Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (26 page)

Eliana’s mindimage smiled happily. “Oh yes! Forty-three arrived recently. Including Sarah Vasiliades and Rafael Dominguez, Matthew. Already they are becoming fine pilot partners for our T’Chak warships!”

He felt mental relief. Eliana’s shared
mind image showed him the intricacy of their recently concluded battle fleet simulations, including tactical innovations he would not have done. His women were indeed full members of the battle team. Eliana smiled at his reaction.

“Thank you! It will be great to share with Suzanne how much you liked our battle maneuvers, my Matthew.”

“I do,” he said even as a small part of his mind said his ship was nearing the 2,000 light year distance out from Earth of the Owl M97 Cluster. “Have got to recompute a Translation exit for the raid on the academy, dear Eliana. Thank you, thank Suzanne, thanks to George and tell Sarah and Rafael I feel honored by their presence in our fleet!”

In their mental communion of three mind-bodies resting upon a grassy meadow in the ship’s Park ecosystem, the
mind image of Eliana smiled, nodded, blew him a kiss and then vanished. Leaving just him, Mata Hari and a preoccupied Gatekeeper to plan their entry into system CC 7843 and the attack on the naval academy. Mata Hari stood up, her mind image brushing out wrinkles in her formal party dress. A side glance fixed him.

“Matthew, we can destroy this objective. But Chai and Yorkel have become inventive in their ways of opposing us. I urge you to conduct future battles with at least Hexagon Prime fleet, and eventually all of Ocean Fleet.”

He nodded, standing up and making ready to leave the mental comfort of a park for the cold instrumentalities of the Interlock Pit, wherein his body had sat during the entire group mind communion. “I agree. More ships are better than a single ship raid. And I do not plan any kind of
kamikaze
attack, now or in the future.”

“
Kamikaze
? Oh. Your mind memory provides the reference.” Mata Hari’s mental presence enlarged so that the classical shape of her finely sculpted face filled his mind. “But the Anarchate ship captains have already tried that tactic on us. Twice. So we need to be extra careful. And variable in what we do. Yorkel has already adjusted to our normal Hit-and-Run tactics.”

Looking now at the front holosphere on Bridge, Matt paid close attention to the three dee graphic of how the Salem system was laid out. Two outer gas giants. Planet four was Salem and its large moon. The inner three planets were analogues of Mercury and Venus. Unoccupied and without bases of any kind. The Anarchate presence was limited to the academy city, the orbiting battleglobe hulk, mobile battleglobes and a resource mining base on the moon Lileen.

“Mata Hari, I agree. Instead of our usual approach from the outer star system, let us Translate into space-time between Planet Three and Salem, heading outward at three-fourths lightspeed. We can time our arrival so the academy city is on our side of the planet and while the moon base also faces our vector line.” He paused, thinking about the presence of at least two battleglobes on active duty. They had surely been given details of his prior battles and orders to fire along the vector line of his gravity wave pulse. As Yorkel and his fleet members had done at Upsilon Carinae. Well, he doubted the academy system would be drenched in sensorRemotes and tachRemotes like the Halicene shipyard. But still, moving off their vector line once they dispatched their own cloud of Remote sensors would be smart. He thought the change in approach and in vector diversion to Mata Hari.

“Looks good, Matthew,” she said, materializing to his left in a full-size holo even as
on his right there loomed the giant holo of BattleMind.

“
We do not vaporize the planet?” growled BattleMind in a hurricane of emotive thought that dear Mata Hari buffered. Its giant black wings half-filled the Bridge room.

Mentally he winced. “Uh, no. The precognition of Eliana and Suzanne says we have to leave the planet and the native species intact. But why not use your Graviton Beam to reduce the orbiting hulk to a tiny black hole? Will be a nice message to future Anarchate crews!”

BattleMind’s spine ridges hunched together into a line of sharp purple teeth. His red eyes fixed on the holo and the attack plan in Matt’s mind. “That is one target. There are the academy on planet, the moon base and two mobile battleglobes. They would all disappear if we used the Bethe Inducer to cause the local sun to go nova.”

“Too efficient,” Matt said mentally before Mata Hari could intervene. “We leave this system mostly intact. For the other targets in space, there are our antimatter beams. For the land bases on the moon and on Salem, I favor 30 megaton thermonukes delivered by hyper
-fast missiles. Mata Hari, can your laser pods take out the polar anti-missile sites so our nuke hits on target?”

“Yes, Matthew,” she said, even as a part of her feminine mind maintained a mental buffer between his awareness and the
mind force of BattleMind.

“Then reset our Translation exit coordinates for inner system arrival with an outward bound vector. Time to go to battle.”

Once more he reached for immersion into the eternity of lightspeed optical neurolinking. Within his mind, the dam burst. The personalities of Mata Hari, BattleMind, Gateway and the dozens of cloneslavery captives receded.
Ocean-time
overwhelmed him.

Seven
picoseconds
.

The Dreadnought-class battleship built by the ancient T’Chak aliens, a shape-changing wonder able to destroy a star, now did his bidding.

Moving swift as a hawk,
Mata Hari
left Translation. They re-entered normal space-time at three-fourths lightspeed thrust. Briefly, he was pushed back into the molded-glass chair of the Pit—until the inertial fields came on. Matt didn’t notice the slight weight gain. Other things overwhelmed him. For within his mind, within his body, the avenging force that was a two kilometer-long starship changed form.

It changed into Battle Configuration.

Two nanoseconds
.

The ocean filled him. The ocean enclosed him. The ocean sang to him.
He was one with Mata Hari, the ship itself was one with them, three were as One, they had become the entity
::.

Two and a quarter
nanoseconds
.

Both biceps clenched.

Distantly, Matt felt the six pontoons of the neutron antimatter cannons power up and move to Standby as both wings of the ship’s T’Chak dragon form flared out to either side of the ship’s main body.

Three
nanoseconds
.

His heart beat faster.

Within her dozen fusion power plants,
Mata Hari
sped up energy production.

Three and a quarter
nanoseconds
.

His fingers twitched.

Outside, on the outer hull, dozens of beam-weapon projectors came on-line, spotting the ship’s skin like an attack of giant warts. Some were low frequency carbon-dioxide gas lasers, some were excimer lasers, some proton beamers, a few hydrogen-fluorine metal-punch lasers, several free electron lasers, and multiple plasma cannons, while others carried neutral particle lasers. They all flowed with energy, they all sang to him—
we are ready. Ready! Ready!

Eight
nanoseconds
.

His groin twinged.

On
Mata Hari’s
top and bottom, giant pods now protruded on pylon arms. They contained torps ready for Defense, for Offense, ready even to give their own lives as decoys, if necessary. And as they protruded, his hull skin flowed like water. Flexmetal and adaptive optics on the hull moved like something alive, reshaping him into a dragon-shaped spacegoing fortress. The long crocodile snout gleamed with silvery teeth, the two red eyes hummed to full thousand-megawatt laser power, and the ship’s tail lengthened even as magfield reservoirs fed positron antimatter into the deut-li fusion thrust gases.

Ten
nanoseconds
.

Matt clenched his jaw muscles.

The winding coils of the axial Plasma Cannon went to high magfield multiples as the ship’s inner guts prepared to emit two hundred meter-wide purple clouds of plasma. Those clouds would consume any matter lying in the way of their advance. Other accelerators fed neutron antimatter to the wing cannons, charged protons to the proton lasers, or pure plasma to the scores of hull projectors waiting to defend the ship. The plasma projectors were for close-up solid projectile defense. Nothing stopped a Nanoshell, a MIRV’d smart rock or a nuclear torp like a 10,000 degree mini-sun. Of course, those hull defenses were unneeded once the Alcubierre space-time fields wrapped around the ship’s body. Which they now did, rendering starship
Mata Hari
invisible to any Anarchate captain, student or professor looking their way. Which would require looking into the thermonuclear furnace of their local star. Matt smiled mentally. Entering a star system camouflaged by the neutrino blasts of the local star appealed to him.

Other changes occurred inside the ship.

Fourteen nanoseconds
.

The Spine’s airtight slidedoors all closed down, compartmentalizing the ship. Subsidiary AIs secured the cargo holds
and the shuttle
Ariadne
.

Sixteen
nanoseconds
.

Matt blinked.

StratTac plans were downloaded into mindless backup computers for each weapon and pod, making sure that every part of the ship would fight on if he became unconscious. Within
Mata Hari,
in deeply hidden and shielded armories, holo decoys were readied for use as diversionary tactics. Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells were downloaded with the spectroscopic signature of Anarchate Couriers and shuttles. Monomolecular armor was plated to nanoware borers. And penetrator viruses were specially manufactured to attack the silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide components of any ship that shared space with their arrival. In far less than a second, Matt, Mata Hari, BattleMind and starship
Mata Hari
reached Battle Configuration.

Fifty
nanoseconds
.

Matt blinked again, calling for a gestalt perception of the ship.

Like a red cloud it glimmered in his mind, rushing to him over the PET relays, floating in front of him in the holosphere, flickering off the backs of his contact lenses, touching his sensitive skin. One would not think you could
see
with your skin. But you can.

One
second
.

“Hello, Matthew,” whispered the image glow of Mata Hari, full of happy feelings as she lifted a Mauser rifle and sighted along its length. Aiming for a target. Which alerted him to the lightspeed real-time images that now filled his mind and his ship senses.

Ahead of them glowed the
red infrared warmth of planet Salem, its ground surface showing brighter than the cooler oceans and seas. Orbiting it were the usual comsats and gps sats used for commerce and personal transport. Well, those civilian things would vanish well before the academy city died. More importantly,
four
battleglobes showed up! Two in equatorial orbit about the planet and two in geosync above the moon’s resource mining dome. Plus the ancient battleglobe hulk named
Silenius
. Each of the five battleglobes radiated neutrinos from their fusion reactors, the white particle spray filling nearby space. At least until they merged into the tidal wave of neutrinos emitted by the G3V yellow star the locals called Dweed. He gave thanks all five battleglobes were within the 100,000 kilometer range of his antimatter cannons.

While his ship’s arrival was partly obscured by the neutrino and gravity wave pulses of star Dweed, it was certain the active duty battleglobes were on Auto-Fire mode. Shortly would come sparkles of purple UV as shipboard lasers fired at their vector path, followed by at least a few
black beams of coherent x-rays as Picket Globes became miniature thermonuclear suns whose plasma emitted x-rays that were aimed his way. Offensive antimatter beams would shortly join the enemy attack.

One second,
400 milliseconds, 213 nanoseconds, 76 picoseconds and nine femtoseconds
, said his onboard cyberclock.

“Off vector now!” he said mentally to Mata Hari.

The ship’s belly Repulsor block moved them vertically up and then toward the north pole of the approaching planet. In short pico and nanoseconds several things happened.

Several thousand
nanoRemotes, tachRemotes, energy seeking nanoShells, sensorBeads, decoy sleds, plasma torps and a dozen thermonuke hypervelocity missiles sprang away from
Mata Hari
in a widening arc that would report back oncoming matter and energy attacks at FTL speeds, allowing the ship to make course adjustments and re-aim weapons fire through the Alcubierre shields. His ship’s crocodile mouth opened up and belched out one, two and then a third purple plasma cloud. The two hundred meter-wide clouds of magfield-contained plasma sped ahead of them, clearing a four hundred meter wide space of any stealthed sensorBeads, tachlink Remotes seeded by the battleglobes, and also stray molecules of hydrogen, helium and lithium that normally wandered supposedly empty space.