Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (22 page)

Looking ahead with his mind, sensing the 120,000 miles per second speed of his ship as its Translation exit velocity moved him toward his target almost faster than an eye could see, he became aware that another 34 battleglobes were arranged around the asteroid in four groups. Each group had fired black antimatter beams at him, while each hull sparkled with powerful laser emissions. Shortly those beams would impact on the nose of his ship.

“Sun Glow weapon is ready!” growled BattleMind as it extruded the cluster of neutrino emission tubes from the ship’s belly. “We can reduce the asteroid once we are within 10,000 kilometers of it!”

Three seconds,
90 milliseconds, 820 nanoseconds, 12 picoseconds and three femtoseconds
.

Even as Gatekeeper moved to the roomsuite with the dead mother, shocked father and screaming child, Matt thought swiftly of what he could do to offset the ‘wait in ambush and lightspeed attack’ advantage that he had long used. But which Yorkel now used against him. His objective was known. His every vector change was instantly known. Thousands of Offense Remotes were attacking or ready to attack, including thermonuke sleds like the six that now exploded behind him. Either they had to Translate out of the system, find a new weapon or decimate the forces arranged against them.

The sneaky part of Matt’s mind spoke to him. He smiled. “Mata Hari, activate both the Bethe Inducer and the Graviton Beam. Aim one at one cluster of battleglobes and the other at a different cluster. How soon before we can fire them and reach those battleglobes?”

The Lady of the Sword swung her
laser sword, destroying several dozen nearby sensor Remotes and two bomb sleds. “Two point four seconds. Before then the antimatter cannons will be recharged. Their targets?”

“Battleglobes in a third cluster!” Matt snarled as his ship Eyes saw the Human father jump from inertial restraint to grab his daughter and hold her tight to his chest.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

“Four hits!” cried Lark from his Tactical Cluster post.

Yorkel felt intense satisfaction that his placement of x-ray Picket Globes, thermonuke sleds and the mining lasers had hit the Human’s Dreadnought before it could raise every Alcubierre space-time shield. Then he winced at th
e real-time image of six antimatter beams leaving the grey-clouded ship and impacting on six nearby battleglobes. One was totally vaporized while the other five had deep wounds that killed crew. But they were operational and now fired AM beams at the shield-protected Dreadnought.

“Move!” he cried over the tachyon comlink that connected him with the captain of each battleglobe in his fleet. “Vary your vectors, be random in movement. Staying in one place allows the Human to lightspeed target you!”

Malel’s brown fingers moved over his circle of datapanels and WorkPads. “They are moving, Sector Captain. As we practiced.”

In his mind’s-
eye Yorkel ‘saw’ the image of thirty-nine battleglobes, plus his own Nova that had the mass of the Admin asteroid between him and direct line of sight of the Dreadnought. The four clusters began swirling through space even as their laser domes and antimatter projectors fired at the spot where the incoming T’Chak ship would be. Thanks to the tachlink Remotes, the Tactical CPU of every ship could project the future location of the Human and shoot where it
would be
, rather than shoot at where it had been. Seeing his opponent’s moves in real-time combined with random globe movement was something the entire fleet had practiced in Polaris B system. He had calculated it as the only method for survival against a near invulnerable warship that had armaments as deadly as the Anarchate.

“The Human is counter-attacking!” whistled Lark as his black fur stood stiff and his scaly black tail thumped the Bridge gravplates.

Yorkel saw six new antimatter beams reach out to impact on six battleglobes in Sector Four, directly opposite his Sector One cluster. Two of them went to nova vaporization as the black antimatter beam penetrated to the inner weapons holds with their magfield held antimatter. Four others were badly wounded, but now rotated operational sides to face the approaching enemy. The Human’s ship speared toward them at three-fourths lightspeed, a velocity that threw off the targeting calculations of most CPUs.

“Emit decoys of
Defiant
,” he cried in voice and in his mind to those crew controlling the cargoholds. “Go to Stealth now!”

Yorkel ignored the frustrated pheromones emitted by most of his Bridge crew. Being weapons silent would keep the Human from focusing on his battleglobe and might leave him a chance to get in a deadly blow.

Then a pale green beam hit six battleglobes in Sector Three, causing them to disappear. A nearby tachlink Remote said only particles of neutron star remained in that space. Soft skin! The Human had fired his Bethe Inducer at ships rather than at a planet or the asteroid!

An orange
beam reached out and impacted seven battleglobes in Sector Two. They too disappeared though a nearby Remote said there now existed seven tiny black holes where once seven ships of his fleet had existed.

“Malel! What kind of weapon is that
orange beam!” he cried aloud.

Four yellow eyes looked his way. “They were coherent gravitons! Somehow they caused the matter of each ship to implode to the black hole state.”

Nausea hit both his inner stomachs. Blue-white flares of antimatter destruction and rainbow laser explosions filled the space around the Admin asteroid. In his mind, the three dee holo of the space around him showed only twenty-four operational battleglobes, including his own. But what could he do against a Bethe Inducer beam stronger than their own weapon, let alone against an alien T’Chak weapon that turned objects into black holes?

Matt
’s mind felt the weight of
ocean-time
immersion in the lightspeed thoughts of Mata Hari and BattleMind, as Gatekeeper saw to the safety of the human family that had lost a mother. One part of the ship sensors told him that his battle strikes had killed fifteen battleglobes, leaving Yorkel with 24 operational craft. But there still remained nine MotherShip hulks in orbit about the Admin asteroid, plus minor Halicene craft that were just now moving away or toward the asteroid on Repulsor or thruster power. Another set of his ship’s sensors said repairBots were spinning new carbon-carbon nanotube fiber to repair the ship’s flexhull skin, even as Mata Hari herself was adding extra armor foam to the space sides of each occupied roomsuite. Fortunately only he and his AI partners knew of the death in the Human roomsuite. The other Humans and dozens of aliens who lay restrained under inertial fields would learn the results of this battle once it was over. And Matt had tough decisions to make.

“Within range for the Sun Glow weapon!” cried Mata Hari even as BattleMind moved to fire at the asteroid.

“Spread the beam!” he mind-thought to BattleMind. “So it takes in the orbiting Mother Ship hulks along with the asteroid.”

A mental grunt from BattleMind tapped his awareness, much the way a hurricane strips a leaf from a twig. Fortunate he was that Mata Hari had long since inserted a portion of herself as a buffer between his organic mind and the ferocious strength of the T’Chak dragon’s mind. “Firing!” it snarled loudly, resembling the
acoustic impact of an emergency siren multiplied by a factor of a million.

Six seconds,
300 milliseconds, 123 nanoseconds, six picoseconds and 13 femtoseconds
, murmured his cyberclock.

In his mind’s-eye, where time and thoughts moved at nanosecond and millisecond speeds, he took in the tachlink feeds from the Remotes he’d emitted upon Translation exit. They were flying at three-fourths lightspeed
parallel to his original vector, while his ship twisted, moved left, moved down toward the system’s ecliptic plane, then spiraled slowly to allow all six antimatter cannons on his two wings to fire at both wounded and untouched battleglobes. The black AM beams often missed since their target vector was FTL signaled to the target battleglobe that was moving randomly as part of a cluster group. But some impacted. Then the Sun Glow’s broad yellow beam impacted the grey cratered surface of the airless asteroid that hosted worker habitats and Admin towers, along with underground food and air bunkers. That beam included most of the orbiting hulks. And that beam carried a message for Yorkel and the Anarchate—surrender or face total annihilation!

Yorkel’s mental vision blurred as several nearby tachlink Remotes transmitted to him by FTL tachyon emissions the image of the grey asteroid that still lay between him and his opponent. A
white spear reached out from the rapidly nearing Dreadnought and impacted the entire opposite hemisphere of the asteroid. That broad beam also took in seven of the nine MotherShip hulks still under construction. Before he could blink mentally, all of them became a roiling yellow globe of G-class star plasma that seemed to be the size of a battleglobe. Not the massively large solid asteroid that had been there less than a second earlier.

“What
is
that thing!” he cried to Malel.

“Checking sensors.” Malel
’s two hands touched spots on his circle of WorkPads. “Neutrinos! Coherent neutrinos of the three types known to be emitted by every star during hydrogen fusion, my Sector Captain. It . . . it is a weapon unlike anything ever recorded in the annals of the Anarchate!”

Fear filled Yorkel. But only briefly. Anger replaced fear as he realized that in fighting a single T’Chak Dreadnought warship he was fighting an opponent more powerful than his entire fleet. Which now number
ed just twenty battleglobes, most of them in his own Sector One and some in Sectors Three and Two. Nothing remained of Sector Four fleet. “Disperse!” he cried over the tachyon comlink. “Head away from this Human warship! Preserve your strength for future battles!”

The pheromones of anger that filled his Bridge were added to by his own pheromone emissions. The
Defiant
would wait here, in full Stealth mode, to see what the Human did as it flashed past at three-fourths lightspeed. Perhaps it would lower a shield. Perhaps one of the few remaining thermonuke sleds could impact it and overload one of its Alcubierre shields. And perhaps his crew and his ship would die at the hands of a soft-skinned biped without Clan sigil or cohort allegiance. If Humans even possessed such cultural signs of civilization.

# # #

Matt
’s mind took in the stellar vaporization of the entire four hundred kilometer wide asteroid, seven of the nine orbiting MotherShip hulks, a dozen or more shuttles and Courier ships, all due to the Sun Glow weapon’s single strike. Even as he marveled at the T’Chak superweapon, his six wing antimatter cannons fired at fleeing battleglobes, destroying four. The laser domes that spotted his ship spine and sides added hundreds of short-frequency, thousand megawatt laser beams to the battle, striking at other battleglobes and evaporating hundreds of Anarchate sensor Remotes that now gave Yorkel an image of his future. Mentally he sent a third and fourth antimatter barrage against those battleglobes previously hit, seeking to vaporize as many members of Yorkel’s fleet as possible. But the highly divergent vectors and outward movement of most battleglobes kept them intact as his ship flashed past the former site of a Halicene shipyard.

“Matthew, there is a thermonuke sled heading toward our port side,” said Mata Hari, her mind moving to destroy it.

“Wait!” he cried mentally. “Let it impact. A single 30 megaton thermonuke will not crash the shield. And I wish for Yorkel to see the failure of this mobile thermonuke tactic of his.”

A nimbus of pur
e fusion-fusion star energy blossomed against the port Alcubierre shield, resembling a tiny star kissing the side of his ship. Internally, feeling the Alcubierre node for the port shield, he felt it handle easily the input of thermonuclear energies that it shifted to Elsewhere-Elsewhen space-time. As all his shields did with any solid or energy impact.

In less than ten milliseconds they were past the roiling star plasma of the asteroid
. Mata Hari’s Lady of the Sword persona tapped him mentally. “Matthew, one of our sensorRemotes has detected a single battleglobe that is in stealth and lying six thousand kilometers out from the former asteroid location. When the magfield containing the star plasma collapses in one minute, it could be destroyed by the mini-nova that will be unleashed. Your decision?”

That would be Yorkel, remaining behind as a captain of a ship does when his ship, or his fleet, sinks in battle. Though this captain likely expected to survive and seek another combat encounter. Well, this whole Hit-and-Run attack that had taken less than a minute of real-time was aimed at teaching a lesson to the Anarchate. He would share that lesson with his opponent. Leaving
ocean-time
to speak in normal real-time mode, he gasped with the physical impact of such an intense time spent in hyperlink with his AI partners.

“Yorkel,” Matt broadcast over open tachlink aimed at the position of the hidden battleglobe. “You should follow your fleet into retreat. The magfield containing the star plasma that used to be the Halicene asteroid will collapse within forty-eight seconds. When it does, a small nova will happen. You could get scorched.
Vaya con Diablo
, my inventive opponent.”

Three seconds passed as Matt re-experienced the feel of bare skin against the glass of his
Interlock Pit seat, still feeling the mental presence of the AIs even as his eyes and skin felt data flows from multiple ship systems. His forward holosphere brightened with the image of a giant ant with golden-yellow skin, its two dark yellow eyes fixing on him. The Brokeet ant’s two head antennae trembled as in the background other alien lifeforms moved to their duties. A hippo-like Orko lifeform worked at a circle of datapanels to Yorkel’s right.

“Sector Capta
in, the Human speaks correctly,” said the Orko in passable Belizel. “Our sensors say the magfield containing the stellar plasma is already weakening.”

“Why did you warn me, Human Dragoneaux?” asked Yorkel as it stood within
a tubular glass booth that contained multiple touchpanel controls.

“A lesson for the Anarchate, good Brokeet who has been promoted to captain a fleet of forty-one battleglobes.” Matt smiled, showing his teeth. “I knew you were here, in Upsilon Carinae B system. I knew you would have a formidable defense set to attack me. But still I entered. And the damage you inflicted early on is now being repaired. We have been combat operational the entire time my ship has been present in this star system. Your Anarchate superiors should know that the other six T’Chak warships like this one are equally as capable of destroying Anarchate bases, shipyards, Admin planets and galactic tachnet nodes as we are.”