Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (23 page)

Yorkel’s two eyes blinked slowly. “Why does your ship portray the appearance of a two-winged reptile? When in normal mode?”

Matt knew this was an effort by Yorkel to get him to drop his Alcubierre shields so the captain could take one more shot at him. But it was an entertaining effort. “The shape of this ship illustrates the real-life shape of the flying bipeds of the Small
Magellanic Cloud. ” Matt sent a mind signal. “It is a much larger version of this T’Chak who stands to my right.”

BattleMind appeared in a twelve-foot high holo, his toothy snout o
pening and screeching a tornado-loud snarl at the Brokeet alien who’d mounted a smart defense and offense against his arrival. “You will die, impudent and imperfect organic lifeform!”

Yorkel’s chitin body shifted back a few centimeters, then froze. “That is a hologram of a living T’Chak. None still live. Is that your ship’s controlling AI?”

In Matt’s mind Mata Hari said
thirty-one seconds remain
.

He smiled again at the giant yellow ant
who filled his holosphere. “Living T’Chak do still exist. I’ve met them. Yes, that is one of my alien AI partners. And you have thirty seconds before a mini-nova engulfs you.”

“Where will you next attack?”

Matt erased his smile. “At places and locations you will never predict, despite the assistance of Commander Chai’s Sector 14 Intelligence node. But thank you for the location of Sector Intelligence near the Crab Nebula. It is good to know your superior will be pulling in battleglobes you will need to that location for his own defense.”

Yorkel’s chitin teeth ground audibly. “Next time you will die!”

“Next time you will wish you were dead,” Matt snarled, then cut the tachlink communications.

Outside, the space occupied by
the hidden battleglobe shimmered with the engaging of Translation.

“We should depart too, my friends,” he said even as Mata Hari activated their ship’s own Translation drive.

“Heading for Morrigan, Matthew,” she said. “And there is a recorded call from the husband of the dead woman. He wishes to . . . speak with you.

Matt could understand the husband’s anger. It likely matched his own anger at the kidnapping of his family so many years ago.

Well, at least he would have the pleasant option of offering the other captives the chance of settling on Morrigan, a planet of giant trees, broad green meadows, fluffy white clouds and pink-cheeked people who had chosen the path of duty and honor in a distant part of the galaxy, choosing to live under a yellow star located midways between Sagittarius Arm and Scutum-Crux Arm, in the cluster called Kappa Crucis. He looked forward to sharing vidimages of planet Morrigan, the downtown Park and the party-making of the Irish people there who claimed a lineage that linked back to the
Tuatha De Danaan
people of ancient Ireland.

If only the widowed father could see a future chance for hope in such a place!

Brrzeet stood before his control pedestal, scanning the holo of the message incoming from Sector Captain Yorkel. It provided verbal, text and vidimages of the recent battle against the Human renegade when the Vigilante creature attacked the Halicene shipyard at Upsilon Carinae B star system. Ignoring the stiff presence of Commander Chai as the hairy Spelidon stood before him, Brrzeet gave silent internal thanks that the Human appeared to be moving away from Perseus Arm and the Cloud of Warning nebula, perhaps aiming for other targets in Sagittarius Arm. With a wave of one hand he canceled the holo report and chose to fix all his eyes on the crippled two-legged form of Commander Chai from Intelligence Node.

“Your prediction the Human renegade would attack Upsilon Carinae
B proved accurate,” he told the black-furred biped. “That was useful.”

“Thank you, High Commander,” the Spelidon said.

Its carbon-black whiskers relaxed from what Brrzeet understood to be a posture of fear into one of relief. That would not do. “But can you and the members of your Intelligence Node continue to be useful? Where will the human strike next?”

The black eyes of the only Anarchate lifeform to meet the Human in person and live to tell its story, went emotionless. “The Human has appeared at two of the five target locations we predicted. And also at locations
not predicted by us. I will travel to the Human’s birth world of Thuringia, which orbits the star Pl-3 in the Orion Arm. Not far from the home world of his species.” The Spelidon paused, his whiskers assuming the stiffness of Arrogance Asserted, according to the studies Brrzeet had vidread. “It is possible he will revisit this Thuringia world in an effort to protect it. If I detect evidence of his presence there, I will call Sector Captain Yorkel to bring his remaining fleet to that star.”

The Spelidon already stomped on choices rightly made by Brrzeet, not by an underling like this creature
who possessed only two eyes and two legs, unlike the sanity and stability of four legs, four eyes and four brain lobes. “Wrong. I
order
you to travel there to interview anyone who knows anything about this Human who seeks to upset galactic stability. And I will order Sector Captain Yorkel to meet you there, or even arrive before you reach the star, since its remaining battleglobes are closer to Pl-3 Orion than you are now.”

Chai’s pointy nose sniffed loudly. “High Commander, this Sector Captain Yorkel lost twenty-six of the forty battleglobes assigned to him! He allowed the Halicene asteroid to be turned into stellar plasma! He—
”

“Is the only military lifeform to have survived two battles with this Human,” Brrzeet interrupted the arrogant Spelidon. “Or the second, if you count yourself. Though you fled your battleglobe before it moved to attack the Human.”

The Spelidon’s whiskers went limp and the scaly black tail dropped from the biped’s left shoulder. “Yes, but, but—”

“And while Yorkel lost those battleglobes, he preserved sixteen battleglobes and stayed behind long enough to receive a direct communication from this arrogant Human,” he bit off in angry Belizel. “Plus in two battles he managed to destroy one of the T’Chak warships and then wound the Human’s own Dreadnought! Did your own ship manage to achieve a similar record?”

“No, High Commander.”

Brrzeet waited a moment to see if the Spelidon’s arrogance would reassert itself. “Then go to this Pl-3 star
with its Human planet Thuringia and conduct standard Intelligence evaluations of the planet’s Human population, the Trade patterns it pursues, and check in with the Anarchate station on its moon. Be aware that anytime you are in space within Pl-3, you will follow the orders of Sector Captain Yorkel. And you will provide him with any useful intelligence you develop. Understood?”

“Understood, High Commander Brrzeet.”

The black fur of his Intelligence underling stiffened into a full body pattern of fear and worry. Good! “Then depart for Pl-3. Perhaps joint efforts by you and Yorkel will allow Anarchate forces to seriously damage this Human’s fleet of seven T’Chak warships. Or explain to me your failure! Assuming you survive the future.”

Eliana stared at the dark immensity of interstellar space that lay a light year out from Dagda, home star for the planet Morrigan and its million inhabitants of Irish and Celtic heritage. The Hexagon
Prime, now down to six ships due to Matt’s absence and the loss of Ocean AI, occupied the center of a globular cluster of 500 T’Chak Dreadnought starships. Those surrounding starships were arranged in ten cohorts of 50 ships each, with AI cohort commanders who, hopefully, would be joined by human pilot volunteers from the tough and honor-bound people of Morrigan.

“Don’t worry, Eliana,” said Suzanne in tachlinked mindvoice. “
Governor O’Davoren has signaled us that forty-three women and men volunteered to be pilot-trainees for our T’Chak fleet. They are all on the way out here, in one of the Morrigan corvettes.”

She smiled and sent her mind-sister a pulse of caring and love, even as she sent a min
dpulse of respect to George, the only other human in pilot-linkage with a T’Chak AI besides herself and Suzanne. His black-bearded face smiled back in her mind. He sent a sense of a brotherly hug to her. Though each of them was separated by thousands of kilometers, in tachlinked mindvoice they felt as close as when they’d shared a picnic meal in the Park, aboard
Mata Hari
. Putting aside her empathy for Matt’s effort to console a father over the loss of his wife during the battle at Upsilon Carinae B, she mentally gathered her human friends together with her AI partner Altuna, Suzanne’s Lorelei and George’s Inevitable. Surrounding the six of them were the mental presence of the ten AI Cohort commanders. Each had a name, a personality, a persona and millennia more experience of commanding a starship than she did. But she was Eliana, designated representative of Matthew the Vigilante. The man who was leading them all on a galaxy-wide crusade to end cloneslavery and bonded servitude. And she would not fail in her duty to Matt or to her comrades, no matter their substance.

The AI Imperial loomed before them all, her
Cohort persona appearance that of a T’Chak neuter dragon. “Your acceptance of me and my cohort partners as equal in value with your organic allies marks you as . . . as worthy of the service we once gave our T’Chak masters.” The black-winged dragon’s visual image was similar to that of BattleMind, but its two eyes were pink rather than the dark red of male and female T’Chak dragons. Like all of them she possessed a snout filled with sharp white teeth. That mouth opened as it mindspoke. “We have all followed you and your Matthew inward to this Milky Way galaxy you call home. We waited out the battle at Alkalurops. And we understand the value of having living organics in pilot-linkage with each of us, in mind-to-mind mode. As we now link with you. What do we do now?”

George sent her a mental signal he wished to contribute. “Yes, George?”

The olive-skinned, grey-eyed man who had found love later in life with blond Suzanne, gave a mental “wave” to each of the AIs who made up their Battle Council. “While particular targets are up to Matthew, we can practice defensive maneuvers that will help us cope with Anarchate x-ray Picket Globes, tachRemotes,  plasma torps and thermonuke torps that seek to overload our Alcubierre space-time shields.”

Eliana liked muscular George. The man was always direct, honest and eager to head straight into battle. As he had done with Matt during the genome slaver starship raid and the battle aboard the Commerce Station of Galifray planet, in Omega Centauri cluster. “Agreed, George. We should practice fleet maneuvers beyond those known from ancient Earth history. Suggestions, anyone?”

“I have some,” said Suzanne, her hazel eyes glowing larger as the intensity of her focus drew in the minds of each of them. “The problem is Alcubierre field overload. While each T’Chak ship could build backup field emitter pods as BattleMind did to protect the nose of its ship, perhaps a simpler solution is at hand that does not require building new installations.”

“What solution?” George muttered
in his Irish brogue.

The
mind image of Imperial reared back on her armored tail. “Defense is useful so long as it allows more effective attack modes.”

Eliana smiled to herself at how similar Imperial’s mindsense was to that of BattleMind. Even to its gale-force mind strength. Which was being buffered for her by Altuna and for the other two humans by their ship AIs.

“Look!” Suzanne arranged her hands into a tube that resembled a hollow log. “We already have backup Alcubierre fields in the shape of other T’Chak warships. Imagine one T’Chak ship lying at the center of a tube formed by four other T’Chak ships that rotate around the central starship, much the way a wheel orbits the spoke at the center.”

“Ahhh,” murmured the strong mindvoice of Lorelei, the
female T’Chak partner of Suzanne. “I had wondered why you were researching the ancient phalanx formations of a human called Alexander of Macedon.”

Suzanne
smiled mentally. “Yup. But this is the phalanx in three dimensions, with each four-ship wheel circling the inner ship fast enough that no thermonuke sled can reach the inner ship’s field. And to avoid overload on the outer four ships in case a sled hits one of them, the center ship moves to the outer ring every five seconds, with its place taken by the ship it replaces. Oh. All five ships are
also
firing proton, laser and neutral particle lasers even as their antimatter wing cannons are firing at opponent battleglobes, x-ray Picket Globes and sensorRemotes. With four ships firing outward and the center ship firing forward and rearward with its AM cannons, this five-ship cluster is able to attack from all six spatial orientations!”

George’s AI Inevitable, who showed the
mind image of a female T’Chak dragon, flapped her wings. “Yes! That five-ship cluster maximizes our firepower while protecting each ship from thermonuke overload. And with each Cohort leader making sure her fifty ships do not fire at a fellow Ocean Fleet member, we are able to rapidly reduce the automated remotes, sleds and torps that will be launched by any battleglobe.”

Eliana admired the efficiency of this formation in her mind’s-eye as the gathered AIs arranged their 500 ships in
to a simulation that shot out black antimatter beams and colorful laser beams as the whole cluster moved at speed toward a planetary target. She thought such a fleet tactical arrangement would allow them to swiftly reduce any pre-positioned sensors and armaments, like those Matt had faced at the Halicene shipyard. That would allow Matt and the inner core of Hexagon Prime to focus its firepower on the decimation of battleglobes, shipyards, installations and moon-based tachnet nodes.