Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (21 page)

“Soooo, you wish me to look precognitively into your near-future? For surprises?”

“Please, my love?” He opened his inner mind-self to her, letting her feel how he always felt when in physical or mental contact with her.

In his mind, Eliana’s green eyes shown bright and her pale white
face showed two small dimples as she smiled back. “Thank you, dear Matthew. Now let me concentrate.”

He pulled away from the mental outreach that she and Suzanne always experienced when they used their psychic abilities to ‘read the future’. It was a part of her mind that glowed like the neutrinos of the Sun
Glow room, but was a place he could not enter mentally. That said, he felt her shock at whatever she saw. “Trouble?”

Her eyes showed moistness. “Yes. There are plenty of battleglobes there, awaiting your arrival. They are commanded by Yorkel. As best I can read his surface intentions, he was ordered to
go there by Commander Chai. You should pass it by, Matthew.”

“I know that.” But he also felt a need to defy fate. To attack even when expected. To put his life on the line, every day, for not taking his sister Charlotte with him to
Elios port on Thuringia. Thereby allowing her, at least, to survive the genome slaver raid. Eliana felt his emotions and felt his stubbornness. She shook her head slowly.

“Matthew, I foresee plenty of explosions and great danger.”

“Will we survive?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, her eyes going distant as she again looked at the future time stream. “But Yorkel feels like a very determined opponent. You risk the flagship of
Ocean Fleet in your effort to . . . satisfy your guilt feelings.”

Matt sat stiff in the glass chair of his Interlock Pit, feeling tense even though he and Mata Hari and Gatekeeper and BattleMind were as safe as could be, since they were in Translation space-time. That would change once he ordered Mata Hari to enter new coordinates for an exit from Translation. “I know. Let me think it over. There are pros and cons to attacking the shipyard.”

A purple-scaled giant dragon took shape in his awareness as BattleMind joined their mindflow chat. Its two red eyes focused on him as intently as Eliana’s mind focused on them. “This is a target. A good target if we can destroy both the shipyard and Anarchate battleglobes! The T’Chak do not avoid combat. We welcome it!”

In the background of his mind there floated Mata Hari and her lifepartner Gatekeeper. Both expressed mental reservations. BattleMind ignored them the way a corporate executive would ignore small underlings.
That behavior reminded him of the nature of what he fought. An end to a totalitarian system that ruled the lives of trillions of people.

“We will do a fast Hit-and-Run on the shipyard,” he mentally told Eliana, Mata Hari and Gatekeeper. “But not for my revenge. We will make this hit and leave a locator beacon for Commander Chai saying we attacked even though we knew there was a fleet of battleglobes protecting the shipyard. That will say something to the superiors of both Yorkel and Chai that they need to hear. Tyranny always falls before hope.”

Sector Captain Yorkel liked his new Captain’s Booth. It had no acid stains on the surrounding clear plastic. And his old Bridge crew filled the half circle of the Bridge. Executive Officer Malel stood to his right, his brown-scaled body encircled by a ring of data panels and WorkPads. Tactical Officer Lark’s hairy form stood before his Tactical Cluster, his mental attention already tracking the tachlink reports from the thousands of tachRemotes they had seeded throughout Upsilon Carinae B’s system.

While most lay along the approaches to the
Admin asteroid that housed Halicene workers and staff, many were widely dispersed in case the Human Dragoneaux appeared on the opposite side of the star system. Such an action would not cause his fleet of forty Nova battleglobes to leave their defensive positions around the shipyard. He would not be drawn out into a string of starships that could be picked off singly, or bypassed by a quick Translation jump from the far system side to within range of the asteroid. While the Human had shown himself to be crafty and deadly dangerous, he, the Brokeet in charge of the largest fleet ever assembled in this part of Sector 14, was more experienced in fleet maneuvers.

Yorkel made sure the x-ray Picket Globes were set on autofire to blast x-rays at the vector line of a gravity wave pulse. Many would miss the Human’s Dreadnought warship, but some would impact on it. Hopefully before the Human raised his Alcubierre space-time shields. And lying in stealth mode were dozens of 30 megaton bomb
Offense sleds that could achieve one-quarter lightspeed on their own. They were a new weapon he had crafted at Polaris B and caused to be loaded onto his battleglobes. The Offense sleds were also set on autofire mode to accelerate toward the incoming vector line. Finally, he had confiscated several short wavelength ruby mining lasers and placed them along the approach line that the Supply Tube ships took when delivering optoelectronic parts for the Halicene MotherShips. Like his other outlying offensive Remotes, these lasers were set on autofire since they would have only femtoseconds in which to sense the gravity wave of the Human’s emergence into normal space-time, then fire at the gravity wave vector. Again, most would miss as the T’Chak ship moved along the vector that would bring it to the Admin asteroid. But a few might impact before the shields went up.

“Sector Captain,” called Malel from the right, “are you in neurolink with
Defiant’s
weapons systems?”

“I am,” he said aloud, working hard at the job of splitting his mind’s attention between normal speech mode and the fast sensory inputs
as his ship’s antimatter cannons and Bethe Inducer projector fed him data over fiber optic relays. “As are the various weapons crews across this battleglobe. We are prepared to respond as fast as neurolink allows.”

Tactical Officer Lark raised one hand from his post. “All ship Tactical systems are on alert, Sector Captain. Alternate weapons crews are ready to replace current crews as their shift ends.”

Yorkel felt inner satisfaction. While his chitin exoskeleton did not allow him the mammalian indulgence of smiling or showing facial expressions, his sensory antennae and the pheromone flow from the Brokeets on the Bridge told him everyone was eager for battle. Anxious even.

“Outstanding, Lark. However, it may be days before the Human shows up. So be sure each crew takes meal and rest breaks in between their weapons neurolink service.”

Malel looked his way with all four yellow eyes showing concern. “Sector Captain, you too need to rest and refuel.”

“Eventually, Malel. Eventually. Right now I wish to roam this ship’s weapons systems. We know not the direction our opponent will appear.  But when he does, there will be lightspeed attacks that may disable him.”

Matt relaxed into
ocean-time
as
Mata Hari
neared the moment of exit from Translation. They would materialize at the spot used by the Supply Tubes when they exited Translation on their way to deliver supplies. But Supply Tubes could only move at quarter lightspeed velocities. His ship would exit at a full three-fourths lightspeed. If weapons were waiting for him to emerge, he expected to outpace their efforts to harm him. The coolness of the glass chair that he occupied in the Interlock Pit spoke to him in slow, human muscle fiber signals.

Five
hundred and thirty-two milliseconds
, murmured his internal cyberclock.

“Matthew, in one second,” Mata Hari said in his mind as oceans of ship data flowed over his mind, even as a three dee
holo of the system space near the Admin asteroid occupied part of his mental attention.

“Are the 73 Megil captives secure under inertial restraint?”

An image of dozens of aliens and nine Humans filled his mind, each of them lying on a bed or couch in their roomsuites. They had become used to orders announced by Mata Hari or Gatekeeper, even though he had visited with them in person the last few days. The two Human families had shown joy at their liberation and had insisted on feeding him a homemade meal during a family picnic in the Park. He had attended and done his best to entertain the young children. They had loved it when he had given each of them a ride on his shoulders. While they also wanted to see him in Suit, outfitted like a two-legged battle-tank, that he had declined. There was too much on the outside of Suit that little fingers could disturb. Anyway, he liked being ‘bare’ for the days they’d spent in Translation.

“Yes, Matthew,” said the Lady of the Sword persona image of Mata Hari. She wore silver chain mail, the leather skirt and
held her steel broadsword in both hands, as if to slash and hack at an oncoming opponent. “My partner Gatekeeper is monitoring their condition.”

He smiled mentally at her. “Great to have you at my side,” he said, then perceived the holo appearance of BattleMind to his right. “And the same to you, great flying dragon of the T’Chak.”

The whirlwind of BattleMind’s mentality was focused on ship weapons systems and the Sun Glow weapon in the Restricted Rooms. But a small tendril of thought showed dry amusement at Matt’s image-term for the AI.

One second, five
hundred and forty-three milliseconds
.

Before him the holosphere went from grey to normal black space, sprinkled with stars the color of jewels. The gravity wave of their emergence went out. In short femtoseconds Matt released thousands of tachlink and sensor Remotes, four decoy Remotes that would imitate the appearance and electronic noise of his real ship, while sensorBeads, limpet complinks
and Hunter-Killer torps spread out ahead of him. He thought the order for the nose shields to come up first, then—

“Impact!” screamed Mata Hari in a tone of pain as she caused the winged dragon shape of their ship to rotate, thereby reducing the chance of a laser penetrating the adaptive
optics sapphire crystals seeded by the millions over the flexhull of his ship.

In Matt’s mind and in his physical body he felt pain. Sharp pain as three x-ray lasers hit his right ship side, cutting into the ceramic armor that lay below the flexmetal hull.
A ruby red laser also struck at that spot. Then two more red lasers struck near the snout of his ship, but were absorbed by the front Alcubierre shields. Their wavelength strength exceeded four thousand megawatts, per the laser frequency sensors that covered the hull. A human scream sounded in his ship Ears as one of the lasers breached a roomsuite. Into his mind came the image of a three year-old girl, with blond hair and pink cheeks, whose mouth was open in a high-pitched scream as her mother’s head vaporized from a penetrating red laser beam.

“Shields fully deployed!” cried Mata Hari as Matt’s stomach began to surge gastric acids preparatory to vomiting.

He could not afford physical distractions. Somehow, someway, High Captain Yorkel had laid an autofire attack that anticipated where he would appear. Either that, or there were millions of x-ray Picket Globes filling the Upsilon Carinae B star system. Mind reeling from the pain of the x-ray and laser impacts onto his ship skin as his mind felt shock from the image of the girl’s mother being decapitated before her daughter, Matt acted.

“Shift vector line upward! Now!
Use the Repulsors and supplement with the deut-li thrusters. Add antimatter to the thrust so we get far away from this vector line!”

One second,
900 milliseconds, 320 nanoseconds, 14 picoseconds and 6 femtoseconds
.

The angry roar of BattleMind as the T’Chak AI sensed what Matt sensed
was combined with the fierce-eyed snarl of Mata Hari as the three of them moved through ship systems at speeds of milliseconds, nanoseconds, picoseconds and even femtoseconds. Matt could not achieve femtosecond thought. But what he could do vastly exceeded the speed of fiber optic neurolinking as practiced on board the battleglobes and on any other armed starship. The thoughts of Yorkel only moved at one hundred twenty meters per second, versus his thoughts that moved at two-thirds of lightspeed thanks to optical neurolinking.

The six antimatter cannons on his wings each fired at a separate target. Six battleglobes that lay within
50,000 kilometers of starship
Mata Hari
lost a large part of their twelve kilometer hull as his neutron antimatter beams connected.

Twenty-three Picket Globes were destroyed by pink beams from his proton
lasers before they could explode and shoot x-rays his way. Other Picket Globes had already exploded but their x-rays either hit behind him, impacted on the Alcubierre fields or missed due to his vector line change.

Two seconds,
100 milliseconds, 609 nanoseconds, 64 picoseconds and 43 femtoseconds
, said his cyberclock.

Three of
the sensorRemotes that preceded Matt reported by tachlink the sudden movement of six Offense sleds. The sleds had dropped their Stealth camo and now approached intersection with his adjusted course at one-fourth lightspeed. A thought-command directed neutral particle laser domes to fire on the approaching sleds, which were still a thousand kilometers away.

The course change by the sleds told him that Yorkel had seeded the area near the Admin asteroid with thousands of tachlink Remotes so the Brokeet alien would know instantly the new vector taken by Matt and Dreadnought
Mata Hari
.