Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (28 page)

“You may enter,” whistled the Loglan amphibian with a pincer gesture toward the slidedoor that gave entry to Yorkel’s office.

Ignoring the underling, Chai straightened his arms, clenched his fists and reformed his black whiskers into the expression of Confidence Unequalled. Entering a large room with a dome ceiling and two wallscreens, he moved toward the glass-enclosed booth that the yellow-skinned arthropod now occupied, its four arms touching separate control panels. A light strip that emitted the yellow-orange light of the local sun illuminated every toehold of the office. There was no rest bench on which two-legged lifeforms like himself could recline, just a small stool which supported the abdomen of Yorkel. He slapped the metal floor with his tail. “Commander Chai of Sector 14 Intelligence headquarters reporting as—”

“The renegade did it
again,” interrupted the chitin-skinned Yorkel, his yellow color appearing pale for a Brokeet. His four arms clasped themselves over his bulging thorax.

“Did what again?”

“Hit us where it hurts,” Yorkel said as he inclined his globular head toward Chai. Two clear eyelids slid in from either side then retreated, leaving him the sole focus of Yorkel’s upset.

He shifted his whiskers to the posture of Empathetic Support. “How did this Dragoneaux biped hit us where it hurts?
You have my support of course but—”

“The Human destroyed the Naval Academy on Sale
m and the mining dome on Lileen,” Yorkel interrupted again. “He also converted our beloved ship
Silenius
to a black hole smaller than a sand grain.”

Chai felt his two hearts stutter in their beating, then his fingers and tail went cold as his inner organs sucked blood into them to offset the shock he was feeling. Yorkel had graduated two annual cycles ahead of him after ranking
first in that year’s Battle Maneuvers contest. His inventiveness was something Chai had studied in his last year at the academy, considering how Chancellor Longine, an old Orko long past the ability to neurolink with anything, had praised Yorkel’s work. He, like Yorkel and other ship captain students for the last hundred millennia, had gathered under the arched stone ceiling of the Assembly Hall to receive their Command Bracelets and the news of their first assignments. To think of the Hall and the surrounding buildings as now . . . gone, along with the friendly metal hallways of old
Silenius
was . . . a shock. He focused on Yorkel’s gaze.

“How? Weren’t there any battleglobes protecting it? Did anyone escape? Was his fleet with—
”

“Just one Dreadnought destroyed our heritage,” Yorkel whistled in slow Belizel.
“Look at these images. And think of the effect upon other captains who graduated from the academy.”

A side wallscreen brightened with the blue-white explosions of battleglobes being vaporized, those being the two that were in orbit about Salem. The view swung down to the planet, zooming in on a black hypersonic Fire-and-Forget missile that sped downward toward the academy. An elevation indicator to the left of the flatscreen moved downward from 320
nipads
to 210 to 23 and then, at one-tenth
nipad
, the screen filled with the yellow-orange light of a thermonuclear fusion explosion that another indicator measured at one-twentieth the strength of the stealth thermonuke Offense sleds Yorkel had sent against the Alcubierre space-time shields which protected the Human’s warship. A later image showed a fused crater of purple and green glass that filled the flat ridgeline on which the academy and support city had been located. Beyond the crater, which seemed centered on Assembly Hall, only tumbled rock, concrete and metal bones showed, none of them rising higher than Chai’s own height. He swallowed hard. His teeth ground together as emotion raged through him. Blinking, trying to think beyond his anger, he spoke stupidly.

“But, but, the Human did not use his neutrino weapon that could have turned the whole planet into stellar plasma. And the graviton beam was only used against the
Silenius
, not the moon Lileen. Why was he restrained? Why—”

“To hurt us and to sow doubt among already serving battleglobe captains,” Yorkel said in a heavy voice. “The Human’s ship materialized in front of the local sun, between Salem and the next planet inward. His ship sped toward Salem and Lileen at three-fourths lightspeed. There was very little time for anyone to counter-attack, even though the nearer battleglobes fired laser and antimatter beams along the vector line indicated by the gravity pulse emitted when his ship left Translation.”

“They fired? To what effect?”

“None,” said Yorkel, then waved at the other wallscreen where a tally of losses from the Human’s attack now glowed. “We lost four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one students, ninety-six Instructors and senior Guidance staff. Plus Chancellor Longine, who, per a vidimage left by this Human, took himself to the top of the central Academy tower and there lay down with forearms upraised as if to fend off the incoming missile. He knew what was coming, even with limited sensor data. He, like the entire Academy city, was vaporized.” The Brokeet paused, its pale yellow coloring growing slightly stronger. “The mining dome and nearby buildings
became a similar crater. Loses there were three hundred twenty-one lifeforms. In space, we lost four active duty battleglobes, the
Silenius
, every Remote larger than my head, and most of the comsat and gps satellites in orbit above Salem. The Tachyon Pylon at the Salem shuttle launch pad was left intact. Help arrived, but every Anarchate lifeform and facility was either dead or irradiated to a fatal level.”

“The native Dweedle species,” Chai asked, his brain continuing to focus on details versus meaning. “Were they, did they suffer damage?”

“Strange you should ask,” Yorkel said, waving two hands to dismiss the wallscreen images, then stepping out of his Captain’s Booth to approach Chai. “Their habitation choice left them uninjured by the blast. Only a few Dweedle working as bondServants in the city died. The new Anarchate representatives report the Dweedle planetary matriarch has asked that the academy not be rebuilt on their home world.”

Chai could now see the points that had left Yorkel so upset, since
the fleet captain had known of the attack before Chai’s arrival in the Thuringia system. “Yes. We will have to find a new star system for the Sector 14 naval academy. And the appeal of increased commerce and annual spending by Anarchate staff and facilities may not exceed fear over being subject to thermonuke attack.” He stiffened his whiskers into the posture of Defiance Determined. “Do you wish me to change from my Thuringia Intelligence survey and move to—”

“No!” Yorkel clicked loudly in emotion-laden Belizel. “No. While I rebuild my fleet with new battleglobes from the Sector 14 naval base at Vela system, you must land on this Thuringia, learn every detail you can discover about this Human Dragoneaux, his family, the attitude of local Humans toward the Anarchate and this genome harvester attack long cycles ago that has motivated this
soft-skinned biped to declare war upon the Anarchate.”

“Determined I will be in my survey work,” Chai said, leaving his tail to
skitter nervously on the gravplates of Yorkel’s office. The office of someone he had previously hated due to the favoring of Yorkel by his dead instructors. It seemed they now shared common cause. “What will our future response be?”

Yorkel’s two golden eyes gleamed in the light of the illumination strip. “Counterattack, of course. Either we must predict where he will next attack, or we must create a reason for him to come to us. Since he attacked the Halicene shipyard even though he knew my fleet was waiting for him, he is arrogant enough to come to us. If we can provide suitable bait.”

Chai knew much about bait. It was a tactic most Spelidon used in their march to advance within the ranks of the Anarchate. Discovering what motivated another species allowed one to offer what was most desired, even as the Spelidon master moved aside and advanced upslope into higher command. Pushing aside the shock of learning about the destruction of the academy, Chai felt renewed eagerness to land at Elios spaceport on Thuringia, and to expand his survey to any burrow, crevice or perch whereupon this Human might have stood before he left for space. All he needed was access to the planet’s civil archive database, a guide from the office of the planet’s governor, and fast hoverjet transport. He focused upon the hard chitin bodyform of his former competitor.

“You can count on me, alliance-mate.”

The hard-skinned Brokeet folded two pairs of arms over his thorax and inclined his gaze toward Chai. “Well met are we as alliance mates. Your species is respected for loyalty to whomever they declare alliance. Together, we shall find a way to vaporize this Human pestilence before he further disrupts the Council of Sixteen.”

“Agreed,” he said. “The memory of Chancellor Longine motivates me.”

“And me also,” clicked Yorkel in Belizel. The arthropod folded both pairs of arms together in the Brokeet sign of satisfaction. “Depart on your survey task. Keep me informed.”

“Agreed, alliance-mate.”

Chai turned and headed out through the office’s slidedoor, already computing the datafiles he would need from Thuringia’s civil archive database. Plus, it would be interesting to observe these tail-less, nearly hairless, Human bipeds as they related to each other. Was this world anything more than an agricultural planet colony established decades ago by the Earth home world of the species? And what did the reference to Thuringia as a Third Wave colony mean? Heading for his personal vacsuit in the outer alcove of Yorkel’s office, Chai set his mind to the task of learning all he could about the minor Orion Arm species that called itself Human. Some data was already known. The Humans had spread themselves outward to twenty-seven colony planets scattered over Sagittarius, Orion and Perseus arms. That was part of the record in the Compendium of Species. But what was it about this meager species that prompted a member of it to assume the arrogance normal to his fellow Spelidons and other Ancient species of the Anarchate? Well, he would find out. And in the finding he would discover an answer to this biped who’d been lucky enough to find some alien warships.

Matt sat in the Interlock Pit of starship
Mata Hari
, in mind communion with Eliana, Suzanne, George, Sarah, Rafael, the alien pilot Toktaleen and the AI Flowering, the eight members of Hexagon Prime. They watched the orderly movement of 500 T’Chak warships through the black reaches of space that lay within Kappa Crucis cluster. Standing on the Bridge, in company with the holos of Mata Hari and BattleMind, were Morrigan Governor Airmed O’Davoren and Militia General Balor O’Clery. They were the reason he and his fellow ship pilots were repeating the Ocean Fleet maneuvers previously developed by Suzanne and Eliana. Anyway, the two leaders of Morrigan deserved to see the combat prowess of their citizens who’d volunteered as ship pilots, in addition to Sarah and Rafael.

“Remarkably complex,” murmured O’Davoren as she watched the real-time movements of
the T’Chak warships.

“Deadly their dance,”
said O’Clery, his grey head gleaming under the yellow light of the Bridge.

Matt agreed wholeheartedly. It was amazing what his two psychic women had accomplished in the short time since they’d arrived at
Dagda system, contacted the governor, explained the 506 gravity wave pulses that would have frightened any planetary authority, then sought and received 43 pilot volunteers from the million inhabitants of Morrigan. Many had wished to follow the path of honor and duty that George had so ably described in a recruiting video. Another eighty volunteers were undergoing simulation training, aboard the Defense sled Matt had left to defend Morrigan from future cloneslaver attacks. He planned to return for them once the first Ocean Fleet attacks were carried out. But now, it was him, the human members of Hexagon Prime, the first class of forty Morrigan women and men, and two aliens from his Alkalurops rescue who made up the organic pilot volunteers. He gave verbal thanks to the ten Cohort leader AIs who were moving the 500 ships through Suzanne’s complex mix of defense and offense.

“Thank you, Vigilante Matt,” said the nearby holo cloud of the AI Immovable, who’d been chosen to represent the cohort AIs in any Battle Council. “This fight is as much for AI self-determination as it is to prevent enslavement of organics.”

O’Davoren moved from standing beside Matt’s Interlock Pit to squatting beside him. “Vigilante Dragoneaux, what do we do when the Anarchate arrives and sets up a local office? We cannot pretend you did not rescue our kidnapped citizens. It’s in every news and data bank on the planet. While my office handled your request for volunteer pilots, with no news reports on the request, still, helping you would have been impossible if the Anarchate had set up a local office. So far, they’ve sent us orders or inquiries by way of our Tachyon Pylon. We reply, we pay our taxes, and so far, they’ve left us alone.”

Matt nodded even as part of his mind stayed in communion with his human and AI mind partners. “That won’t last. The public history of the Anarchate says they always set up
a local base within a hundred years of contact. You are part of their commercial web. You’ve been visited by several conglomerates offering you services. Which you wisely declined. And my activities may cause the Sector 14 admin people to visit every human colony world.”