Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (27 page)

“Lift from deck locks on belly jets, rotate and exit using attitude thrusters. Main thrusters to ignite at fifty meters from
Uhuru
,” Jack told the simple-minded AI unit.

“Lifting. Rotating. Exiting,” it said, sounding all too much like Anonymous. To which, come to think of, it was cross-linked by way of wireless and laser datalinks. A sense of weightlessness hit Jack as they left the confines of the
Uhuru
and the one gee gravity maintained there by the ship’s grav-pull drive. Three beeps sounded. “Ready to engage thrusters. Define target location,” squeaked the AI unit.

“Asteroid Vesta, crater Minucia, landing field adjacent to New Physics Research Institute, 21 degrees north, 209 degrees east, reference Dawn spacecraft coordinates,” Jack said. He could have tapped it all into the NavTrack panel. But he liked giving verbal orders that were understood by smart AI programs.

“Location recognized. Coordinates accepted. Departing orbit on one gee thrust,” the AI said, sounding even more mech.

The back of his seat pushed against him. Tapping his NavTrack panel caused the Lander to lift the metal shades that covered the clear quartz of the front view-window. Black space dotted with white stars and the silvery tubes of five Mars fleet ships filled his view. Then the ships rotated upward as the lander’s attitude thrusters pointed them nose down toward the basalt rock mantle of Vesta. The push against his back increased. Soon he felt his normal Earth-level weight.

It was sad to see the Mars ships vanish. Hideyoshi’s
Bismarck
and the four destroyers of his Mars fleet rode orbit close by the
Uhuru
. The man had insisted on mounting a spaceborne guard after the assassination attempt. Further out, in the shipping vectors that approached Vesta, automated robot guard modules outfitted with HF lasers challenged any approaching ship. Every ship that now came to Vesta had to provide a live person ID to someone on Vesta who knew them. Or they did not land at the giant asteroid’s admin HQ in Aricia Tholus.

“Jack,” called Cassie from behind him, her voice sounding earnest over the vacsuit’s comlink tab. “Want my Intel report on the bastard who tried to kill you?”

It would be ten minutes before they arrived at Archie’s location. Anyway, it sounded like his sister had turned up more than had been reported by AV talking faces in the days after the attack. “Sure. What did you discover beyond the fact this guy hails from Pakistan?”

“Plenty,” she said eagerly. “Akram Mohammad Dijeel comes from the riverside village of Chitrāl, just below Tirich Mir mountain, in the Northwest Frontier province. Grew up there. Joined the remnants of the Kashmir Freedom League. Got thrown in jail for ten years by the Islamabad authorities. And,” she paused, “he is suspected of trying to buy weapons grade enriched uranium. So the League could toss a tactical nuke across the Line of Control at the Hindus in Srinagar.”

“Nasty,” Jack said. “So who sent him? The Pak authorities? Some Sunni mullah? And how the hell did he end up in the Asteroid Belt?”

“Well, India’s prime minister told me after the attack he suspected Islamabad sent the guy,” she said quickly. “But my contacts with the Belt Intel Service on Ceres say they believe it was the League that sent him. They have made AV broadcasts asserting that Earth should join the Hunters system as a way of opening up new worlds for colonizing by Muslim peoples.” She paused. “Some Sunni religious leaders from Saudi Arabia have supplied the League with piles of money for the last twenty years. Based on his pupil ID, Vesta Central reports him arriving from Earth two days after the fleet’s return from the Doomat system. He had a job waiting for him at a hetero sex provider in Domitia crater. When the call went out for the colony ship send-off event he was among nine men arriving from this provider.” She gave a hum. “All the other servers from the provider are long-time Belter residents. Only this guy was new to the Belt.”

Which should have prevented him from gaining a job at the departure event. “Helpful info. Good research. Any public statement from the bosses in Islamabad?” He split his attention between watching the dozens of brown, red and black crater rims draw nearer and thinking about the assassin.

“Just the normal stuff. A message of extreme sympathy from the Prime Minister of Pakistan. With an attached message from the Army’s top general pledging that the New ISI would scour the village and interrogate League operatives.”

Which meant nothing of substance would happen. “Pakistan withdrew from the Unity and has expelled their miltech people, right?”

“Right. They pledged their two spaceports would never host any Unity space vessel,” she said, her tone musing. “Plus they expelled all Unity personnel from the country. Still, we could antimatter zap both launching sites. As an object lesson to Islamabad, the League and any other Sunni jihadist types that we squash flat anyone who harms a Belter.”

Tempting. “Let’s hold off on doing that. Is the Belter Intel Service backtracking on that job with the sex provider? As in who bribed whom in order for the man to get the job, then who bribed someone else in order for him to show up at the send-off event.”

“Jackkk,” she said loudly. “I
do
know my job! Of course the BIS is doing all that. And more. Plus I’ve posted a 20 million dollar reward on the Black Side of the worldwide net. Money motivates.”

He knew that. And he knew his youngest sister, who had gone to Earth to try to locate the factory that created Earth’s first grav-pull drives, had insisted on doing that dangerous job. Which had resulted in her boyfriend being killed and her being beat up and tortured at the South Pole Naval Academy, before Jack and his buddies rescued her. “Many thanks Sis. You’re good at what you do. Please keep on with the BIS coordination and anything else you think should be done.”

“I will!” she said, sounding pleased.

Time for more positive news. “Nikola, you got any imagery of the colony ship’s departure? I missed seeing it and before the event I had no time to look up stuff on its target star.”

“Sure,” she said over the comlink, the warmth of her voice filling him with joy. She had told him after his exit from the hospital how much it meant to her that he had shielded her and the baby when the Pak guy attacked. “Here’s the AV vid of its departure on grav-pull. Heading out for Pluto and final departure on Alcubierre.”

Jack looked away from the true-light image of the approaching asteroid surface to a vidpanel projecting from the left arm of his seat. It showed the long red cigar of
Humanity
going sparkly as its grav-pull drive distorted nearby starlight with gravitational lensing. Then the cigar shot away almost faster than the videye camera could track. “Great imagery! Uh, I know it’s headed for some yellow star in Horologium constellation. But how far away is the system? What kind of planets are there?”

She laughed happily. “Been waiting for you to ask!” she said. “Three days ago it launched for the star HD 27631, a G3V main sequence star located 148.4 light years from Sol. As for planets, there are five. The first was discovered early this century in 2012. It’s a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting at 3.25 AU out from the star. The gas giant’s orbit is a bit eccentric. It swings closer and away by a factor of 12 percent. But that does not mess with the four inner planets.” She tap-tapped from her seat in the cargo hold. “Here’s a plan view of the system. Its habitable zone extends from one AU out to 1.8 AUs. Planet one is a small rocky Mercury-type planet at one-half AU. Then there’s a Venus-type planet orbiting at three-fourths AU. Planet three is the Earth duplicate, based on spectroscopic readings of its atmosphere. Which is oxy-nitro and full of water vapor. Which means oceans.” The planet appeared as a blue dot on the plan view map that appeared split-screen on the vidpanel. “The planet is located 1.2 AU out from its star, which gives it a light intensity slightly less than what we get on Earth. Planet four is smaller, about the size of Mars according to the Long Baseline Stellar Interferometer. It orbits in the hab zone at 1.7 AU. Which makes it icier and colder than planet three.” She paused, tapped and a fourth blue dot showed on the system map. “Planet five is the gas giant. Which likely has plenty of large moons orbiting it, like Jupiter and Saturn do. So. Our colonists have two habitable planets for the present and for their future growth.”

Damn fine news. Maybe they could visit the colony sometime in the future. After they defeated the Arbitor. Jack told himself to think just that way—not if, but when! “Thank you love! Sounds like they’ve found a fine system to head for. I assume the star is not showing on the Nasen star holo as belonging to some species?”

“Course not!” she said, her tone a copy of Cassie’s incensed tone. Well, it was a logical question. “The nearest Hunter subject people star is 15 light years away. It is part of the Yiplak Hunt territory.”

Which left their Lander’s target for him to focus on. That being the giant torus which was the offices, Tech machines, classrooms and habrooms of the institute. From what he could see as the lander slowed to 30 kilometers above Minucia crater, the institute torus filled only a small part of the 22 kilometer-wide basin. Course it resembled all the habitation toruses that spun on every occupied asteroid in the Belt. Thereby giving occupants spin-gee gravity. Except this torus was stationary. Like the torus inside the Dock Cavern of Mathilde. He guessed that meant someone had built a grav-pull drive, set it to the low-G band emission level and set graviton contact points at opposite ends of the torus. Creating thereby a full one gee gravity inside the torus. Which meant the grav-pull drive had to be in the center of the torus, where its support pillar lifted it above the crater surface. That would give the inner habrings a sense of gravity that pushed out toward the torus rim. The fact that such artificial gravity was horizontal to the surface of Vesta meant nothing. The asteroid’s natural gravity was just three percent of Earth’s, far too weak to make anyone in the torus feel unbalanced. The stationary torus made him think of his silent buddy.

“Max! That torus is stationary. Looks like they have a grav-pull drive down there, maybe in the pillar. Yes?”

“You guessed right,” his first ally said. “Professor Cumberland’s accelerator, I heard from Archie, has produced enough Dark Matter to power up twelve Belter-made grav-pull drives. Three of which have gone to give one gee gravity to admin toruses on Ceres, at Tholus and down below. The other nine are onboard ships of the Third Belter Fleet. Which I think is now being managed by Heloise Beauchamp.”

“Really?” Interesting to hear that the captain of the commerce raider ship
Ferocious
now led a fleet of a size similar to Gareth’s Second Belter Fleet. With the departure of
Ferocious
that left the second fleet with just nine ships, counting Gareth’s ship
Dragon
. Both groups were smaller than Hideyoshi’s Mars fleet, but all Belter fleet ships were now outfitted with antimatter, neutral particle beam and HF laser weapons. Plus they had Alcubierre stardrives and, for
Ferocious
, a Higgs Disruptor. “Good news,” Jack said as the lander’s belly jets flashed on to lower them to the blackened basalt plain that lay just a hundred meters away from the outer torus edge. A tower rose up from the field edge to contact the torus ring. Which said it would be their entry point into the institute. Also on the landing field stood a Lander similar to theirs. It was too distant for him to read the ship’s name on its hull. Though it could just belong to the institute. “Uh, where’s the accelerator ring? I thought it was out in the open, in vacuum.”

Max chuckled as the Lander’s fore and aft support legs came into contact with the crater’s surface. “It’s out there. But it lies
inside
the circle of the hab torus. That support pillar did more than provide an axle for the torus to rotate on. At its base are two fusion reactors. One for the torus and one for the accelerator’s ring-tube. Takes a lot of power to activate the magfield coils that spiral around the tube. And push subatomic particles to near lightspeed.”

Tapping the NavTrack panel Jack made it recall the view from 30 klicks up.
Yes!
There was indeed a silvery tube that made a ring within the larger hab torus.

“Lander has arrived at target location,” the dry, stuffy sounding AI said. “Additional functions desired?”

Jack looked out the front view-window, which faced the torus ring and the nearby lander. “Identify lander parked on this landing surface.”

“Working.” A beep sounded. “Lander is listed with Vesta Central as belonging to the Mars destroyer
Admiral Chester M. Nimitz
. Lander designation is
Inchon
. Other functions desired?”

“Yes. Extrude external ramp until contact with asteroid surface. Focus lander videye toward habitat torus. Transmit all videye imagery to Pilot Elaine on ship
Uhuru
.” Another thought hit him. “Also transmit all imagery from vacsuit vidcams to
Uhuru
, along with any audio detected by vidcam.”

“Ramp lowered to surface,” the smart program said briskly. “Videye activated. Transmission link established with
Uhuru
ship orbiting above this location. Other functions—”

“Shut up!” Jack said, then flushed as he heard Cassie, Nikola and Max chuckle over the suit comlink. “Uh, correction. Shut down main thrusters. Maintain human standard eco-environment within ship hull and maintain constant lidar, microwave, radiation and other sensor watch for any object approaching this location. If such object is detected, verbally alert Combat Commander Maureen.” Who, thankfully, had not laughed at his irritation with the persistent AI. But the AI was silent. “Acknowledge my orders!”