Freedom Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series Book 3) (6 page)

“What do you want?” Katsaros said, gesturing to two women assistants to leave his presence.

“Answers,” Jack said, lowering his gloved hand. “Why did you send five ships to attack one of our Belter habitat asteroids? And why is Earth trying to reclaim control of Sol system, when your own Unity Congress passed the law you wrote that abandoned such control?”

The man grimaced. “That law was invalid. Passed under deadly threat. The Unity represents all humans! It was our duty to reclaim system control and seek a peaceful agreement with the Aliens you keep killing!”

Jack felt his patience growing thin. “Do you doubt the AV broadcasts we’ve made? Of multiple predator species hunting and killing intelligent beings in other star systems? Then eating their corpses?”

The man shrugged, the thin white lines of his formal suit creasing slightly. “We believe the broadcasts. But humanity cannot defy an interstellar culture that has controlled the Orion Arm for three thousand years! It’s madness to try that! Best for Earth and all humans to reach an understanding with these Aliens who have come to our system.”

“Oh?” Jack said, gesturing to Denise to continue recording their discussion. “Do you mean an understanding that includes yearly culling of millions of humans to provide meat protein to Aliens? An understanding that allows Aliens to plant a colony on Earth, perhaps taking over Australia? Or Madagascar? Tell me, why should humanity become serfs to Alien masters?”

The man’s expression went politician blank. He sat back in a chair that automatically matched his body shape. “The Unity has ended all wars on Earth. There are no more mass famines, unlike earlier this century. Food, water, shelter and education are provided to all peoples of Earth. If a few humans must die to preserve peace, to allow us access to Alien technology, so be it.”

Jack held back from sending a thermonuke torp down to vaporize the man who felt it was his right to decide who among Earth’s peoples should live and who should die at the teeth of Aliens. “And the ships you sent against us? Why pick a fight you cannot win?”

Fury filled the man’s face. “You pirates of the Asteroid Belt are troublemakers from antiquity! You deserve to be killed, or tamed to civilized behavior. If we had had more gravity-pull drive ships, we would have sent them all against you!”

It was enough. “One last question. Will you and the Unity surrender all power to us? And to the individual nations of Earth?”

“Never!” The man slammed a beefy fish against the solid oak top of his executive desk.

Jack smiled. “Is the Unity Congress in session? The web internet says this morning was the start of a full conclave.”

Puzzlement showed on the man’s swarthy face. “Yes. The Congress always meets in full panoply in the first week of September. That has been the practice for decades. Why?”

“ Then, in the few seconds you have yet to live, you may wish to advise your fellow politicians to say their prayers to whatever deity, beyond money and power, they believe in.” He looked back at Denise. “Shut off the link.”

“Shut down, Captain Jack,” the young woman said, her tone sounding normal despite her awareness of impending events. “The whole session has been recorded to the ship’s Library computer.”

“Good. Thank you.” He looked to the images of his allies. “Admiral, captains, the Unity had their chance to surrender. Their Dictat has refused my request. It is time to end their rule. Join your antimatter beams with mine to take out every building occupied by the Unity Congress and their staff!”

“
D’accord
!” “
Hai
!” “Will do!” and other agreements sounded from Hideyoshi, Minna, Gareth, Zhāng, Ignacio and every other fleet captain.

Jack looked at the holo image of Maureen. Whose expression was sober, not eager, not impatient. “Combat Commander O’Dowd, list for me and our allies the buildings that compose the Unity Congress in Geneva.”

The woman’s expression went Irish somber as she looked down at her Tactical Display panel in the Battle Module. “The Unity Congress is located in the New Building, Library, old
Palais des Nations
core structure, Building D, Building S and in the nearby
Musée Ariana
. They are surrounded by the
Parc de l’Ariana
and the Botanical Garden that separates them from the shore of Lake Geneva.”

Jack nodded to the woman who understood that some civilians, even some children, might die in the impending attack. She was a grandma after all. But she was also a blooded battle veteran of the First Belter Rebellion. “All ships, fire antimatter at those buildings and the park area until the waters of Lake Geneva fill the landscape. Now!”

The true-light image of the ancient city of Geneva expanded in the ship’s scope view to a size large enough to show the roofs of the buildings that made up the Unity Congress. He gave thanks that the headquarters of the International Red Cross lay far enough away that its people should survey the air blast and heat wave generated by their attack.

“Firing!” cried Maureen.

Thirty-two other voices echoed her.

The middle of the front screen showed thirty-three black threads instantly reach down from his combined fleets to impact on the buildings named by Maureen. And on the landscape between them. The total conversion of matter to energy happens very quickly. And the oxygen in the air only added to the fury of Hades unleashed on a part of Geneva.

Pine trees toppled a kilometer away. Buildings closer to the blast zone swayed in the air blast generated by the total matter-to-energy conversion that now happened, bringing a small sun to rest atop a once beautiful part of the ancient city. Buses overturned on the nearby
Route de Ferney
and
Chemin de l’Imperatrice
, while trains in the marshaling yard south of the blast zone showed yellow flames on their wooden bodies as the infrared heat wave scorched or incinerated all matter within a hundred meters of the blast edge. The yellow-white mushroom flame only died when the blue waters of the nearby lake rushed into the vaporized cavity that now marked the spot where once hundreds of bureaucrats and politicians had run the affairs of Earth.

Jack looked to Elaine. “Give me a vector to put us above the South Pole Naval Academy. No need to stay in this orbital. We can blip jump there in a few moments.”

“Done. The NavTrack vector is laid in and shared with the rest of the fleet.” His sister looked his way, her manner calm, professional and with no sign of her worry for their sister Cassie.

The stars outside began to blur as gravitational lensing bent their photons.

CHAPTER FOUR

The fleets left grav-pull moments later, leaving Jack to stare at the massive white continent of Antarctica, fifth largest land mass on Earth. While mostly covered in massive ice sheets, their target was located in the McMurdo Dry Valleys at the foot of the Transantarctica Mountains, a short helitack trip from the old American McMurdo Station on Ross Island. The front screen image expanded as Nikola worked the adaptive optics CCD imagery of their ship’s Schmidt scope. The screen image now focused in on two ice-free, parallel valley systems separated by a partly ice-free ridge line. To either side of the valleys lay the ice-covered peaks of the Transantarctica range. The South Pole Naval Academy consisted of six buildings, all located in a valley area that split the central ridge line. A text overlay from Nikola labeled that spot as Bull Pass. A spaceport field and hangar sat next to a freshwater lake not far from the academy buildings. The label for that area said Wright Valley and Lake Vanda. He looked up at the screen images of his allies.

“Admiral Hideyoshi, please expand on what we are seeing.”

The man, seated before a curved assemblage of control panels on the Command Bridge of the
Bismarck
, looked aside at a repeater screen which showed the imagery Jack and the other captains were now viewing. “The spaceship factory building is the hangar structure next to the landing field by Lake Vanda. The six buildings that make up the academy are three housing dormitories that flank the three central buildings. The administration building is the middle one. There are basements below each building and access tunnels to allow for student movement even during a blizzard. Including a tunnel to the spaceport building.”

“Weapons?” Jack called. “I see some square blocks lying beyond the six locations you mention.”

The admiral nodded abruptly. “They are aerospatiale laser mounts. There are five of them, including the one next to the landing field. They are powered by a second fusion reactor lying between the academy and the field. Another fusion reactor is in the basement of the admin building. It provides power to all six occupied buildings.” The man’s words were swift, clear and to the point. An aspect of his ally that Jack had always valued. The Asian looked back to him. “Fleet Captain Jack, the personal AV frequency of Fleet Admiral Santiago Narváez is being transmitted now to your ComChief. Every Unity naval unit has access to that data. Along with encryption codes that allow for deciphering of laser transmitted orders.”

Jack nodded his thanks. “What is the range of the laser mounts?”

“Up to fifty kilometers altitude,” the admiral said. He looked aside, then back. “Weaponry Chief Lieutenant Marlena Lopez tells me the mounts are carbon dioxide powered lasers with punch-through power against any metal other than tungsten.”

Jack reached up to rub his eyes. A movement stopped by his bubble helmet. Sighing, he reached down to the side of his seat and grabbed the water bottle he kept there. Lifting it he touched it to the feeder tube at his neck ring, sucked on the internal drink tube, then returned it to its holder. He scanned the images of the 32 captains and one admiral who made up the only grav-pull fleet in Sol system. Those ships could enforce his will against any point on Earth. But they were not enough to control the nine billion humans who lived under the tyranny of the Unity. Only free choice could do that. Which brought him to the next step, one he had been dreading. Keeping his focus on the enlarged true-light image of the academy buildings lying between Victoria and Wright valleys, he spoke.

“Denise, send a Come-Back AV signal to the office of Admiral Narváez. And put him up on the front screen along with our true-light imagery.” He paused, wondering if he had forgotten anything. “Oh, share that signal and my comments with every fleet ship by way of our tightbeam laser links.”

His ComChief whispered into her comlink panel pickups, telling its expert system what to do. “Signal sent. Response coming in now. Up front.”

The Dry Valleys imagery moved to one side as the AV visual of a man standing behind his executive desk filled the right hand side of the cabin’s front screen. Above both images lay the small images of every ship captain, each of them giving quiet orders to their pilot or command deck crewmates. The standing man wore the dark blue formal uniform of the Unity Space Force, with medals, ribbons and a few tabs filling his left chest. Banishing the thought of how much the man resembled the image of an old World War II admiral, he began the ritual of Challenge, as the Aliens called it.

“Fleet Admiral Santiago Narváez, your academy, landing field and the three spaceships docked at the field are under my weaponry,” Jack said bluntly. “Why should we not destroy you in response to your attack on our home at 253 Mathilde?”

The clean-shaven man, who bore the looks of his Spanish Castilian heritage, fixed black eyes on him. “Fleet Captain Jack Munroe, you are expected. Leaving aside your destruction of Unity staff and structures in Brussels, Germany and Geneva, the direct answer is . . . your sister Cassandra Munroe. She is still alive. And we hold her inside our spaceship factory.”

“Prove it!” Jack said too loudly, his heart beating too fast for what was in truth a military engagement of tactics versus strategy. “Let me speak to her. Otherwise I will assume you killed her, as you no doubt killed Bridge Lieutenant Howard Goldin, who came to you of his own free will.”

A touch of humor showed on the man’s starkly drawn face. “Hardly a free will visitor. He came to steal the secret of our grav-pull drives. Which, sadly, take so long to create due to the Thorne Exotic Matter that we were only able to send five ships against you.” The man reached down a long, slim finger to touch a control panel on top of his desk. “Opening a channel to your sister. Inside our factory.”

A third image suddenly appeared at the side of the front screen. Cassie!

“Hello brother,” she said, her tone sounding defiant despite the blue bruises on her face, the redness along one side of her neck, and her position seated in a chair with accel straps locking her into place. Flanking her were four Unity Space Marines, each carrying a laser long rifle, the muzzle of each being pointed at Cassie’s head. Four lasers. Four muzzles. Pointing at one young woman who had insisted that loyalty to humanity had no age limit.