Humans Vs. Aliens: Aliens Series, #2

By T. Jackson King

Jack Munroe has learned another space lesson: defeating Alien invaders in the Kuiper Belt does not guarantee peace. The HikHikSot social carnivores have returned for a second invasion of Sol system! They’ve brought with them a colony ship filled with 30,000 cheetah-leopard Aliens and an attack fleet that is able to deflect lasers and particle beam weapons. They aim to turn Earth into a source of protein, and humanity into serfs! All of which forces Jack to get his fellow Asteroid Belters to join him in an anti-Alien crusade that will first go after the invading predators, then head out into interstellar space to liberate other subject peoples. The future of humanity is on the line and Jack Munroe is determined to teach Alien predators a permanent lesson—mess with Humans and you die!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications Inc.
• Release date: Feb 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633843691

T. Jackson King

T. Jackson King (Tom) is a professional archaeologist and journalist. He writes hard science fiction, anthropological scifi, dark fantasy/horror and contemporary fantasy/magic realism--but that didn't begin until he was 38. Before then, college years spent in Paris and in Tokyo led Tom into antiwar activism, hanging out with some Japanese hippies and learning how often governments lie to their citizens. The latter lesson led him and a college buddy to publish the Shinjuku Sutra English language underground tabloid in Japan in 1967. That was followed by helping shut down the UT Knoxville campus in 1968 and a bus trip to Washington D.C. for the Second March on Washington where thousands demanded an end to the Vietnam War. Temporary sanity returned when Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that paid the bills, led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States, and helped him raise three kids. A funny thing happened on the way to normality. By the time he was 38 and doing federal arky work in Colorado, Tom's first novel STAR TRADERS was a stage play in his head that wouldn't go away. So he wrote it down. It got rejected. His next novel was published as RETREAD SHOP (Warner Books, 1988). It was off to the writing races and Tom's many voyages of imaginative discovery have led to 23 published novels, a book of poetry, and a conviction that when humans reach the stars, we will find them crowded with space-going aliens. We will be the New Kids On The Block. This theme appears in much of Tom's short fiction and novel writing. Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. His other writings can be viewed at http://www.tjacksonking.com.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The second Alien invasion of Sol system happened two months, four days, three hours, twelve minutes and nine seconds after the destruction of Menoma the Manager’s base on Sedna the dwarf planet. Jack Munroe knew this thanks to the screeching of his finger-clock alarm. It was three in the morning on asteroid 253 Mathilde and not the ideal time to hear such news.

Jack? said Nikola, reaching to touch him from where she lay next to him on their waterbed. Something wrong?

He blinked, trying to fit his mind around the fact that what he had warned the rulers of Mars and the Moon about had now come to pass. Grasping Nikola’s warm hand he lifted it to his lips and kissed her fingers.

Yes. New Aliens have arrived at Sedna, according to a laser signal from the gravitomagnetic sensor probe that Ignacio left in orbit, after he finished salvaging grav-pull drives.

Again? Nikola gasped. Damn! I’d hoped that blasted FTL probe would never reach Menoma’s home system.

Social predators like Menoma’s people can also be good engineers. As Max has found from his study of the grav-pull drives and his reverse engineering of the Alcubierre star drive in that Rizen hulk we salvaged. But it could be other Aliens. Jack sat up, his eyes taking in the naked form of Nikola his lifemate, who also now sat up, her hand holding his hand. He could not see her pale blue eyes in the bedroom’s darkness, its only light being that of several touchplates scattered about the room that occupied a spot in Mathilde’s habitat torus. Giving mental thanks he had not diverted one of the grav-pull drives from a ship to provide one gee Earth gravity to the torus occupants, he chose action over worry.

Activate room lights at one-half normal intensity, he said to the bedroom’s eco-control expert system. Jack grinned at Nikola, whose curly brown hair showed static electric dispersal that made it a puffed out globe. You Rádsetoula people look hot when naked!

She gave him a quirky grin, shrugged in a way that sent her breasts moving nicely, then turned astronomer serious as she pointed up at the motion-eye sensor which occupied a niche just above their bedroom door. Tell that blasted sensor to tight focus only on you! We Czechs may be nature-lovers but I do not care to be naked in any databank!

Jaguar, he called to their habitat’s eco-control computer. "Narrow focus on the Jack Munroe organic in this room. Then link me with Max Piakowski on the Uhuru in full AV mode."

Complying, said the dull mechanical voice of a device with expert system intelligence, a system he could have reprogrammed with Nikola’s voice if he had desired. He hadn’t. Organic appears, it said.

The bare-chested form of his ship’s Drive Engineer looked at him from Max’s seat in the Pilot cabin of Uhuru, looking as if he had not slept in the last twenty hours. Jack? You got the alarm?

Of course. You and Ignacio did wonders with that stealthed probe he left among the ship debris in orbit above Sedna. Is there a visual with the gravitomagnetic signals? What Alien species? How many ships—

Here, Max interrupted, reaching out to touch a control on his seat’s armrest panel. Not good news.

Jack’s wallscreen glowed on with an image of black space, diamond-like stars, a partial curve of Sedna’s reddish-brown surface and more than a dozen Alien ships of the HikHikSot culture, their form distinctive. Appearing as a golden ball embedded in a tan rectangle, each ship was painted with the keystone predator image of that species. The ball showed the snarling face of a cheetah-leopard, with two pawhands flanking it on the rectangular hull. Two golden yellow eyes occupied the center of the globe, staring at Jack. He sighed.

How many?

Twenty-one, Max said, moving to pull on a t-shirt over his hairy chest since he was the only crew aboard their ship as it hung just outside the Dock Cavern of asteroid Mathilde. Plus a biggie. At the twenty degree angle on the upper right. See it?

Oh! cried Nikola.

Yup. Jack looked closely at the fat cigar shape of a tan-brown hull that had to be at least a kilometer long, since it was many times larger than the standard HikHikSot ships that were clones of Menoma’s deadly ship. Colony ship?

Probably, Max said, his gaze turning from watching the front screen of the Uhuru’s Pilot cabin to fix back on Jack. The man’s rad-tanned forehead creased and his black eyebrows nearly joined. Seems Menoma’s FTL probe got through. This is the colonizing fleet that aims to turn Sol system into part of the HikHikSot Hunt territory and make some humans into breakfast.

Jack nodded, recalling the claim made by Menoma the Manager as the Alien fought Jack’s ship during the last battle above the Moon. How long since detection?

Max grimaced. At least eleven hours since Mathilde is on the opposite side of Sol system from Sedna. Denise or Elaine could give you an exact number.

Which reminded him that it was time to sound the Fleet Activation call that he, Hideyoshi Minamoto, Gareth Davies and Maureen O’Dowd had agreed on in case the probe brought in a new group of Aliens intending to claim Sol as a subject people. Transmit the Fleet Activation call to Maureen, Gareth and Hideyoshi. Tell Hideyoshi to rendezvous with us at Charon Base. What’s the status on refit of those fifteen salvaged grav-pull drives. Are our fleets ready to blip jump?

Max gave him a wry grin. Yes, in short. Hideyoshi fitted the five drives we gave him to the frigates he had at Deimos base, while Maureen’s buddy Gareth has had his ten ships refitted, rearmed and upgraded for the last week. His fleet had planned to exit the Dock Cavern this morning and do practice maneuvers based on our AV combat vids.

Jack nodded. Well, Gareth can practice at Charon Base. And be sure to alert our fleet captains.

Max tapped his seat’s Comlink panel. Done. At least we will outnumber the HikHikSot with our twenty-seven ships.

Numbers, numbers, Nikola muttered as she finished pulling on a black leotard and moved into view of the motion-eye, her attention focused on the image of Max that showed in a split screen with the Sedna space image. "You know, Jack could ask me, the astronomer in this group about that laser signal. It took exactly eleven point two three hours to reach the Uhuru. And 253 Mathilde. She bit her lip, then sighed. I’m coming with you folks. While Elaine and Denise are tech-capable, I’m the one who’s spent years peering at neutron stars and Dark Matter gravitational lensing. Jack, you ready to add a Chief Astronomer to your crew?"

He swallowed, feeling his mouth suddenly go dry. This determined side of Nikola was a part of her that had given him trouble during their time at Charon Base, just above Pluto. The place where the Unity had sent him, Max and their former crewmates to make sure no planet-killer comets were coming in-system to disturb the tranquility of Earth’s world government. The Communitarian ethos had ended war on Earth and replaced it with a getting rich is glorious theme borrowed from China’s long-dead Deng Xiaoping. But it had not been able to cope with the arrival of social predator Aliens in the Kuiper Belt. Aliens who demanded that humanity prove its right to independence by way of a ‘trial of strength’ combat challenge that pitted Aliens against humans. But Nikola had shown her love for him by leaving Charon Base to join him at Mathilde.

Sure. You can use the seat behind my Tech station, he said, looking to her with an innocent expression. Where my sister Cassie sat during the last battles.

Nikola’s blue gaze scanned him from head to toes and back to head, ignoring how he stood naked while she had dressed in the standard clothing worn by Belters when not in a vacsuit. The tall, slim woman tilted her head as if she were a sparrow inspecting a tasty worm. You do look cute when you behave guilty, she said, then looked back to Max. Drive Engineer, can you transfer the Schmidt scope control software to that seat’s armrest panels? Along with the ship’s Astro database?

Sure, said his Polish buddy, the only other survivor of the First Contact combat encounter with the Rizen aliens long months ago. And Jack, I’m picking up chatter on that neutrino comlink we salvaged from the Hackmot Aliens ship.

Oh? Jack began pulling on the black cotton leotard that Nikola had handed him, while she began tossing woman stuff into a carrybag. Is it in English? Like all the other Alien contacts we’ve had.

Nope. Some kind of Alien talk-talk. It’s being recorded for Denise to hear. Maybe she can figure out what is being said. The man who had spent most of the last two months researching Alcubierre drive shell theory and reverse-engineering the FTL drive module in the Rizen ship hulk, now grinned like a kid gifted with six kilos of chocolate. "But yesterday I finished installing the Rizen FTL drive in the Uhuru! And I’ve given the design specs to your Tech buddy Matthias Binder. He says he can build duplicate drives in short order. Our fleets can be FTL capable within a week or less!"

Amazement filled Jack, overwhelming the intense worry he felt at the arrival of twenty-two HikHikSot starships in the Scattered Disk of comets which lay between the Kuiper Belt and the outer Oort Cloud. He realized that with FTL his ship could cover the 78 AU to Sedna far faster than the eighty percent of lightspeed that the Alien-built gravity-pull drive allowed. Humans could go star-roaming . . . once they took care of this second Alien invasion. He smiled at Max. Excellent news! Have you uploaded FTL control algorithms to the NavTrack computer?

Of course! Max said, sounding as if he’d been insulted by Jack’s question. Then he grinned, the man’s gruff good humor returning quickly. I’ve alerted Maureen, Denise, Elaine, our fleet captains, second fleet’s Gareth and Minamoto’s Mars fleet. Anything else to send out?

Yes. Jack grabbed his own shoulder carrybag, then took back Nikola’s warm hand in his. Send a conference meet message to Ignacio, Minna, Akemi, Júlia, Aashman and Kasun. I want to hear their thoughts on how to cope with any gravity probes these ships may launch to divert our laser beams. We’ll join you in an hour. After I see my parents and Cassie, and we have something to eat.

Max rubbed his black-bristled chin. Will do. And I guess I better shave. Not quite ready to grow a beard, or a mustache like Ignacio!

Fine. See you soon. Comlink off.

Nikola grinned up at him. Uh, haven’t you forgotten something?

Jack paused, patted his carrybag, then frowned. Nope. Got my sword and revolvers in here. You have your own sword. And your gyrojet rocket gun is with you, right?

Nikola gave him that Woman Superior look which she had been cultivating ever since joining him on Mathilde. She pulled something out of her bag and showed it. "Your boina! Ignacio would never forgive you if you left it behind. Remember, you’ve been adopted into his clan?"

He took the black beret given him by Ignacio, just before they confronted Menoma the Manager in the Gathering Hall on Sedna. A place now radioactive debris. Jack had given Ignacio a yellow diamond for the family of Sabino Ibaiguren, one of their battle casualties. It had touched Ignacio and the man had chosen to adopt Jack into the Euskaldunak people known to others as the Basque. Which made him wonder. Had the newly arrived HikHikSot found Sabino’s body buried in the frozen snows of Sedna? At the place where once the Entry dome had stood to give access to Menoma’s ocean deep hideaway? For Ignacio’s sake he hoped his cousin’s body had not been disturbed. Feeling the weight of the hundreds of people who depended on him and his three fleets, Jack donned the boina and nodded soberly to his lifemate.

"Nikola, thank you. It’s time to return to Sedna and remind these Aliens that while we lost good people like Sabino and Anneli, we humans will never be the prey of other predators!"

Together they walked out of their bedroom, through the living room of the habitat and out into a corridor that would take them to his parents’ habitat. It lay halfway around the torus that spun in the asteroid’s airless Dock Cavern, creating enough spin-gee gravity so that the twelve thousand people living on Mathilde could stay healthy, raise their kids, work at their jobs and enjoy a life of freedom and liberty. He’d enjoyed spending the last two months here, visiting with his Mom Julia and his Dad Richard, while arguing with his youngest sister Cassandra over her decision to visit Geneva on a tourist visa so she could sniff out what the Unity Congress was doing in secret. Her spy work on Earth would be as dangerous as the Uhuru’s upcoming fight against Alien spaceships. But it was the career Cassie had chosen months earlier, when she had joined him in overthrowing the Unity government’s control of Sol system. And he had discovered that revolutions never ended, they just created new challenges for people who still chose to celebrate the Fourth of July. Smelling the minty odor of green plants in the torus park that lay near their habitat, feeling the breeze of cool air that kept him and everyone else alive as it moved through the many levels of the habitat torus, Jack knew his time of living a normal life was at an end. So be it.

CHAPTER TWO

In orbit above Charon Base, Jack looked past Maureen to his sister Elaine at her Pilot station. Send a tight-beam laserfax to the other two fleets that no one uses their neutrino comlink without my okay, and that we all move to the opposite side of Charon, so its bulk is between us and the straight-line vector to Sedna.

Message going out, said his oldest sister, her tone matter-of-fact even as her amber eyes watched him rather than the screen that filled the front of the cabin.

Maureen, their 78 year-old Belfast grandma, looked at him, her narrow face showing fine wrinkles. Good choice, my Captain, she said, her musical voice sounding approving. The only way we can keep the HikHikSot fleet ignorant of us is to not do anything they can detect. Like blathering on the radio waves or sending out modulated neutrino signals, all of which they can pick up.

Jack felt brief pleasure at the approval voiced by their veteran of the First Belter Rebellion in 2072. He glanced rearward to where red-haired Denise sat in the middle of the Pilot cabin in her ComChief seat. Young lady, send a similar laserfax tight-beam down to Charon’s Administrator Andrea Grübingen telling her to shut down any radio or maser broadcasts. Our presence needs to stay covert if we are to have any chance at killing these HikHikSot ships.

Denise, who had become a fine proto-commerce raider despite being just 19, tapped on the Comlink panel that hung over her lap. Done. And I’ve added a text message to the base’s intranet so no researcher who ignores official chatter can fail to know this. She looked his way, her red freckles dark against her pale face as she fixed a green-eyed gaze on him. Should I contact Gordon Sørenson? Hortense’s collaborator, you recall. He may have some ideas on social predator hunting tactics.

Jack felt a hand on his shoulder. Captain, I too would like to visit with Gordon, Nikola said. He can help me access the base’s telescope and share with us any data on Sedna that may have changed since Ignacio left our probe there.

Nikola was in her Puzzle Mastery mode, the side of her that made her such a fine research astronomer and astrophysicist. Keeping his eyes on the front screen’s image of the moon Charon and nearby Pluto, he spoke. Nikola, yes, talk with Gordon on Sedna maters. Denise, you do the same with him on Animal Ethology and predator hunt issues. Max, move us out of orbit on fusion pulse drive. All three fleets are to move to Charon’s opposite side on fusion impulse. No need to transmit more gravitomagnetic signals than we did just by arriving here.

Going to Pinch Mode, Max said as he reached up to the Main Drive controls that had lowered from the cabin’s ceiling. Far behind them, in the belly Drive module, a mixed gas of deuterium and helium-3 swirled inside a steel cylinder that, very soon, would use intense magfields to bring the mixture into a ‘pinch mode’ that would fuse the two isotopes into one substance. Which would degrade into helium-4 and a hell of a lot of raw energy.

Elaine pointed at the front screen which showed the twenty ships of the two other fleets copying their vector by way of seventy kilometer-long drive flares. Gareth and Hideyoshi are following us, per our signal. She looked at Jack, her expression worried. Brother, what’s the likelihood these new Aliens have a stealthed monitor probe hiding somewhere among Pluto’s five moons? The way Menoma had that stealth probe in orbit between Earth and the Moon? For talking to Earth by way of his FTL neutrino comlink.

Jack felt everyone in the cabin go tense. He had wondered the same thing but Minamoto had given him a reassuring answer. Not likely, Elaine. Any such probe would have to arrive using gravity-pull ship drive. Which arrival emits a graviton pulse that Andrea, on Charon, can detect with our gravitomagnetic sensors. Andrea has not reported any such pulse since the arrival of the Alien fleet thirty hours ago.

Good, said his sister as she grabbed her stretch headband and put it on to keep her long brown curls out of her eyes. So we do our scheming on the far side of Charon?

Jack grinned at his sister’s term for fleet battle coordination. Well, he could tease too. Yes we do. Which will also be the time when you and Ignacio can scheme about your next date!

His sister’s rad-tanned face grew darker as she flushed. She shrugged her leotard-covered shoulders. We at least have the social politeness to use encrypted comlinks! You and . . . you and Nikola just prance along the Spine hallway hand-in-hand like two teens out on their first date!

Loud chuckles sounded from Maureen, Denise, Nikola behind him and even from Max. Jack felt his face go warm. Was that a flush? No! He had never flushed in his life. Anyway, he and Nikola kept their romancing reserved for their habroom in the Rest Area section of the Uhuru. Course, one did have to pass by the Med Station and the Food Refectory parts of the ship when heading up to the Pilot cabin. Distraction. He needed a distraction to move his crew’s minds off of his and Nikola’s love affair. Max! Are the modulated neutrino comlinks on the other ships working perfectly? Their refitted grav-pull drives that we salvaged, did they hold up during our blip jump out here? And the ship rebuilds for the other six ships in our fleet. Are the railguns and neutral particle beam emitters we added working the way they should? And—

Enough! laughed Max, a laugh also joined by his entire crew including Nikola. You and Nikola love each other. The way I loved Monique, before she died. No one here objects to love among the starways!

Love among the starways? Were he and Nikola the prime actors in a pirate vidcast among the ships of three fleets? No. Impossible. I’m hungry. Anyone else here want to join me, and Nikola, in having a steak, a beer and a cigar?

More laughter filled the Pilot cabin at Jack’s poor effort to use his prime recruiting tool as a distraction. Yes it had worked to bring in Belter volunteers to crew the ships of Gareth’s fleet and the six other ships of his personal fleet. But not so for this crew. Setting his Tech station panel on alert for gravitomagnetic pulses, Jack unbuckled his seat restraint straps, stood up and headed for the pressure hatch that opened on the Spine hallway of the Uhuru. Maybe they hadn’t packed enough elk steaks for barter trade with nice Aliens . . .

––––––––

On the far side of Charon moon, Jack and his crew stared at the laser link images of every ship commander that filled the top of the Pilot cabin’s front screen. The images made for four rows of seven images per row, while below them were split-screen images of local space side-by-side with the last stealth probe image from Sedna. The top row held the images of Minna, Ignacio, Akemi, Júlia, Aashman, Kasun and Hideyoshi Minamoto, while the second and third rows held the images of the captains for Hideyoshi’s four destroyers, five frigates and his heavy cruiser Bismarck. The third and fourth rows held Gareth’s image followed by his fleet captains, for twenty-seven images total. He had expected everyone to show up for this final fleet battle coordination. But a twenty-eighth image surprised him.

Archibald? What brings you into this battle talk?

The Brit’s rad-tanned face broke into a shy grin. A new weapon! One that should help you, Admiral Minamoto and Captain Gareth in the attack on the HikHikSot fleet.

Jack focused on the image of Gareth Davies, the older man who some suspected was a love partner of Maureen’s. The Welshman had arrived at 253 Mathilde upon their return from the Moon battle and thrown himself into organizing a second fleet of new volunteer Belter ships that had been refitted with ten of the gravity-pull ship drives scavenged by Ignacio. Archibald Wheeler was crew on Gareth’s ship. The stocky, broad-shouldered descendant of Wales now grinned broadly.

Gareth? You have a surprise for us?

Most assuredly, he said in Welsh-accented British English. "It seems there is a way to disable the gravity probes that Menoma used in the last battle to deflect laser beams. But let Archibald tell you, your crew and everyone else what he’s done here on the Dragon."

This was major news. Jack looked back quickly at Max, who had collaborated with Archibald on reverse-engineering the grav-pull drive salvaged from the Rizen hulk so he and Jack could use it on the old Uhuru.

Max held up both hands in innocence mode. Me? Knew nothing about this.

Captain Jack, called Archibald from the front screen, "this  Higgs Disruptor device I’ve built using the Dragon’s neutral particle beam generator is not anything I discussed with Max. Just had some nifty ideas on how to disrupt the Higgs Field that uses Higgs bosons to provide gravity to everything in the universe."

A rustle among his crew told Jack they were as eager and hopeful as everyone else. Go ahead Archibald. Tell us all what you’ve developed.

The middle-aged man whose shock of reddish-brown hair had always been unruly during the time Jack had known him on Charon Base now turned professor serious. Well, you all learned in school about the detection of the first Higgs bosons early this century by the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. That detection proved the Standard Model theory of subatomic particles was correct. It also gave the first proof of a scalar field. As you may recall, the Higgs Field is what gives every particle in the universe some kind of mass and hence gravity. The man paused as if to confirm he held the attention of twenty-seven ship captains and their crews. Well, it occurred to me that the gravity probes used by Menoma had to emit a stronger than usual Higgs Field in order to cause a gravity tide deflection of our laser beams. And of anything else material that approached the controlling HikHikSot ship. So, I figured out how to collapse that field.

What! cried Max from his Drive station. You mean you can kill gravity?

Archibald looked shocked. No! Uh, well, just locally. Don’t worry, the universe will still stay stuck together!

Jack had done his best to avoid the high energy physics classes while studying to be a anthropologist on Vesta. He’d done the same later on while studying Technology under Matthias Binder at Charon. But he knew enough from what the man had said to understand the implications. "Excellent Archibald! What’s the range of your Higgs Disruptor beam? And does this mean the Dragon has no neutral particle beam weaponry?"

Archibald looked briefly disappointed by Jack’s interruption, then answered. Uh, the range is short, maybe a thousand kilometers. Due to the fermions I used to—

Good enough, Jack interrupted. "The Dragon, did you kill its neutral particle beam emitter?"

The man ran a hand through his shock of wild hair. Had to! I couldn’t create a 125 giga-electron volt beam without using the accelerator that is part of that weapon. But it gives us—

The means to disable the gravity probes, interrupted Hideyoshi as their former Unity naval admiral took charge of what was intended to be a fleet battle coordination conference. Well done, Professor Wheeler. We are indebted to you for your device. Fellow captains, we all agreed on using a globular Pinwheel Plasma Torch formation upon our arrival at Sedna, so as to disrupt any neutral particle beams fired at us by HikHikSot ships. How does Professor Wheeler’s new weapon affect this plan?

"Kamikazi is needed," said Akemi Hagiwara of the Orca, her voice soft. The woman, who’d been a fierce warrior during the Gathering Hall battle in the Sedna base of Menoma, fixed her gaze on Jack. "My shogun, while most fleet ships should remain part of the Pinwheel formation, effective use of this new weapon requires a ship to precede the Dragon in order to draw out the gravity probes. My crew and I volunteer to be that ship. Even if we do not survive

Reviews for Humans Vs. Aliens

[dabofdarkness · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very fast paced space adventure with humans battling it out with more than one alien race. Jack Munroe doesn’t start off as the captain of the Uhuru (thanks for that nod to Star Trek) but things go wrong early on for the original captain, Monique d’Auberge. The Polish engineer, Max Piakowski, becomes Jack’s wingman as they quickly assess these new predator aliens and come up with a game plan.In many ways, this story felt like a really long episode of Star Trek meets Battlestar Galactica meets Futurama. Jack often acts like Captain Kirk in Star Trek but the aliens can be pretty vicious like the Cylons in Battlestar Galacitica. Meanwhile, there are some silly shenanigans and stubborn idiocy by bureaucrats as I would expect in Futurama.Most of the time I liked the quick nature of the story but sometimes I did get fatigued and wanted a moment to reflect on things or clarify the current score. Also there are a ton of characters in this story. Honestly, I lost track of nearly everyone. I believe there’s no less than 3 alien species introduced and yet I had trouble keeping the individual alien characters separate as well. I do recall Destanu, the first alien they communicate with, and he’s of the Rizen aliens.The author did do a great job of having both men and women play important roles, even if they messed up. The characters, in general, were flawed and very human. They weren’t all heroes and some made big mistakes. The crew starts off small – only 6. Jack, Monique, Max, Gail (pilot), Hercule (comet expert), and Hortense (biologist). Plenty of other characters are drawn in along the way.Early on, a chunk of the crew accurately assess the first aliens as predators by simply taking note of their physiology – claws, muscles, teeth, aggressive stances, etc. Initially, I really liked that Jack and his posse acknowledged that they had not stumbled into altruistic morally advanced aliens, but rather predators who were seeking to expand their territory. However, this then becomes the backbone of the story, and in a rather simplified manner. After all, us humans are apex predators and yet we can make alliances and seek something more than territory and resources. So over all, I would have liked more depth and to have the predator aspect toned down.It’s a fun listen with plenty of action and interesting characters. If you’re looking for a simple humans versus aliens story, then this would be a fun choice.The Narration: In many ways, Somerset Hamilton did a good job at narrating this book. His character voices were all distinct and his female voices, for the most part, were believable. There were no technical issues with the recording. However, Hamilton does such a realistic job with the various accents that I often found myself trying to figure out what the character just said in that thick (Belgian, Russian, Polish, etc.) accent instead of paying attention to the tale. I would have liked this better if the accents were toned down a bit.