Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (18 page)

“Not ever,” said George softly, then
turned to include them all. “When honor and freedom are at stake, any descendant of the
Tuatha De Danaan
will always choose to battle for what is right!”

High Captain
Yorkel looked at the holo image of his new orders from Sector 14 Intelligence. They were emitted from the ID bracelet every member of Combat Command wore, on whatever manipulator limb sufficed. He had taken over one of the commerce starships in order to head for the nearest naval base at 18 Scorpii, but it seemed High Commander Brrzeet wished him to be elsewhere. At Polaris B, an F3V main sequence star that orbited the brighter Cepheid variable star recorded as Polaris A. It lay three hundred light years away from Alkalurops, but not far as the Alcubierre stardrive measured such matters. Going there would link him up with four ten-groups of Nova-class battleglobes. It seemed his recent success in destroying one of the Human renegade’s warships had earned him a chance to try again at killing this enemy of the Anarchate.

“High Captain, we are ready to depart,” said navigator Dinkel, a Spelidon whose shifty whiskers suggested any data Yorkel shared with him would not remain secret very long.

But with this matter, Yorkel had no choice. “My orders direct me to Polaris B, to the naval shipyard that orbits Planet Four. Using the fastest available transport. Can you get us there within a Belizel week?”

The black whiskers on the Spelidon’s long nose-mouth stiffened. “Yes! It will take constant monitoring of the fusion power modules, but this ship was first built as a fast
Courier, before being sold to Halicene Conglomerate. There is a comfortable stateroom halfway down the central hallway that has been prepared for you by one of my crew.”

Yorkel eyed the short black fur of the navigator, gave him credit for
being employed by one of the galaxy’s premiere conglomerates, then decided he needed privacy in which to review the molecular memory crystal records of the two battles at Alkalurops. Perhaps there were further lessons to be learned by studying his opponent’s actions and reactions.

“Thank you, navigator Dinkel. I will reside there to study my orders and other matters. I will call when food is required.”

“As you wish, High Captain.”

Yorkel left the
commerce ship’s Bridge and headed down its central hallway, enjoying the comfort of gravplates set to Brokeet normal gravity. One of the small advantages of traveling under the orders of Sector14 Intelligence. Now, if he only knew the situation of Chai and the plans of his academy nemesis, all might be right with the universe. With a tap of his bracelet he entered orders for his Bridge crew to be re-assigned to Polaris B. He would not advance to the level of Sector Captain without his ally Malel, his Chief Tactician Lark and the other Bridge members who had survived the last battle with this Dragoneaux biped. Which left him wondering a simple matter. Did this Human biped show similar allegiance to his allies? It seemed a matter worth researching in the Compendium of Species.

Matt entered
ocean-time
, knowing he had to be in full sensory-link with starship
Mata Hari’s
offensive weaponry the moment they exited near the sole planet of 18 Scorpii. It was certain there would be battleglobes on alert, ready to fire at him the moment the ship materialized. The gravity wave pulse was something he could not avoid emitting once he left Alcubierre space-time. And gravity waves, like Suzanne and Eliana’s telepathy, were instantly perceived.

The dam burst. Oceans filled him, oceans of machi
ne-fed data filled his mind’s-eye.

The
dragon shape of the ship’s flexhull shivered in Translation space. His back itched as directed energy weapon domes popped out onto the hull. His biceps fed power to the ship’s six antimatter cannons, which adorned the black wings that used to be small pontoons. He clenched tight his jaw muscles, bringing on-line the deuterium-lithium six fusion drive for chasing after the battleglobes. Ears listened to tachyonic comlinks, synthetic aperture and phased array radars. His eyes ‘saw’ infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays and radioactives. Inside his chest, his heart beat. It beat in sync with the Alcubierre Drive that underlay everyone’s interstellar travel. And halfway down the Spine hallway the 73 slaver captives lay in their roomsuites, each confined by inertial fields in case there was a loss of local gravity. A precaution and a good means of preventing interference with his
ocean-time
work.

Instinct allied to emotion allied to analytical thought. Matt
knew he was a true cyborg . . . and it was time to go to work.

Femtoseconds sped along and picoseconds felt like the ticks of an ancient mechanical clock. A nanosecond would feel like an hour, while a millisecond would feel . . . longer. He sighed, knowing there would be reentry shock when they materialized
in normal space.

This was a gamble. But this time he
had experience with the super-weapons in the Restricted Rooms. And he knew how long it would take any Nova-class battleglobe to start up its own Bethe Inducer field in an effort to turn starship
Mata Hari
into a few neutron star particles. He planned to strike decisively before that occurred. The Graviton Beamer in the Restricted Rooms would be his primary weapon, while the axial plasma funnel and his neutron antimatter cannons were able to handle the shipyard’s orbiting hulks, completed battleglobes, Courier vessels and Supply Tubes. He planned to leave nothing but a debris field for Commander Chai to contemplate.

In the Pit, Matt felt the inertial fields come on, pressing him into his chair. He relaxed, but did not shut off external ship sensors. His bare skin flew through the coldness of
Alcubierre space-time. Like a double-image, he was both inside the ship, and outside. It would be rough experiencing the exit from Translation while still in cyborg-link with his ship. But he had no choice. He must be completely alert and aware when they materialized several planetary diameters out from the single planet that lay at 1.5 AU from its G2V yellow star.

Fifteen milliseconds
, pulsed his internal cyberclock.

“
Exiting Translation!” called Mata Hari in his mind

All about him, reality went
from grey, amorphous, and indistinct to normal space-time. Hundreds of tachRemotes, Spy Eye sensors, sensorBeads, software virus floaters, white noise disruptor cubes and a few holo decoys sped away, just before the Alcubierre shields snapped into place around his ship. Imagery blinked off, then back on as tachRemotes fed him and Mata Hari a multi-spectral display of what lay ahead.

Twenty-two
milliseconds,
said his cyberclock.

Before them
glowed the red infrared warmth of the target planet, the lighter red of six battleglobe hulks still under construction, a dark red discus that housed the construction HQ, the yellow of a dozen or more tiny crew shuttles bringing workers to and from their weightless jobs, and the neutrino purple of two orbiting fusion power globes that transmitted power to everyone, appearing like two beacons that pulsed faster than he could keep count.

“They are like a pulsar, Matthew,” murmured Mata Hari in his mind as his optic fiber cable linked them in full mindflow synchrony.

He didn’t give a damn what his AI partner thought the power globes resembled. He just wanted them gone. Along with everything else made by intelligent life.

With multiple PET image-thoughts, Matt fired the first barrage from his six antimatter cannons, aimed at the four operational battleglobes.
They were twelve kilometer wide giants, with antimatter batteries at the north and south poles of each globe. He expected counterfire very soon. The whiplash of coherent x-rays from a Picket Globe or the heart attack of being hit by an antimatter beam were not feelings he desired. He gave thanks for the Alcubierre space-time shields that protected him and his ship, but could be bypassed by tachRemotes signals.

Tachyons, traveling as they did in Elsewhere-Elsewhen, could pass through the shields that blocked normal light, lasers, beams, Offense torps, lidar, radar, neutrinos and anything else that belonged to the Standard Model of cosmology. He now lay outside of normal reality, and it was good that he did.

Three battleglobes fired two antimatter beams at his vector line, while sixteen nearby Picket Globes became thermonuclear fusion blasts that sent coherent x-rays his way. Though they traveled at lightspeed, they arrived long milliseconds after he’d raised his wraparound Alcubierre shields.

“Matthew, the Graviton Beam
is ready,” said Mata Hari, her mind image that of the Lady of the Sword, her chain mail cloak shining like a slivery mirror while her brown leather skirt sparkled with golden bronze reflections. Her two-handed broadsword was pointed at the airless, cratered planet that housed the naval shipyard headquarters and worker housing, along with proton lasers that even now were shooting pink beams at his location. They were absorbed by his Alcubierre shield just as the x-rays and antimatter beams had been absorbed.

Reaching with his mind through the circuits, chambers and rooms of starship
Mata Hari
, Matt’s mind
felt
the quark glow of the Graviton Beam that had its projector end extruded from the ship’s belly. It felt eerie to sense subatomic things like quarks, but the coherent gravitons emitted by the projector would travel instantly to the surface of the planet below and do the miraculous.

“Fire!”

In his and Mata Hari’s minds, they perceived the orange beam that instantly linked his ship with the planet. Then the planet began shrinking inward, toward its iron core. Everything on the surface also compacted as matter lost the spaces between atoms and became denser. Dense enough to become a small black hole. In the instant that it took for the Graviton Beam to connect with the entirety of the planet’s mass, it became a compacted mass with a density greater than a neutron star. All subatomic particles in the planet, along with all molecules of matter, from people to habitat domes to weapons to sharp rocks, became invisible to normal space-time perception. In sum, an object the size of a large pillow now occupied the space where once a planet existed. Its orbit would continue along the pathway of the planet, its invisible mass and gravity tidal effect the only sign that once there had existed a planet in orbit about a yellow star.

One second,
45milliseconds, 19 nanoseconds, 61 picoseconds, 310 femtoseconds,
said his onboard cyberclock.

Matt blinked mentally and became aware that their three-quarters lightspeed velocity had carried them past the cluster of orbiting naval vessels. He PET thought-imaged a barrage of neutral particle beam, free electron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen-
fluorine, excimer and proton laser attacks from his hull’s directed energy domes. Then, flipping the ship 180 degrees over several long seconds, he burped out a 200 meter wide purple plasma cloud from his ship’s dragon mouth, fired all six antimatter cannons at the six battleglobe hulks that were only partly built, leaving the construction discus to die from his purple dragon’s breath.

He tossed out
several Offense torps, a sensorRemote and took in the tachlink messages from the tiny tachRemotes he’d emitted just seconds earlier. They told him one of the battleglobes had sent out an Alert call for help via tachlink before it became a blue-white globe of matter-to-energy conversion. They also said the radiation level near the construction zone was high enough to kill every organic lifeform within a planetary diameter. No ship, no Courier vessel, nothing moved now under intelligent control as his nanoBit computers overwhelmed their shipboard computers with electronic white noise, intrusive worms and software viruses.

“This target seems to be dead,” Mata Hari said in his mind, her persona image becoming the Spy dressed in a white lace filigree dress of late Victorian vintage. Her dark eyes were somber and
her slim hands were clasped at the waist.

“Agreed,” howled the mind-gale of BattleMind as a twelve-foot tall T’Chak dragon took holo shape on the Bridge to his right, while Mata Hari stood to his left. “A simple attack you performed,
but at least our Graviton Beam saw use. Perhaps it will eat any visiting Anarchate ship that responds to the Alert call for help.”

“Perhaps,” said Matt in his mind as he exited
ocean-time
and resumed the normal thump-thump of his heart. Body exhaustion hit him the way a long-distance runner ‘hits the wall’. It was a feeling he recalled from his own long-ago run across the desert landscape of Halcyon. He had disabled the Stripper machine that sought to eat the surface of Eliana’s home world. Stopping it had been a good deed. Was this also be a good deed?

Mata Hari’s feminine mind slid between his awareness and the mental gale that was BattleMind. “My Matthew, it is good you ask yourself such questions. It is sad the Anarchate never seems to doubt its enslavement of peoples, including AIs.”

BattleMind’s giant black wings spread wide, nearly filling the Bridge. “Sad. Not sad. Emotions are irrelevant to fulfilling the Task set before us by the perfect Master.”

Matt and Mata Hari both felt disagreement. Emotions mattered. They had helped Mata Hari become a more complete ‘person’ than the human-like persona created by BattleMind in order to deal with organic lifeforms he understood not.