dead song?” he tossed out.

Laughter sounded from Elaine, Denise, Nikola, Blodwen and Cassie. “How about
Whiskey Hangover
by Godsmack?” Nikola said between chuckles. “It’s at least from this century.”

“We guys surrender to your fixation on Hard Rock Metal.”

The women laughed more.

A thumping beat filled the Pilot Cabin and the loud voice of vocalist Sully Erna filled Jack’s ears. He winced. But he endured. Turning off his vacsuit comlink would be obvious to everyone. Anyway, it could not last longer than a half hour. The Melagun ship would come over the horizon of Cold Gases by then.

Jack found himself counting the minutes.

♦   ♦   ♦

“Melagun ship has just come over the horizon of Cold Gases,” Elaine said hurriedly. “Got it on my sensors. Putting up a Schmidt true-light image of it up front.”

Jack joined his crewmates in scanning the silvery-white image of the Melagun spaceship. It was different than the usual cigar shape, disk shape or other shapes they had recorded for Alien species.

“Looks like a skinny pyramid,” Cassie said from the rear.

“It’s big,” Blodwen said, her tone thoughtful. “Course they are big people. My guess is that their males are the size of an Earth hippo with the females hitting the size of a large pony.”

Jack inspected the ship’s shape.
Polar Ice
did indeed resemble a skinny pyramid. Except its shape was conical. That said, there were seven circular modules stacked one atop the other. Four small square boxes were located at its middle. At the base of the ship were coil-like tubes that ran around the bottom unit. He suspected they were magfield coils that focused the fusion pulse exhaust the same way every Earth ship’s magfield coils worked. There was no plasma flame showing at the moment. Just a conical layer cake of modules stacked one atop the other. He saw no habitat ring for producing artificial spin-gee gravity like the old
Uhuru
had had. Which meant either the Melagun coped with micro-gee weightlessness, while running their main drive at three gees of thrust to give brief moments of onboard gravity like that at Home, or they had their own version of artificial gravity. He recalled the image of Benaxis from the comet vidcast. The Alien’s head and upper body were all that showed, with no floating. Course it could have been strapped into a bench seat the same way his crew was strapped in even with the one gee gravity provided by the grav-pull drive. Well, if the Guide or captain for the
Polar Ice
replied to his broadcast, they would learn the answer.

“Distance from us is 120,000 kilometers,” Maureen said from the holo above Jack’s Tech panel. “Their orbital vector velocity is the same as ours. About 20,000 klicks per hour. Enough to maintain a natural orbit above Cold Gases. And those four boxes could be weapons nodes.”

He looked up at the vid images of Hideyoshi and 21 captains. They orbited 260,000 kilometers above the
Uhuru
. While there was a slight time delay in their receipt of the laser tightbeam AV vidcast from his ship, they could respond quickly to any emergency.