Earth Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series 1) (13 page)

Minamoto’s mouth thinned, then he nodded abruptly. “Agreed. Armistice. We will not attack you further.”

“You have nothing left with which to attack us. And your neutral particle beamer cannot reach us. You did right to power it down.,” Minamoto glared at Jack, but kept silent. “And the use of hydrogen bomb-tipped torpedoes against a human vessel or settlement is a violation of the Concord of Mars, Fourth Protocol. Isn’t it?”

The man glanced aside as an aide approached, then waved her away. Minamoto faced Jack, his expression uneasy and not happy. “It is a violation. Orders from Brussels. Again, my duty compelled me to act as I did.”

Jack relaxed slightly. The Unity admiral knew he and his ship could be destroyed at any time, knew that Jack had held back, and the man had no reason to worsen his situation. A situation where two human ships fought each other, rather than predatory Aliens. He nodded slowly. “Understood, Admiral. Tell me, where did you fight during the Rebellion?”

Minamoto looked surprised by the question. “At all three major engagements—the taking of Vesta Fortress, Hektor’s Gambit and the Battle of 2:1 Kirkwood Gap. Why?”

His Grandpa Ephraim’s words rang in his mind’s ear—
The Unity believes all rights are conditional, never absolute, and belong to groups, never to individual citizens. That’s why they abolished the American Bill of Rights. European socialism has always treated its people as subjects, rather than as the masters of their personal fate.
Jack answered the admiral. “My Grandpa fought at Kirkwood Gap. When his HF laser burned out, he rammed the Unity vessel he was attacking. Was only a frigate, but it never returned to Ceres Central.” Minamoto sat back in his seat, thin black eyebrows lifting in silent questioning. “Admiral, I should kill you and your crew, now. That’s what my Combat Commander wants me to do.”

“Damned right!” muttered Maureen from her holo.

“But I won’t.” Minamoto looked relieved, then puzzled. “Admiral, you’ve seen our vidrecord digitals from the Rizen and Yiplak encounters. Did you ever wonder why the Hunters of the Great Dark are so . . . so animalistic in their behavior? So territorial and predatory?”

Minamoto’s face darkened as dogma fought with recent experience. “I wondered, yes. Why? You have a theory?”

Jack nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got a theory. What if, admiral, what if natural selection at the interstellar scale selects for social predator species? What if convergent evolution means different species can evolve similar social behaviors? What if we humans have more in common with the social carnivores like lions, wolves, hyenas, killer whales, hunting dogs and jackals, and little with chimpanzees and the gorillas? What if there are
more
Aliens cruising the Kuiper Belt, waiting for an unarmed Human ship? And what if the whole point of Aliens camping out in the Kuiper Belt is to claim Earth and Sol system as
someone’s
hunting territory?” He paused, noticed that Max now held the fusion cylinder at Pinch Mode and that Maureen had aimed their mass driver launchers at the
Bismarck
, then continued. “Admiral, I know it’s heresy in the Unity, but we humans are
not
naturally peaceful, non-violent and altruistic. We’re social predators, we have two million years of pack hunting built into us, and like these Aliens we’ve met in the Kuiper Belt, humans
will
defend their home territory to the death—just as my Belter ancestors defended family, home and their liberties. Do you see where I’m leading?”

Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto pursed his lips, gestured angrily at a second aide who approached, then laced his fingers together and focused intently on Jack. “Captain Munroe, I thank you for sparing the lives of my crew. That was an act of mercy. But my oath of duty has long rested with the Communitarian Unity, with Earth, and with the united future of humanity.” The man sighed regretfully. “I cannot join your crusade. But . . . neither will I judge the need for it.” Jack understood—that statement of neutrality was the most that Minamoto could say openly, before his crew. “My Drive Engineer tells me we are now pressure-tight and able to make controlled thrust for the Deimos Yards. We need repairs, sir. Are we free to depart?”

Jack glanced at his friend. “Max? You okay with this?”

The Pole ground his teeth, eyed the admiral’s stiff image, then nodded. “Yeah. Let them go. Maybe this experience will teach them not to mess with a Belter ship that has gravity-pull drive. Or any Belters who are friends of ours.”

Minamoto smiled slightly. “I am in no condition to trouble any other ship.”

Maureen waved at Jack from inside her holo. “I remember Minamoto now. At Kirkwood Gap, he treated our POWs fairly. Let him go.”

Jack nodded solemnly at their recent opponent. “Fleet Admiral Hideyoshi Minamoto, you are free to depart this vector. Please extend my greetings to Governor Aranxis and let him know that should any of my clan family experience a visit from his security forces, the
Uhuru
will turn its attention inward from the Kuiper Belt to unfinished business at Ceres Central. Understood?”

“Understood.” The man’s image blinked out.

“That was too close,” Max murmured. He touched the Main Drive release. “We’re departing on plasma thrust. Accelerating to twenty percent of lightspeed. Outbound for the Kuiper and Karla comet. Any particular vector, Jack?

“Yeah. One that links up with
Wolverine
and
Badger
.”

Max slapped his forehead. “Damn! Forgot all about them. Making vector, Captain.”

Maureen entered the cabin, the rank odor of stress sweat floating ahead of her. She sat down in the Combat station seat to Jack’s right, transferred weapons control with a tap on the armrest panel, and looked over at Jack with a speculative gaze. “Think we’ll run into the Rizen? I fancy a first-hand look at those lion-hippos.”

Jack smiled ruefully at her. “Maureen . . . our prime reason for heading back to the Kuiper is to salvage any useable gravity-pull drives from the Yiplak battle debris. Beyond the two drives Max, Denise and I scavenged after our battle. For other Belter ships willing to join us. Three grav-pull ships is a very small fleet.” He paused, recalling with sharp sorrow their first encounter with predatory Aliens. “And believe me, meeting the Rizen aliens ‘in the flesh’ so to say, is not a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.”

She shrugged, then combed fingers through sweaty curls. “Whatever—you’re the Captain.” Maureen peered at her Tactical display. “The
Bismarck
is diverging from its track. Heading in-system, toward Mars.” She looked up, her expression now grandmother friendly. “You did good, young Jack. Ephraim would have been proud of you.”

“Thaaanks,” he mumbled, then looked down at his Navpanel before she could see his reaction. At least with grav-control, your tears don’t float around where everyone can see them. But tears were the least of Jack’s worries.

Could the jaguar, badger and wolverine work together as a Human hunting pack? In the wild, those predators usually hunted alone. Now, they must Hunt together, despite Minna’s unease over his leadership and Ignacio’s headstrong will to evict the Stranger from the Kuiper. Would it happen?
It must!
For just ahead in the Kuiper Belt, he, Max, Maureen and their two allies would face possible death at the hands of social carnivores who roamed the Great Dark. Roamed it the way tigers roam the forest, always on the lookout for new prey.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Five days later, Jack led the
Uhuru
and its allied ships into an elliptical orbit about the Kuiper object 1993 FW, site of their battle with the Yiplak aliens some four months earlier. In an image downlinked from the ship’s telescope the frozen comet, reddish like Pholus and with a diameter of 175 kilometers, turned slowly on its axis in a ‘day’ of 14 hours. A thousand klicks out orbited its companion, the tiny satellite named Mole, safely beyond the Roche Limit for any companion of FW, or Karla as Denise had called it. At an average distance of 45 AU from Sol, the illumination in this part of the Kuiper Belt depended mostly on reflected starlight, with the Sun a pale beacon that made him feel chill and lonely and far from the memory of his clan family. At least this time, on this visit to 1993 FW, they came to salvage, to scavenge, rather than to attack. He touched on the Comlink, tight-beamed a Come-Back to his fellow Captains, and waited for them to join him, Max and Maureen for a scavenger-hunt conference.

The swarthy face of Ignacio Aldecoa of the
Badger
was first to appear on the front screen, followed by Minna Kekkonen of the
Wolverine
. The Basque beat the Finn woman to the first comment. “Captain Munroe, how do we find our needle in the haystack?”

He grinned. It was an apt analogy for their job of locating ship debris from the battle with the Yiplak mini-ships and their mother ship. “Hey, Ignacio, I know our ship has the biggest Astrophysics panel, but it’s your friends from 16 Psyche who will benefit if we find one or more working grav-pull drives among the hulks. Didn’t your crew of cousins figure out how to find them on the way out?”

Minna overrode Ignacio’s sputtering with a “If I may?” then continued talking. “Munroe, Max, Maureen, and my esteemed fellow Captain Aldecoa, we on the
Wolverine
did study
Uhuru’s
battle records. The answer for where you might find ship debris is simple: the Lagrange points of this two-body system are logical starting places.”

“Great, Minna,” said Maureen from the front of the cabin, her anxiety at being in a strange place making her talk more than usual. “Now, how many such points are there and where are they?”

The Finn’s steely blue gaze warmed slightly. “In the Trojan points, first of all. Sixty degrees ahead of and sixty degrees trailing in the orbit of Mole. You know, the way 1980 S25 Calypso leads Tethys, 1980 S13 Telesto trails it, and how 1980 S6 Helene leads Dione, all in orbit about Saturn?” On screen, Ignacio seemed irritated as Minna dominated the group consultation. The man reached up and reseated his
boina
, or small beret, on his head. The Finn, who’d led her first Unity commerce-raiding party when Ignacio was still in mining school, continued. “Debris will tend to collect in those spots. Also, at a Lagrange point between Mole and 1993 FW, but pretty close to Mole’s facing side.” She paused and looked off screen, perhaps at data offered by her Astrophysics crewman Alaric. “There could also be a small libration point on the side of FW opposite from Mole. But bear in mind, the local gravitational fields of both FW and Mole are quite small, and unlikely to hold combat debris that exited at speeds beyond 150 meters per second.”

Jack felt his heart sink. That was a very, very low speed for successful capture of Yiplak ship debris. Perhaps one of the four mini-ships that had been hulled by their ball bearing blast had crashed on FW? Or maybe the nose fragment of Big Mother still orbited FW in a highly elliptical track? He waved at Ignacio. “Captain Aldecoa, your ship has the better radar of our group. Would you care to lead the sweep of these localities?”

The Basque looked mollified at being chosen as lead ship. “We will! You honor Euskal Herria by your choice—we will not fail you.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” Jack said dryly.

Aldecoa’s image blinked off the front screen. That of Minna stayed on, her expression Nordic-distant and a bit aloof. Ten years his senior, the woman gave Jack the impression she chaffed at his command of their group. He nodded politely. “Minna? Something else?”

She looked from him to silent Max to watchful Maureen, then back to Jack. “Munroe, you realize the implications of the use by
Bismarck
of nuke torps against you?”

A sinking feeling tugged at Jack. He’d been trying to not think of what that meant, looking forward instead to their current task of finding Alien ship debris, searching it with crew in EVA suits, salvaging the tubes-and-globe assemblage of any gravity-pull drive still in one piece, getting the new drive back to 253 Mathilde and later integrating it with a new ship’s Autonomous computer using the Control software so laboriously developed by Max. It was a tall order under any circumstances. Doing it when, at any time, they could be attacked without warning by a Hunter of the Great Dark made for gray hairs, an unsettled stomach, and a need for intense focus on the job at hand. “Yeah, Minna, I wondered about how quickly the Unity abandoned one of their prime principles. Your view?”

The petite Finn woman frowned. “The Unity has decided if they can’t recover the
Uhuru’s
gravity-pull drive, then no one else will either. You’re more than an outlaw, Munroe. You’re fusion bait. Any ship with grav-pull is bait. Including me and Ignacio.”