Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (24 page)

“Outstanding Suzanne!” she said in shared mindvoice.

“A useful tactic,” rumbled Cohort leader BattleMate.

“Highly efficient,” whistled Imperial, the neuter Cohort leader.

“I like it!” whistled Melody, a Cohort leader who had chosen the mind-shape of a female T’Chak dragon.

Eliana felt the soft mental touch of Altuna, whose persona shape was that of a
male T’Chak dragon every bit as large as BattleMind. But Altuna carried a sense of wisdom gained over millennia of star traveling. “Yes, Altuna?”

“The Morrigan corvette nears our
spatial locus. Who . . . which of you Battle Council members will greet it?”

“I will,” Eliana said. “As Matt’s representative within
Ocean Fleet, I should meet these forty-three volunteers. But each of you, humans and AIs all, are welcome to mindwatch my greeting via our tachnode linkage.”

“Sounds great,” said Suzanne as she and
Lorelei mentally withdrew from the Strategy Council, their mind presence dwindling to that of a small blue cloud on Eliana’s mental horizon.

“
Always hated admin work,” grumbled George as he and Inevitable also retreated mentally. “Hope you survive it!”

Melody
, the T’Chak female whose black dragon wings seemed to fill Eliana’s mental space, fixed two red eyes on Eliana. “Was that George statement an example of what organics call humor?”

Restraining her giggles from going acoustic, Eliana gave the Cohort leader a friendly smile. “Yes, Melody, it was. But even we organics sometimes do not understand some humor expressions.”

“Then why speak at all if you cannot be precise?”

Eliana laughed out loud. “Because we organics find humor in all parts of the natural world. Such as the humor question of ‘Why does the Milky Way galaxy rotate its arms in a clock-wise fashion?”

“Why?” asked Melody in a calm voice only slightly stronger than a tornado.

“So the galaxy can keep from becoming curdled!”

Melody’s mind image vanished, as did those of the other Cohort leaders.

Well! Guess there was room for these T’Chak AIs to learn something new! Standing up and stepping out of her Interlock Pit, Eliana checked her hair in a reflective part of the Bridge wall
. Next to her glowed Altuna’s giant dragon shape in a nearby holo. While the crocodile snout of Altuna did not allow Eliana to ‘read’ the obvious mood of her AI partner, she got the sense that Altuna did indeed understand the simple humor of her joke, but felt it beneath his wisdom to comment.

Together the two of them strode into the Spine hallway, heading for the mid-belly cargohold and their ship’s shuttle, the
Jocelyn Bell
. Eliana would don her full combat suit before leaving in the shuttle, a rule of Matt’s that she enjoyed obeying. She loved the eye-blink control of the suit’s shoulder laser cannons, let alone the nerve gas dispensers on its waist. While she would toss back her helmet once inside the corvette and facing the volunteers, she would allow suit to remain on Alert status. It was a smart thing to do. And anyway, if she and Suzanne were to outshoot Matt at their weekly armory practice, she had to get in her time in suit!

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Sarah Vasiliades stared intently at the combat suited form of Eliana Themistocles, a woman she had admired during their refugee flight from Omega Casino to Morrigan planet. Now, the woman she had admired looked like a feminine version of Matthew the Vigilante. Had her personality also changed?

“Hey Sarah!” called Eliana’s voice from the combat suit’s external speakers. “I missed you!” Her friend paused as she noticed how the pilot volunteers seemed uncertain
about how to relate to an armored giantess. Eliana stood just inside the airlock that connected their corvette with the
Altuna
. The woman who’d treated Sarah like a sister slapped the side of her armored helmet, causing it to hinge backward to lie against the white flexarmor of the suit. She smiled broadly. “Hey! I’m human. Or mostly if you don’t count my prehensile tail!”

Sarah chuckled, heard a dozen other people laugh or chuckle, then walked up to Eliana, who stood a half meter taller than her thanks to the combat suit. “Eliana! So great to see you again! Uh, do I hug your waist? Or will that set off the nerve gas dispensers?”

Eliana’s left hand gauntlet slapped her forehead, lightly, even as her friend’s right arm gripped Sarah’s waist and effortlessly lifted her up for a ‘soft’ hug, face to face. “Is this better, boss lady?”

The deep green eyes of the old Eliana who’d spent long hours in the Commune Hall with her, other Omega Casino managers and more than a hundred other human refugees from Matt’s destruction of the casino, looked the same as before.
Sarah ignored how it felt to be held in mid-air, and reached up to push a lock of Eliana’s soot-black hair away from her white forehead. “Hey, sister, you look good. But this combat suit look is new to me. And I think a surprise to other folks here who recall you from our first trip to Morrigan.”

Eliana gently set Sarah on the corvette’s gravplates, gave a nod to the Morrigan captain-pilot who’d spent the last three days convoying them out to an empty space that lay far beyond the heliopause of Dagda star, then faced the watching eyes of her fellow volunteers. “First off, I am Eliana Themistocles, a crossbreed of human and Direndl parentage from
planet Halcyon, out at Sigma Puppis system. My lifepartner, Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, is on his way here after delivering another blow to the Anarchate. You, all of you, saw the news coverage of our rescue of the Morrigan citizens who were captured by a genome slaver ship. Then it seemed like half the planet turned out for dancing, drinking and wild party-making!”

Everyone laughed at that. Including one of her fellow casino refugees. Rafael Dominguez, husband of her fellow manager Rebecca.
He stepped forward before other people could.

“Eliana,
protector of children, I told my wife Rebecca someone from our family must join this crusade against cloneslavery!” The black-haired, thirty-something man who’d done structural consulting for the casino at home while Rebecca worked at a casino office, held up his right hand. “I volunteered. Rebecca could not refuse me. Anyway, as you may recall, my temper is calmer than Rebecca’s!”

Sarah laughed with Eliana as both recalled the time she and Matt had hurried to the roomsuite occupied by the Dominguez family, a roomsuite that had been penetrated by a laser beam that fortunately did not harm anyone. But it had scared the children and Rebecca. Who’d given Matt a piece of her mind. “Eliana, I’ve been taking spatial d
imensions class work with Rafael,” she said. “He was more patient with our expert program than I was!”

Several dozen Morrigan men and women pushed forward toward them, overfilling the central aisle that ran the length of the cargohold of the Morrigan corvette. Before she could
say something, Sarah saw Eliana nod to the captain-pilot, tap her earpiece, then speak too softly for her to hear. But in less than a second all gravity had vanished as the gravplates were shut off by the Morrigan pilot. While her stomach clenched, she realized Eliana had chosen three dee disorientation over people being trampled.

“Calmness, folks!” Eliana spoke loudly over her suit’s speaker. “Remember that there is no real up or down or whatever. What matters is your
vector and your objective. If you wish to get closer to me, kick in the opposite direction. If you suddenly have to empty parts of your anatomy, kick away from me toward the lavatory amidships. Uh, there is gravity inside there!”

Sarah enjoyed how Eliana had quickly seen the problem, devised a solution, communicated the fix to the person able to make a change, then moved now to reassure and give guidance.
Her friend’s growth in people management said her wearing of the combat suit was for more than show. And it told her that coming here, to be joined mentally with the self-aware mind of a T’Chak dreadnought warship, had been the right choice. While she had never served in any military or police service, she was good at organizing. And at contributing to the efficient working of any organization. Including fleet maneuvers that involved deadly destruction carried out in short seconds of optical neurolinking with the alien AI that controlled each T’Chak warship.

Eliana looked down at her. “Sarah, I see you hooked a foot under the seat of that couch-chair. Stable already, I see. Ready for your training with George and Suzanne? If you do well, I suspect Matt would welcome you in as the eighth member of the Hexagon Prime fleet.”

Her heart filled with caring and love for Eliana, a professional woman who understood Sarah’s need to be valued for more than her gender or her platinum Standards. “I’m ready. Are we assigned to a particular warship yet?”

Eliana smiled at five Morrigan citizens all trying to claim her attention simultaneously, then looked Sarah eye-to-eye. “Oh yes. Every pilot has already been assigned a warship for
partner training. We expect everyone to survive basic pilot training and spatial maneuvers. For you, I think Cohort leader Imperial will do. You represented every human before the casino’s annual Owner’s Ball. While Imperial has a mindsense of straight-forward logic. I think the two of you will match up quite nicely!”

George had come to enjoy being in
optical neurolink with Inevitable, even though the female T’Chak dragon always seemed impatient to be doing something. Anything. In this case, having all 506 Dreadnought starships engage in simultaneous movement as everyone worked to emulate Suzanne’s three dee phalanx maneuver that allowed for a combined offense and defense arrangement of Ocean Fleet. He lay at the center of Hexagon Prime, with six other ships revolving around him as he pretended to be Matt in starship
Mata Hari
. Suzanne, Eliana, Sarah in
Imperial
, Rafael in
BattleMate
and the AIs Gondu and Flowering rotated about his ship
Inevitable
. Beyond them were a hundred clusters of five ships each, with each cluster sending out weak but colorful laser beams to emulate an attack in six spatial dimensions.

“Pay attention, George!” grumbled Inevitable as she filled the Bridge’s front holosphere with purple dots that represented Anarchate battleglobes.

“I am!” he said, even as he admitted to the distraction of wondering why Matt had not already arrived at Morrigan. Even though he and his human allies were not in
ocean-time
superfast neurolink mode, still, sitting in his glass chair in the Interlock Pit and mind-sorting through dozens of neurolink and visual inputs was challenge enough. “Hey, none of us have the seven years of neurolink with you AIs that Matt has!”

The green mindglow of Inevitable
brightened. “It shows. Though the target destruction of Suzanne and Eliana is nearly perfect, thanks to their psychic precognition!”

George knew he shouldn’t feel envious of his lifepartner, or her girlfriend. The two women had become as adept in full combat suit activity as he, and they often beat his combat sho
oting score. He liked to tease them that their psychic abilities gave them an unfair advantage. But in truth their combat suit work and shooting scores reflected native abilities. Just meant he had to work harder!

“Thanks Inevitable,” he said, leaving mental distractions behind and focusing on the
tachlink ‘feel’ of the mental linkage of Sarah and forty-two other human pilot volunteers as each of them worked in optical neurolink with the T’Chak AI that ran most ship functions. “Each cohort is avoiding cross-fire on other warships while maintaining a nice targeting of laser beams at the nanoRemotes, Offense sleds, tachRemotes, battleglobe holo decoys and shuttle
Jocelyn Bell
.”

Inevitable spread her black wings even as red beams from her eyes took out several tachRemotes and her long tail vanquished three
Offense sleds that imitated thermonuke carriers. “You humans are so much slower than we AIs, but your intuition and your human sneakiness abilities are welcome additions to our battle matrix.”

In his mind’s-eye and in the holo, Sarah and her ship
Imperial
destroyed targets in all six spatial dimensions, firing simulated antimatter cannons at four battleglobe decoys, while hitting sensorRemotes, tachRemotes and Offense sleds within nanoseconds of each other. He and Inevitable were doing similar attacks along multiple spatial vectors, even as their ship moved to become part of the outer rotating ring and Eliana’s ship
Altuna
moved to the center of their Hexagon Prime combat ring. Farther out, other fleet members formed a cloud of always moving, always firing and always striking warships that bored ahead through a simulated whirlwind of stationary and mobile targets. Their target was an orbital shipyard that was being played to perfection by Eliana’s shuttle
Jocelyn Bell
. How Matt’s lifepartner managed to split her mind into two segments, one focused on her ship’s actions and the other segment focused on firing shuttle lasers at the approach of the fleet, amazed him.