Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (10 page)

“Ahhh,” said Archibald, “the alpha male and his queen arrive! Sit. Grab a class of lemonade. I opened a jar of Brit-made marmalade for sweetening.”

“We will. And thank you.”

“Yes, Archibald,” Nikola said, her tone musical. “This all looks delicious. You’ve set out a feast for us all!”

Their Physicist nodded to the rest of the crew who were gathered around the picnic cloth. “Well, I researched the components of an American-Belter style picnic. Hope it suffices.”

Jack grinned at the man’s earnestness. Usually shy and reserved, there had to be something special going on for the Cornwall-born academic to do something so out of character as this picnic. Writing out esoteric equations on a holo board was more the man’s line. And if the equations gave him no solace, Archibald would hang with Max in the Mech Shop, discussing Alien tech. The only hint of normal male mode he’d ever seen in the man had come at the mention of one Agnes Cumberland of the New Physics Research Institute on Vesta. Archibald had disappeared for a month to work with Cumberland on upgrading her particle accelerator so it could generate WIMP particles, or Dark Matter, for human-made grav-pull drives. But the woman had not accompanied their Physicist upon his return to teaching classes at Mathilde.

“Here, my love,” Nikola said, offering Jack a tall glass of yellow lemonade with ice cubes in it.

“Great! Thank you.”

Maureen, who sat at his right, jabbed her left elbow in his ribs. “It’s
you
who should be serving this maiden here. What with the bother of morning sickness and a growing baby, it’s a wonder she looks so perky.”

Jack ignored the veteran of the First Belter Rebellion in 2072. While the woman had been an admirer of his grandfather Ephraim, and a possible lover of grandpa long ago, that did not mean he had to bow and scrape to her. Instead, he looked around, taking inventory of the expressions, moods and appearances of his crewmates.

Brown-haired Elaine sat beside their sister Cassie, who had pulled her blue-black hair over one shoulder. They looked happy and relaxed. Even though he knew Elaine missed the company of her lover Ignacio. Cassie was more of a puzzle. She seemed happy doing her Spy craft when it came to First Contact with Aliens. But did she want more? Need more? Like revenge for the death of her buddy Howard Goldin, who had been tortured by the Unity Naval brass at the Antarctica base? Maybe not. Lately he’d seen her with the Mars Marine Lieutenant Andy Mabry at a few Mathilde dances. Were they a couple? She noticed his look, stuck her tongue out and went back to chatting with Elaine.

He resumed the check-out of his crewmates. Across the picnic cloth sat Max with one rad-tanned arm around the waist of Blodwen, who was wearing a Spring dress embroidered with images of flowers and butterflies. Bare-armed like Max and everyone else, the Welsh lass was focused on their Drive Engineer, her manner devoted and loving. Their Sociologist seemed quite happy to focus her analytical skills on the proper etiquette needed to wrap Max around her small finger.

Which left young Denise to their right, wearing a black leotard. Sitting cross-legged, the freckled teen had coiled her thick red hair into two braids, one on either side. She was looking down at a yellow datapad, seemingly absorbed in whatever it showed. Perhaps a game called Farm Animals. Or perhaps a new algorithm to improve the SETI translation matrix she had created with the help of Anonymous. She was a puzzle to Jack. While she had dated several young men on Mathilde after their return, there had been no one special that she showed off to her crewmates. While he valued the maturity she had shown during their two star jaunts, there had to be something more that kept her working as ComChief. What did she hope to achieve by serving on the
Uhuru
? She could have left the ship, thanks to her share of the diamonds and emeralds they had earned on their last trip. She had stayed. Why?

With a sigh Jack gave up trying to figure out their teen. He picked up a plate of green grapes newly harvested from a grapevine that grew in one corner of the Garden, thought about snatching a few cherry tomatoes from his lifemate’s plate, then gave up. She needed the vitamins. Which brought him back to the woman who loved him, who had accepted his yellow diamond-studded Commitment Ring, and seemed overjoyed at being pregnant. She still puzzled him despite knowing her for the last two years counting time at Charon Base. Chief Astronomer that she was, she had a brain every bit the equal of Max and Archibald. But what did she want out of life, besides him and a baby? What kept her on board the ship when she could have pled the need to stay at Mathilde until the baby was born? Though with both parents long dead from an Earth plague, perhaps being among her crewmates was the same as being with blood family.

Jack swallowed the grape he’d been chewing and fixed on the man who had chosen to leave the Charon science station and emigrate to the Asteroid Belt, where he now did Remote Tutor classes for the smart youth of 253 Mathilde. Except when he was on interstellar jaunts with the other crew of the
Uhuru
.

“Archibald, out with it. What’s the secret?”

“What?” The man whose head was festooned with an unruly mass of reddish-brown hair looked at Jack with puzzled brown eyes. “What secret?”

He tossed a grape at the middle-aged man. It hit him in the middle of the Hawaiian style shirt he wore over his ship leotard. No stain was left, despite the man’s automatic checking for it. Jack shook his head, amazed at how a physics brain like Archibald could explain Dark Matter and its production by way of generating WIMP particles with the ease of a mother explaining birthdays to her child, while being so socially blind. “You and Max have been spending too much time in the Mech Shop. You two are up to something. Or have figured out something. What?”

“Exactly!” growled Maureen. She lifted a rad-tanned hand and pointed a manicured finger at their lunch host. “You’re not romancing any woman, on Mathilde at least, according to my spies. But you are in love with the Alien tech of the grav-pull and the Alcubierre drives. So, what gives?”

Archibald blushed at the accusation of Maureen. Then he gave a quick glance to Max, who was also doing his best to appear nonchalant. Which the Pole from Lodz could do about as well as Jack could solve a tensor calculus problem in his head. “Well . . . ,” he shrugged, sipped his glass of lemonade, then grinned widely at them all. “We’ve done it!”

“Done what?” asked Blodwen, whose position between Max and Archibald put her in the middle of the two tech brains the way a net lies between two volleyball teams.

Archibald lifted reddish eyebrows, then looked down at his lunch plate as he suddenly returned to his normal shy mode. “Well, Max and I, we think we know what the Arbitor ship shield is. And the Isolation Globe might be. Actually, we think we know that and how they are powered.”

Relief came over Jack at the news. The demonstration of invulnerability by the Arbitor ship had kept him awake half the nights since they’d left Tau Ceti. He’d been up in the middle of the ship night as often as Nikola had gone to the toilet, thanks to preggy issues. “Wonderful! What are they, and how are they powered? And can you kill either or both?”

“No to killing either,” Archibald said, his happy look going briefly sad. Then he brightened. “But, but, we
are
on the track to figuring that out. Now that we know what those two things are.”

“What are they?” Nikola prompted. “Come on. Tell us before I deliver my baby.”

Max laughed, Blodwen chuckled and the other women also gave sound to their amusement at his lifemate’s tease. Archibald’s rad-tanned face darkened as he flushed.

“You people are worse than students!” The Brit looked to Max, who gave him an expressionless nod. “Well, you all saw the shield globe become visible multiple times. Thanks to Captain Jack’s attack efforts and his laser challenge at the end. Right?” Archibald scanned everyone, going from face to face until he saw nods from the rest of the crew. “While we saw a black globe surround the Arbitor ship, we also saw silvery streaks of starlight appear on that globe. Those were signs of gravitational distortion. The same kind of gravitational lensing of external true-light images that happens when this ship goes to gravity-drive propulsion. Which is also the same distortion that happens when we activate the Alcubierre manifold and surround this ship with a space-time bubble. See?”

Jack closed his eyes. “See what?” He opened them and gave the man his impatient look.

Max leaned forward, his expression now amused. “What my collaborator means is this. The protective shield that surrounds the Arbitor ship is likely a kind of Alcubierre space-time manifold. Which does not move the Arbitor ship, but does protect it from all energy and matter events that happen outside the manifold. In short, any beam, any laser, any torp that hits the shield is translated to Elsewhere-Elsewhen space-time. Which is another dimension. Which is why the Arbitor ship cannot be harmed. So long as the shield is up.”

Weird. But for Jack, it was understandable. “Well, you two are the experts in these Alien tech thingies. I just use them. So, is the Isolation Globe just a giant shield?”

Archibald nodded quickly. “Yes. Well, mostly. Well, uh, yes,” he said when he saw Jack’s frown. “The Isolation Globe sits beside the home star of the system to be isolated because the Alcubierre space-time manifold can only generate a globular field. A bubble. Like the one we see every time we watch a starship activate its stardrive. Except this globe is the size of a star system and it encloses the star, planets, comets, stellar wind, dust particles and gases. They are all inside an Alcubierre space-time globe that never shuts down.” The academic shrugged his bony shoulders. “Which is why it’s called an Isolation Globe.”

Fuck. Damn. Crap
. Jack wondered what other profanities would fit something so monstrous as the Isolation Globe of the Arbitors. “Okay. So that’s what the shield and the globe are. How the hell can something that power-hungry sustain itself? Forever? Can’t be a fusion reactor cause—”

“Cause it would run out of fuel,” Max finished gruffly. He crossed thickly-muscled arms and looked around the rest of the crew. “Well, Archie and me, we think Dark Energy powers it.”

“Wow!” cried Nikola.

Jack winced. His math skills had cratered once he got past trigonometry. Calculus was a loss. And the stuff called tensor and scalar math was another world. Which this Dark Energy sounded like. He looked left to his Chief Astronomer. “You know what they’re talking about?”

His Czech partner looked to him, lifted her sandy brown eyebrows and said, “You don’t know what Dark Energy is?”

Her innocent tone was a ruse. They had spent enough time together that she damn well knew he had no clue. On the last star trip he had had a hard enough time understanding Archibald’s excitement over learning from the Melagun researcher Atarksis how Dark Matter was at the core of the grav-pull drive. Which at least had given them the key to making their own grav-pull drives. Once Dr. Cumberland produced enough with her accelerator to fit into the globe that lay at the center of the triangular tube framework that made up a grav-pull drive. And when Archibald began blathering about how WIMPs were Weakly Interacting Massive Particles at the subatomic scale, he blanked out. “No, madam sky geek, I do not
know
what Dark Energy is. Something  important?”

She winked at him, her pale blue eyes a part of her that had sucked him into dating her when they still worked at Charon Base. “Well, it’s just seventy percent of existence. It is also the reason why our universe is not just expanding, but speeding up that expansion.”

Oh. He had studied basic astronomy while at home with his Mom, Dad, Elaine and Cassandra. That Remote Tutor course had included the basics like the age of the universe, the beyond counting number of galaxies, and how thousands of exo-planets had been detected around other stars in a small part of the Milky Way galaxy. Which meant there were billions of habitable planets in the galaxy. A fact further documented by the Hunt star holo of the Nasen predators. “Okay. So Dark Energy is a big deal. Uh, how does it relate to Dark Matter? I think I recall some digipaper I had to read that said it was why our galaxy’s spiral arms had not flown apart as they rotated around the black hole at the core of our galaxy.”

“Good student,” she said, her tone patronizing but also loving. Looking to the rest of the crew, she held up a clenched fist. “First, we’ve known since last century that our entire universe is made up of three things. Dark Energy, Dark Matter and normal planets and stars.” She wiggled one finger free. “Latest cosmology computations say the universe is made up of 68.3 percent Dark Energy, 26.8 percent Dark Matter and 4.9 percent normal matter like stars and planets and comets. Clear?” Jack nodded with the rest of the crew even though he already felt lost. Nikola raised another finger. “Second, while we now know Dark Matter is made up of WIMPs, courtesy of Archibald’s work with Atarksis, we have no idea what Dark Energy is. Except that it continually flows into our universe from somewhere.” She held up another finger. “Third, the Lambda-CDM model of cosmology says Dark Energy is equivalent to the cosmological constant, which is also called vacuum energy.” She smiled as nearly everyone looked confused. “Stick with me. Vacuum energy is the key detail. In order for the universe to appear ‘flat’ rather than curved, it needs a constant inflow of vacuum energy so the outer boundaries of the universe are always being pushed outward. This expansion is due to the Friedman-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric that means—” She stopped when Jack grabbed his head and grimaced in pain. She held up a fourth finger. “Okay. Forget the math. Dark Energy is equal to vacuum energy. Vacuum energy is what keeps the universe expanding. Plus, even though the density of Dark Energy is small, it stays the same density throughout the universe. It never gets less even as the universe gets bigger. Which means Dark Energy permeates all of space and is available to be tapped.” She looked to Archibald. “Which I gather is what you think the Arbitor knows how to do?”

“Just so, young lady.” The Physicist looked to Max. “Your turn.”

Their Engineer looked to Nikola, then grinned boyishly. “I won’t hold up my fingers. Bottom line is, if we are to figure out a way to kill the ship shield of the Arbitor, we need to find a way to test out our theory that Dark Energy  powers the Isolation Globe and the ship shield. If we can find a place where Dark Energy is being used, maybe Archie and I can figure out a way to block access to that energy. Or maybe increase it so the device overloads and blows up.”

Jack held up a finger. “The Nasen star chart! Recall Nalik’s holo? The one that showed a star system with planets, then the same location surrounded by an Isolation Globe? We need to find out where that place is. Or another Isolated system near us if that one is hundreds of light years away.”

Archibald nodded slowly, his manner thoughtful. “Good idea. We do not control the movements of the Arbitor. But we do know there are 14 systems in the Orion Arm that are Isolated. This Nalik should be able to tell us where they are and how far away.”

Cassie frowned. “Okay, so we find an Isolated system. We go there. We try to kill that Isolation Globe probe. If we figure out how to do all that, what next?” She fixed hazel eyes on Jack, her manner peremptory.

He winked at her. “If we confirm Dark Energy is the source of power for both the shield and the Isolation Globe, and we figure out how to collapse it, well, then we find a way to make the Arbitor come to us. So we can do this.” Jack picked up a fork from the picnic cloth, held up a grape in his other hand, and speared the grape with the fork.

“Yeah!” growled Maureen, doing an arm-pump in the air.

Jack wondered what it was that made the woman so ferocious. Was it her adult kids and grandkids? Something that had happened during the war? Could it be the fact his grandpa had died in a
kamikazi
strike on a Unity frigate and she felt guilty for surviving the war? But how could he find out without drawing a slap or worse from the woman? “First things first. We now know what we need to find out from Nalik the Nasen. Next, we travel to an Isolated system. Which could take awhile. Then again, we have two sub-fleets on their way to check out two possible home stars for the Arbitors. Vigdis and Helena.” He looked to his buddy. “Max, I know you and Archibald will be busy trying to figure out a way to create new Dark Energy, or interfere with it. But it would be nice if you can discover a way to increase our Alcubierre speed. Four light years a day is okay. A lot faster would be better. Might give us an edge when confronting this Arbitor.”

Their genius of applied Alien tech gave a shy smile. Then Blodwen kissed him on the cheek, which brought a blush under his rad-tan. He looked around at their crewmates. “I’ll work on it. Got another week or more until we get to Zeta Serpentis. After that, it could be a hundred light years or more to this Isolated system. Which is more weeks of work for the two of us. We’ll figure out something.”

Jack had no doubt the two of them would. Archibald’s creation of the Higgs Disruptor weapon that caused any matter to lose its gravitational attraction to other particles had been amazing. It gave them a second master weapon in addition to the antineutron antimatter beam that had killed Menoma’s spaceship during the Alien’s last-ditch effort to support the Unity space navy in its battle against Jack and his fleet. But neither weapon was of any use against the Arbitor. Until they could collapse or kill this shield. He held up his half-empty glass of lemonade.

“A toast! To our two big brains!”

Around the group glasses were lifted, toasts were repeated, smiles showed on every face. For now, they had an idea of what they faced and the hope they could overcome it.

And hope was all that any human needed.

♦   ♦   ♦

Two weeks later the fleet exited Alcubierre at 40 AU north of the ecliptic plane of the star Zeta Serpentis. Its white glow was a welcome sight. Jack checked the front screen’s true-light imagery of the star’s seven planets. Above the planets were the faces of his other ship captains. They were Hideyoshi, Gareth, Minna, Ignacio, Akemi, Júlia, Aashman and Kasun. Each captain waved at him, nodded or looked attentive as was their personal manner.

“Nikola,” he called back over his shoulder, “remind us of the basics for this system.”

“Right.” He heard the tapping of her fingers on her Astro and Big Eye reflector scope panels. “Zeta Serpentis is an F3V star. While its diameter is just 1.3 times that of Sol, its brightness is six times that of Sol. Which is why the habitable comfort zone begins at 2.58 AU out from the star.” She paused as the numbers she cited showed up in a table at the far left side of the screen. “In other respects it is a normal main sequence star.”

“What about the planets your Big Eye is showing?” Jack prodded.

More tapping and an overhead plan view of the system appeared in a split-screen depiction. “As we saw before, there are seven planets orbiting the star, with two asteroid belts. One belt is between planets two and three, while the second belt lies between planets five and six.” A second split-screen took shape. It showed the half-illuminated disk of a planet, with the silvery white of a large moon lying near it. “This is the inhabited planet two, known as Hunt Forever by its Nasen people. It is located at three AU, well inside the liquid water ecozone. No other planet is inside that zone, though planet three is at its outer edge. Planet four is a rocky ice ball. The three outer worlds are gas giants of various sizes. The air of Hunt Forever is an oxy-nitro mix similar to Earth’s, but with fewer pollutants. My Big Eye scope imagery shows an icy north pole and icy south pole, with the blue of oceans in several places. Which is the most we can know at this distance. The closest we got last time was 42 AU, where the comet Hot Blood orbits out beyond planet seven.”

Jack looked to his right. “Elaine, bring us up to date on what your Sensor scans show for neutrino sources and grav-pull ships?”

His older sister looked up and spoke. “Autonomous, overlay my system Sensor feed atop Nikola’s scope image of the system. Display fleet ships as red spots. Show other grav-pull ships as yellow spots. Fusion pulse drive ships are to be green. Process!”

“Processing,” said the dry voice of the
Uhuru’s
AI computer. “Completed.”

“Damn!” muttered Maureen from where she sat between Jack and Elaine.

Jack felt the same as he had the last time they’d seen this imagery. A feeling of being outnumbered. A total of 51 grav-pull ships showed as yellow spots, with just twelve fusion drive sources shown in green. Stationary neutrino sources were present as white spots on Hunt Forever, on its moon, at three spots in the first asteroid belt, on the Mars-like planet three, in orbit about the gas giant planets five, six and seven, and at Hot Blood. The nine red dots of the fleet clustered above the system imagery. The front screen also showed multiple overlays from NavTrack, the gravitomagnetic sensor, passive infrared and ultraviolet sweeps, and local synthetic aperture radar. As before, this predator system was busy with the traffic normal to a species involved in exploiting the resources of their home star system.

“So,” called Blodwen from her Sociologist post behind Max, “do we head for Hot Blood?”

“Maybe.” Jack looked rearward to his SETI translator. “Denise, what do you pick up in AV channel emissions? Maser traffic? Microwave search scanning? Any other EMF systems active in Zeta Serpentis?”

His linguist genius looked down at her Comlink panel, then gave a low whistle. She looked at him, her green eyes wide. “Captain Jack, my instruments are showing 483 AV channels at signal strengths from 5 kilohertz up to 300 gigahertz. Other EMF emissions at 1,000 gigahertz are likely microwaves, some of which match to moving ships. There are maser emissions suggestive of a diginet that links every computer in the system. Which is obvious from the grav-pull ship traffic patterns.” She again looked down at her Comlink panel. “There are also radio emissions from the three gas giant planets that are natural. It’s everything we detected before.” She pulled one red braid into her lips and began chewing on it.