Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (19 page)

“Elaine, where is the Rizen colony settlement located?”

She tapped on her Sensor panel. “The AV broadcasts said the colony habitations were concentrated on the eastern part of the equatorial continent. Which is what is now passing below us. My Sensor feed shows to the right of the true-light image. I’ve marked the locations of fusion reactors. And there is a single graviton emitter near the eastern edge of the land mass. Next to that large urbus beside the river emptying into the ocean.”

Jack could see that. The continents of Green Grass were three. A northern one called Rocky Ice stretched an archipelago into the north pole zone. A southern one, squarish in shape and called Stormy Land, ended before reaching the free-floating southern ice cap. And the equatorial one. Called Lush Fields. Which resembled Eurasia of Earth moved down so it centered on this world’s equator. Jungles, forests, massive grasslands, savannahs and sharp-peaked mountain ranges covered Lush Fields. Denise’s SETI translation program had scoured the AV broadcasts and picked out the landscape names. And the centers of Doomat population. Which she estimated to be three billion, based on energy emissions, cities, transport hubs and cultivated lands. For the Doomat no longer relied only upon natural grasslands to feed their herds. They cultivated food like nearly every species known to Jack and his fleet. “Where’s the Doomat capital? Do they even have one?”

Denise laughed and Blodwen chuckled. “Captain Jack,” said their teen whose birthday would happen in a month, “the Doomat society is run by herd matriarchs. Very much like the elephant herds on Earth. Mass communications and a worldwide diginet have allowed for millions to belong to a single herd.” 

“And,” called the cheery voice of Blodwen, “the source of the strongest AV broadcasts comes from that urbus located in the center of Lush Fields. On that high plateau. Note the many lakes there and the rivers that run off the plateau edges onto the central plains.”

Well, answers from his ComChief and his Sociologist were to be expected. They were the ship experts in these matters. He looked to Nikola. “Chief Astronomer, can you bring up a scope image of that graviton source on the eastern urbus? I want to see if it is a Rizen ship.”

His lifemate nodded slowly. “Can do. Being done. Image on the left side of the front screen.”

The image of the continent below was joined by a refractor scope image of the eastern urbus. Which enlarged as Nikola told the ship’s scope to magnify. The buildings of that place were totally different from the native Doomat domes. Large metal boxes clustered on either side of the brown river that split the city, with green parks spotted among the buildings. On the north side of the urbus lay the black rock of a landing field. Around it stood three hangar-like buildings, a Sensor tower, what looked like two weapons mounts and the shape of a Rizen ship. The globe pierced by a spearhead was pointed nose up. Its lower half lay below ground level in a deep bowl. The middle globe section of the craft touched ground level. Tiny black cargobots moved from the hangars to the ship and back. He looked down at the holo of Maureen, who was still on Combat Alert in the Battle Module. The face-on view was of her helmeted head as she leaned over her Fire Control panel. “Combat Commander, what do you detect in the way of aerospatiale lasers? Anywhere below? And are there any threats in our orbital track?”

The woman tapped on a side Tactical Display panel. “The eastern urbus landing field is protected by two laser mounts. Similar to what we know from the Moon, Mars and Alien worlds we’ve visited. My weapons sensors report a dozen similar mounts spread along the western boundary of the Rizen colony habitations. Along that mountain chain.” She paused, then clenched her fist. “Torps! Coming up on us from the eastern horizon. Our spysat says they are chemfuel driven. My panel reports 14 of them. No sign of automated mine fields. There is a single space station to the west of us. A large globe that is not spinning. It’s a graviton source. My guess is the Rizen put a grav-pull drive into that Doomat station for their convenience.”

He didn’t have to ask if the woman was aiming weapons at the oncoming torps. Which likely carried thermonuke warheads. Thinking back to orbital imagery of Earth, he realized the eastern portion of the Lush Fields continent resembled the landscape of old America. A weathered mountain chain formed the western boundary of the Rizen colony settlements. The Rizen cities filled the space between that range and the eastern ocean. Kind of like the human cities that ran from Boston south to Charleston. A distance just short of 976 miles. Or 1,570 kilometers. Black thunderstorm clouds showed on the central coastline. A hurricane spiral showed out at sea but it had not yet hit the eastern coast. Based on Elaine’s Sensor data, the dominant winds were from the west.

“Firing!” called Maureen over the vacsuit comlink.

Jack tapped his Tech panel to Tactical Display with weapons systems status. He saw the black and blue streaks of dual beams from the ship’s antimatter and particle beam emitters. Two of the 14 incoming torps died violently.

“Maureen, you shoot just fine. But I don’t like rad showers like we got earlier. I’m aiming the Higgs Disruptor at this group of torps, with a thousand klick footprint. Any survivors are yours.” He tapped on his panel.

On the front screen true-light image, the yellow beam of the ship’s disruptor spat out eastward. The oncoming torps were random-walking with varying thrusts so as not to present a predictable approach vector. Still, they were approaching at near planetary escape velocity. Eleven klicks per second was covering the 4,000 kilometer distance very quickly.

Nine torps blossomed like flowers opening their petals. Then those metal fragments became a diffuse cloud of yellow and red particles. Which soon flew apart at the atomic level as neutrons, protons and electrons separated from each other. In two seconds nothing remained of the nine torps. Which left three still random-walking and drawing within a thousand klicks of his ship’s orbital track. Which was pushing the
Uhuru
toward the oncoming torps at an orbital speed of 17,450 miles per hour. Or 28,080 klicks per hour. “Maureen!”

“Got them!” she growled from the holo.

A green HF laser beam hit one torp, while the blue neutral particle beam did a zap-zap hit on the two other oncoming torps.

Three more yellow, red and orange flowers blossomed just 600 kilometers east of their orbital position.

Jack turned his attention back to their passage over the continent of Lush Fields. They would reach the eastern coastline in ten minutes or less. Which just wouldn’t do. “Max! Blip-jump us back on our orbital track! Make it 5,000 klicks back, which will keep us away from the space station.” A thought hit him. “Maureen, does that station show any weapons mounts? Any Auto-Track and Defend emissions?”

“Nope,” she said hurriedly as her Tactical Display filled with the true-light image of the metal globe. “Only emissions my panel is classifying as the usual low power radar and lidar associated with tracking incoming ships. So as to guide them to a docking with those dock mounts on the northern and southern poles of the station.” She touched her Fire Control panel. “But I can take out that station with either beam weapon. Or our lasers.”

“Hold off on that,” Jack said as the oceans, trees and mountains below them grew hazy as Max blip jumped them back along their orbital track. Their ship soon resumed their orbital vector. Which had them moving above Green Grass at 28,000 klicks per hour. He noticed they were passing over the central plateau that hosted the capital of the Doomat elephants. “Denise! Transmit down the vid record of our fleet battle against the Rizen Colony Fleet. Add in a verbal warning that any urbus which launches rockets or lasers at us will be vaporized. I’ll do my First Contact chat with the Doomat later. After we take care of the Rizen colonists.”

“Do I want to watch what happens next?” called Cassie, her tone uncertain.

Strange. His youngest sister had witnessed their battle to rescue her from the South Pole Naval Academy of the Unity Naval Command. She had even laser-zapped the academy commandant as Jack carried her toward the hangar exit. Course she had not seen what he and his super fleet had done to one of the two HikHikSot home worlds. “Yes, Cassandra, you do want to watch this. The loss of a single life is a tragedy. The death of millions is policy. And my policy is the same for these Rizen as with the HikHikSot—to make sure no Hunter of the Great Dark ever again attacks Earth, humanity or a human ship. Denise calls it operant conditioning.”

“Understood,” she replied, her tone now firm. “I do understand Denise’s point about how natural selection operates at the interstellar level. While I may not like it, I’m a realist. As you know.”

He did know that. She had been the one to insist on going to Earth to spy out the hidden location of the factory that had produced Earth’s own grav-pull ships. Four of which had attacked their home asteroid of Mathilde. And she had been onboard when they had liberated the captive ChikHo and Bizzdaw peoples. She understood the necessity of removing any Hunter colony from the home world of a captive peoples. Which these Doomat had been for a good millennia, under two different Hunters. Jack looked back, catching the attention of his Polish buddy.

“Max, load a thermonuke into our nose ejector. Follow it with six more torps.” Which would leave them with a single thermonuke torp out of the eight they had loaded onboard at Mathilde. The upgrade work that had added a third fusion reactor and the belly nodule for the Higgs Disruptor had allowed the asteroid’s engineers to expand the
Uhuru’s
torp storage chamber. He hated to expend so many torps. But to blanket the east coast of Lush Fields with rad fallout, it would take seven torps aimed at the major Rizen cities that lined the eastern coastline. The incoming hurricane would push the rad fallout westward across the smaller habitats until stopped by the mountain range. Most of the 90 million Rizen colonists would die. From plasma vaporization, from the heat wave of a 50 megaton thermonuke going off and from the wind blast that would knock down any structure within 60 kilometers of such a blast.

“First torp loaded,” Max called. “Target?”

“Make it that northernmost urbus up the coastline. Aim the other six at the six largest Rizen cities from north to south along the coast.” Another thought hit him. He smiled at what it might bring. “But delay the torp set for the city with the grav-pull ship. I want it to hit it last, after the other cities are hit. Elaine, send him the city coordinates.”

His slim sister bent over her NavTrack panel, tapping on it with both hands. “Transmitted. Seven target cities selected.” She looked his way, her expression sympathetic. She knew he did not enjoy killing millions of thinking beings. But the Rules of the Great Dark Hunters did not allow for mercy to a competing predator. It was ‘Eat Or Be Eaten’. On the interstellar scale. Anyway, these Rizen had been the first Aliens to attack humans in Sol system. It was a memory he never forgot.

A hand touched his right shoulder. “It must be done,” Nikola said softly, her words heard by everyone over the vacsuit comlink. “I’ve never liked violence. But these Alien predators have done just as bad to the subject peoples they enslave. We humans have had our wars, but we never
ate
the people we conquered!”

Jack knew that. While most of the Hunters they had encountered to date were carnivores who loved meat, it did not equate that eating meat automatically made you bloodthirsty. Just smart. As Denise had shared with them on earlier star trips, eating meat early in human evolution had led to a doubling of the size of the human brain. Which had led to the creation of the first stone-tipped spears about 460,000 years ago, by the human ancestor
homo heidelbergensis
. Those spears were followed much later by atlatls and even later by bows and arrows. Their torps were just an upgrade of the ancient, stone-flaked spear that those early humans had used to bring down giant mammoths, cave bears, deer, elk and anything else that could not run faster than a human. But eating meat did mean that apex predator animals grew smart enough to dominate their eco-niche. Which for many of them meant ruling their home world.

“Nikola, expand your scope image of the east coast to include all the target cities.”

“Expanding.”

The front screen’s primary image of the continent below was replaced by the eastern coastline enlargement. He noted that Elaine’s Sensor map of the entire star system showed yellow dots vanishing in the Rock Fields belt. Thanks to Hideyoshi’s efforts. The next cluster was three Rizen ships in orbit above the planet five gas giant. Or Rizen as it had been named by the conquering Hunters of the Great Dark.

“Wow!” cried Blodwen.

“Incredible,” murmured Elaine over the comlink.

“Oh, goddess,” cried Denise.

“Simple physics,” muttered Archibald.

“They won’t forget who did this,” grumbled Max.

A 50 megaton thermonuclear explosion close to the ground is a wonder to behold. First comes the yellow-white plasma ball as all matter at the ignition site becomes flaring energies. Then comes the circular ring of invisible infrared heat which betrays itself by the ring of buildings that suddenly burst into red-orange flame. Next comes the gamma ray and neutron radiation front, its particles also invisible but deadly to any organic life lying within 40 kilometers of the blast site. Then comes the classic mushroom cloud of roiling gray, white and red vapors that rise up kilometers into the sky. Lastly, after the mushroom stalk comes the hurricane-level air blast which snuffs out the flaming buildings just before it knocks them flat. Any structure within 60 kilometers of the blast site is knocked flat. Any person inside such structures is made flatter than a pancake. While the plasma ball of a 50 megaton thermonuke measures eight kilometers wide, its radius of death, burning and destruction reaches much farther. In truth it is a star come down to earth.