Earth Vs. Aliens (Aliens Series 1) by T. Jackson King

us to their home territory. You realize they’ll defend that to the death?”
    Silence filled the Pilot cabin. “I know.” Behind him, Max moved as if he might come forward, then stopped. “But we’ve got to finish this job. Humans can’t let another species camp out on their home territory. And the Kuiper Belt is ours!”
     
     
    Three days later, the Uhuru approached comet ‘Karla’ from above the plane of the ecliptic, with the fusion drive offline, moving on momentum and with no use of the gravity-pull drive. Jack had no doubt that if humans possessed a gravitomagnetic sensor able to pick up sudden surges in gravity fields, so did the Swarm—or whatever they called themselves. Maybe he’d see their faces before the battle began. Maybe not. At least he, Denise and Max had been able to work out a simple battle plan. The application of ‘bait and switch’ tactics to interstellar hunting ranges might be something new to the Swarm, but his Grandpa had described how it had been applied during the Belter Rebellion. Now it was their turn.
    Max floated into the Pilot cabin, then pushed forward to where Jack sat, held securely by freefall restraint straps. “Jack, you know I want vengeance for Monique. But is this wise? We’ve got the only working gravity-pull drive—maybe we should hand it over to the Unity, or to Ceres Central, before we get killed?”
    “I thought Wheeler made copies of everything you two did?” He eyed the man who’d worked tirelessly on Charon to decipher the workings of the gravity-pull drive. “Didn’t he?”
    Max folded his hairy arms and floated in mid-air. “He did. But we’ve got the only Alien-built drive. It would take the Unity three, maybe four years to build a copy, then months to duplicate the control software needed to integrate it with our NavTrack computers.” The Pole lifted thick black eyebrows, his expression sardonic. “Wheeler is good, but he’s a theoretical type, not a ‘bang it into shape’ bench-type like me.”
    Jack grinned. He had wondered the same thing as Max. Should they take their tactical win and head inward, maybe to the Asteroid Belt where aged veterans of the Rebellion might lend a helping hand in their crusade to defend the Kuiper Belt? A few Rebellion bases still existed on obscure asteroids, including a ship manufactory his Grandpa had told him about. Or should they go for a strategic win that would remove the Swarm from the Kuiper Belt once and for all? Good sense said do the former. His human instinct, the instinct of a social predator with two million years of scavenging and hunting, before the niceties of agriculture, cities, and wishful thinking had set in, said—“Drive them out!” As did the old texts of Weston LaBarre, Clifford Geertz, Robert Ardrey, Carleton S. Coon, E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, W.G. Durham and Desmond Morris, scholars from the last century who’d argued for the biological basis of some human behavior and for the core nature of Man as the Hunter.
    “No, Max, we’ve got to drive off the Swarm. Kill them outright, hurt them bad, do whatever it takes.” There was a joker card in this situation—where two Alien species could be found, in less than four months, might not other Alien predators be watching how strongly and how forcefully Humans defended their home territory? Jack suspected many now watched even as only a few fought. “Others may be watching us.”
    His friend nodded thoughtfully. “I wondered about that too, ever since our talk that night in the Audience Hall at Charon. Hope Denise understands. She’s awfully young to bet everything on one roll of the dice.” Max unfolded his arms, pushed away and floated back to his Engineer station.
    Moments later, Denise floated in, whistling pleasantly and smelling like roses. She’d used her weekly water ration for a bath and hair shampoo. He smiled at her as she settled into the far right-side Astrophysics seat. “Welcome! Did you and the NavTrack