Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (36 page)

“Grav-pull activated,” his buddy said, the man’s tone sounding eager. “Blipping!”

The front screen images went hazy, then jagged as the gravitational lensing put out by the grav-pull drive bent the incoming light photons. On the side screen, 52 dots became silvery graviton streaks as they sped toward the intruder. Jack blinked, tapped on his own Tactical Display function on his Tech panel, then looked up to see the front screen clearing. Covering the distance at eighty percent of lightspeed made for a quick arrival. Filling the screen was the Arbitor ship.

Resembling two red pyramids joined base to base, the Arbitor craft hung motionless in space. An octagon in overall shape, Jack inspected the ship, looking for any changes since he’d last seen the monster ship. Its north pole spire was a neutral particle beam emitter. Not mobile, unlike Maureen’s Battle Module. A similar spire on the south pole was another particle emitter. At the four corners of its equators loomed bulbous gas laser nodes. While there were portholes in the northern half, there were multiple half-domes on the southern half. Jack suspected those domes could be antimatter beam mounts plus exits for torps and railguns. All in all, the 240 meter-wide Arbitor ship was the size of a Mars destroyer. Though he doubted it held more than 100 dinos. The equipment for sucking Dark Energy from the metauniverse, and using it to create an Alcubierre ship shield while also powering weapons must take a lot of space. Plus, somewhere in that mass out there, must be the Isolation Globe that MakMakGor planned to deposit next to the sun.

“Fleet, assume formation Delta Q!”

The super fleet ships became four rings centered on the
Uhuru
, the
Sharp Teeth
and the
Nimitz
, with his First Belter Fleet ships in the first ring, followed by the other Belter fleets in rings two and three, with the Mars fleet ships making up ring four. His ship shook briefly as Max ejected a spysat on a lateral vector. Shortly that spysat would provide imagery of their group plus the Arbitor ship. Above the front screen there now appeared the images of all fleet captains. One in particular now fixed on him.

“Fleet Captain Jack, the
Nimitz
is ready. And eager,” she said.

Jack saw that Archibald and Agnes, both wearing vacsuits, were seated before the Dark Energy Projector control pedestal. “Thank you, Captain Zhāng.” He gestured backward. “ComChief, send a neutrino signal to the Arbitor ship.”

“Done,” called his too mature redhead. “Incoming signal! Up front.”

The front screen filled with the giant body of MakMakGor the T-rex dino. A creature of red and yellow scales, thick legs, dart-tipped tail, flaring neck hood and two dark red eyes stood before them. The red and yellow bands that covered its scaly hide flexed as muscles moved underneath. The Alien stood in a large circular room filled with glittering wall panels, Control pedestals, and yellow-glowing ceiling panels. Behind it were two other dinosaurs who used their black taloned hands to manipulate pedestals in the rear of the room. “This Arbitor ship has arrived outside the Human Sol system,” it said in a series of sharp barks, snaps and hisses. “The Hunter people Human have violated the Rules of Engagement of the Great Dark. A warning was given. Compliance was promised. The promise was broken by a new contact with a juvenile species before it reached its outermost planet.” The Alien paused, a long red tongue licking out against its jagged white teeth as it caught its breath. “Isolation of the Human species will—”

“
Bismarck
!” Jack called.

A black antimatter beam and a blue neutral particle beam shot out at the speed of light.

To impact on a black globe. Into which the deadly beams sank with no effect.

Up front the image of MakMakGor stayed the same. Slowly it shook its head. “Defiance is useless. The ships you have gathered here are welcome to leave this system before it is Isolated. We Arbitors care not where you go. But your home world of Earth will shortly become Isolated from the rest of this universe. Our judgment—”

“Zhāng! Now!”

An invisible beam shot forth from the nose of the
Nimitz
as the particle accelerator coils that spiraled around the ship’s 200 meter length combined Dark Matter at the speed of light.

The black globe of the Arbitor ship shield showed tiny white sparkles as the gravitational lensing emitted by its partial Alcubierre field bent and reflected incoming starlight. Being black against the black of space, the only way Jack knew the ball was there was by the thin outline of distorted starlight. Nothing changed. Then everything changed.

The black shield ball vanished.

On the lower hull of the Arbitor ship appeared three eruptions of yellow plasma as something underneath the tough hull blew up. The octagon of the ship rocked slightly from its stationary mode. In the front screen, a background dino screamed shrilly.

“Shield is dead! Dark Energy intake is non-functional!” The dino and its neighbor hurriedly tapped control pedestal tops. “Shifting to fusion reactor power. Weapons are—“

“Bulaken! Eject your bombs now!”

On the spysat sideview image Jack saw the globe atop a square box shape of the Niktoren ship
Sharp Teeth
spit out four oblong torps. The torps glowed, then spat four pale white beams at the lower portion of the Arbitor ship hull.

“Magpulse Bombs ignited!” screeched Bulaken as the black and white furred raccoon person grabbed her Pilot pedestal.

“Ejecting!” said Hideyoshi. “Ten Magpulse Bombs targeting south hull domes!”

The space quickly filled with two dozen other ship launches of Magpulse Bombs. Invented by the Niktoren, the bombs channeled a tight beam of electromagnetic energy straight at a Tech target. They had the same effect as a thermonuke’s EMP pulse did. Except these bombs were able to target the EMP pulse in a single direction. Like a laser of EMP.

Dozens of Magpulse Bomb strikes hit the south hull of the Arbitor ship. Tiny bursts of yellow and red flame spat out from the red hull as underlying circuits overloaded and melted. Thereby blocking control inputs to the equatorial lasers, particle beams, antimatter ports and torp ejection tubes that he thought lined that part of the Arbitor ship.

On the front screen the face of MakMakGor showed shock, judging by the way its red eyes grew larger as eyelids peeled back. “Impossible! You Human creatures cannot—”

“Striking!” screamed Maureen.

A blue particle beam whiptail shot out from their Battle Module, hitting one equatorial laser node. Her antimatter emitter shot a black beam at another laser node, causing it to instantly vaporize in a total matter-to-energy explosion.

Several dozen other blue and black beams shot inward from other rings of the ship formation. Each struck a predefined spot on the Arbitor ship hull. While the portholes and habitation zone of the upper half were not struck, the north and south pole particle beam spires melted under the impact of antimatter beams from the
Zhukov
, the
Yamamoto
, the
MacArthur
, the
Grizzly
, the
Dragon
, the
Badger
, the
Mongoose
, the
Caiman
, the
Orca
, the
Bismarck
and more ships than Jack could track. In less than ten seconds the entire south half of the Arbitor ship was aflame with matter-to-energy plasma bursts, internal explosions, spurts of white air and silvery water globules, and hull parts separated from the main body by streaks of blue particle beams.

It was not all one way.

Black antimatter beams shot out from two untouched domes on the south hull, aiming for fleet ships.

“We’re hit!” yelled Júlia. “Our back half is gone! We do have reactor power. Blipping out of formation.”

“Bastards!” growled Helena. “Our midsection is gone! No engine power. We are on emergency life support!”

Jack saw the two offending antimatter emitters melt under the impact of blue particle beams.
No more!

“Maureen! Take out the entire bottom hull with your Higgs beam!”

“Gladly,” cried the woman whose holo image above his Tech panel was frantically busy.

A yellow beam with a narrow footprint streaked out from the
Uhuru
and impacted the Arbitor ship. From its equator down to the melted south pole spire, the hull expanded, ballooned out, then scattered in a cloud of tiny subatomic particles that no longer had the ability to link up with each other. Which meant his other ships were safe from Arbitor weapons fire

That left only the northern pyramid of the Arbitor ship. Which might still have the ability to go to Alcubierre stardrive, despite several impacts from Magpulse Bombs.

“Formation Omega Seven!” Jack yelled. “Latch onto that upper hull!”

“Yes!” Max yelled from behind Jack. “Blipping to contact with the upper hull!”

“I’m coming for you, MakMakGor!” Jack yelled at the image of the giant dino. Which vanished just after the creature turned away to do something with the two dinos on its Command Deck.

In less than a second there were ten ships latched onto the red hull of the Arbitor ship with magnetic grapples. As planned at the last fleet battle conference, the six ships of his Belter fleet plus the
Bismarck
, the
MacArthur
, the
Yamamoto
and the
Dragon
were now hull-to-hull with the Arbitor ship. Jack freed his restraint locks, stood up and headed for the
Uhuru’s
midbody airlock. Where he would meet up with Maureen, their personal weapons and enough C4 explosives to force entry into any room or hallway. “Max, cut internal grav power once you see me and Maureen in the airlock!”

“Jack!” cried Nikola as he ran past her. “Live! Live for me and the baby!”

He gave her a thumbs-up. Of course he would stay alive for his family. It was deadly Maureen that he was worried about. Her battle ferociousness was wonderful, but he had long wondered if the woman fought so fiercely because she felt guilt at surviving the First Belter War, when his grandpa Ephraim died in that war. Well, he would not allow the woman to intentionally kill herself. He owed that to his grandpa. And to the woman’s kids and grandkids.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The length of the Spine hallway seemed longer than usual. Then Jack saw the open hatch.

As he ran into the midbody airlock Maureen threw a carrybag at him. He grabbed the double-edge steel blade of Old Roy from where it hung on a wall hook. Maureen tapped the Close function for the inner airlock hatch, turned, ran to the outer hatch, cursed in
Gaelic
while she waited for the air to pump out, then slammed her fist against the lock’s Open panel. At that moment the one gee gravity that had felt so normal inside the
Uhuru
died away as Max killed all functioning of the grav-pull pedestal.

The hatch swung inward. Revealing empty black space and an Alien hull that gleamed redly from the interior light of the airlock. His Irish battle mistress jumped across the meter separating his ship from the Arbitor ship hull, landed on the flat metal with her magboots, bent down and began attaching a line of explosive putty in an oval large enough to allow entry by a person.

“Maureen! You stay alive, you hear me!” he yelled over the suit comlink.

“Whippersnapper! Of course I will. I want to taste roasted dino steak!”

In seconds the explosive putty was laid, the radio activator attached and Maureen came flying back into the airlock. Jack caught her and then pulled her suited body away from the open hatch and up against the ship’s inner hull. She looked at him with snappy gray eyes, grinned, then squeezed her right hand.

Yellow flame shot into the open airlock hatch as the C4 putty ignited and cut through the metal of the Arbitor ship.

“Put me down!”

Jack let go of the woman, who pushed against him until her magboots contacted the floor of the airlock room. She turned, grabbed her own kitbag with its sword and javelin, and slapped her waist magboot control just as she jumped forward, her laser pistol aimed toward the darkness of the hull opening. He slung the carrybag and jumped after her.