Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (36 page)

“Thank you, Matthew,” she said, her
mind image the Spy persona she’d first worn upon recruiting him as a Vigilante. “I thought materializing here would be in keeping with the dissembling tactics taught by Sun Tzu, Mao Zedong and Chanakya.”

“Exactly so,” he said mentally, feeling Mata Hari the way a human might feel another person walking beside him on a crowded street. For the T’Chak warship was indeed crowding his mind with internal data flows and external imagery that showed the target system in the purple of ultraviolet, the deep red of infrared, the green of microwaves, the white of neutrino emissions by more than a hundred battleglobes, the local
star and the Intelligence base, and heat lifesigns that showed thousands of lifeforms inhabited the 900 habitat globes of the spacebase.

George, standing in his combat suit just behind Matt, was also in mind communion with him and Mata Hari thanks to the suit’s fiber optic
link to the man’s spinal cord. And to the tachlink node behind his battlemate’s left ear. “A big base,” he said, his mindvoice carrying his Irish brogue. “And lots of battleglobes. Well, as some stratec person once said, being outnumbered gives you plenty of targets.”

Matt grinned at George’s sardonic mental smile. “Exactly so, my friend. And first battlemate in this fight. You ready to take wing once we get pass the defense?”

“Of course.”

In Matt’s mind he felt George become one with the cyborg systems of his combat suit. It was a feeling he had missed since he’d become wedded to the Interlock Pit and
ocean-time
fighting from within the Pit. Well, soon enough he would join George in his first ally, Suit. Who was activated and in tachlink communion with him, Mata Hari and George. “Hi there, Suit. You ready to fly?”

“Yes, Matt,” said the simple
Tactical CPU that might not have an AI personality, but which possessed terabytes of combat power, knowledge and options. “How soon do we fly?”

“Soon,” he said. “But now we must see what our enemy has done.”

Mata Hari reclaimed his mental attention. “Do wish a compilation of what Sector Captain Yorkel has assembled to oppose us?”

Did he? Using ship senses allowed him to see far beyond human normal. The different wavelengths of light reflected from steel, titanium, angled constructs and floating Remotes
were something his mind perceived directly. Just as he felt the impact of the local stellar wind as if it were a light summer breeze, so he perceived space and the artificial constructs that filled a part of the asteroid belt just an AU away.

“Yes, Mata Hari. I may have missed something. In particular please highlight any sleds or Remotes that may be thermonuke sleds. Yorkel’s choice to give them one-fourth lightspeed was an innovation not listed in the confidential records of Combat Command.”

“Quite so,” she said, changing to her Lady of the Sword mind persona. With a gesture of her sword she cast little red dots at the points she now highlighted. “The neutrino emissions document a total of 160 battleglobes, fourteen Supply Tubes, twenty-one Courier ships and seven fusion reactors within the 900 habitat globes of the Intelligence base. The infrared lifeform heat signatures indicate the base contains 3,124 beings. Plus the four hundred lifeforms per battleglobe that is the standard crew size.”

“Megawatt laser installations? X-ray Picket Globes?
Offense sleds?” he asked, even though he could see most of them himself based on spectroscopic analysis of reflected light.

“Yes.” She pointed with the sword. “The asteroids within a half AU of the base contain
twelve megawatt mining laser modules. With tachlink sensors and guidance CPUs. Based on prior battles, there are at least two thousand Picket Globes dispersed just outside the outer shell of battleglobes. While most occupy positions along the plane of ecliptic, a few score are placed above and below the planetary ecliptic.”

“Anything out of the ordinary? Something that seems not normal to a star system with no planets?”

In his mind, moving at lightspeed and downlinking to his mind, she highlighted four thousand, three hundred and six locations. “These spots within the asteroid belt emit energy that is greater than absorbed stellar radiation. They could be sensor stations, automatic mining devices, astronomical stations or simply spots with thorium and uranium deposits.”

George frowned, then tugged at his black beard. “A puzzle for sure. And a problem to solve. How?”

That was the question he needed to solve. Yorkel would expect Matt and his ships to detect the obvious. The battleglobes, Picket Globes and other ships with onboard fusion reactors for stardrive thrust. But what surprises did the giant ant with a three-lobe brain hide from him? His experience of being in mind communion with Toktaleen had taught him a Brokeet alien thought comprehensively, in-depth and with a twist to the usual assumptions that he intuited were a challenge for him. At least to how he thought. Then again, the Anarchate had regularly underestimated him and his T’Chak ships. For the moment, they assumed he would arrive with just seven ships, not 507 Dreadnought-level warships. Ocean Fleet outnumbered the defending fleet by a three to one factor. He focused ship sensors on the twelve armed Courier ships that clustered next to the white globes of the base.

“Are those ships the genome slaver ships?”

“Yes,” said Mata Hari.

BattleMind took form to Matt’s right inside a giant holo that showed a giant dragon ready to take wing and rend the flesh of every opponent. “Why bother with those captives?
They are a distraction. They may be dead. We can include them in the spread of our Graviton Beam and allow them to become minuscule black holes.”

Mata Hari
assumed the persona of a smaller female T’Chak dragon, her wings spread in imitation of BattleMind’s stance. “Senior leader, that could be done. However, perceive these tachnet and UHF transmissions that come from one of those ships. Some of the captives still live.”

Matt’s mind filled with the holo image of Commander Chai standing before five captives in a red-lit cargohold. One of the captives was a male human, two were Mican griffin-tigers with sad-looking plumage, and two were Meligun bear bipeds whose black fur looked matted.
Within their mind communion, George cursed. Matt’s cyborg CPU implant translated the Belizel of Chai, and the responses of the captives.

“Have you eaten recently?”
Chai, standing to one side of the galactic tachnet image, gestured to the Meligun bears. “Do you have water? Are waste disposal devices provided for you?”

“Yes three times,” said one of the bears, his two pink eyes glancing off-image to what Matt assumed was a slaver crewman. “We do not lack for the basics. We volunteer to be sold as labor if you of the Anarchate would speak on our behalf to the ship’s captain.”

Chai’s black whiskers spread upward as if startled that a captive sought some kind of help. “Your request will be conveyed to this ship’s commander. However, my duty to the Anarchate is to confirm that your ship conditions are survivable. That you will live to reach a market world where . . . species cloning is performed.”

“Kill us!” cried one of the Mican griffin-tigers as it lifted dirty brown wings and panted from being overheated. “We live only to die soon!”

The person holding the holo recorder moved to place the two Micans out of the device’s perception zone. Chai turned to face the male human who had been watching the pretend interview. The Spelidon rat flipped his tail up onto his left shoulder. He focused on the man. “Human male, do you have food? Water? Waste disposal? Any degree of—”

“You will all die,” the man said hoarsely, as if he had not dru
nk water in a long time. Though he stood upright his body trembled. His clothing, while covering him from hips down, did not hide the red streaks of neurowhip slashes on his back.

George grunted. “The man’s been tortured by these slavers!”

Chai stepped back, then flared his whiskers. “Die? Us of the Anarchate? Member of a Newcomer species, you know not your place in the galaxy!”

The man moved to stay in view of the holo recorder as the device’s holder moved to show Chai backstopped only by the weak-acting Meligun bear people. He spit blood on the gravplates of the cargohold in which they were held. “I will die. But you and others will die for
this cloneslavery. For not stopping the kidnapping of thinking people! You—”

The image of Chai with the captives disappeared, to be replaced by Chai
facing the holo recorder. “Citizens of the Anarchate, my inspection of the other eleven genome harvester starships that voluntarily came to this base shows the captive beings are alive, being given basic sustenance and allowed normal functions during their transit to a species cloning facility elsewhere in Perseus Arm.” He paused, then assumed a relaxed posture. “Alleged reports of captive mistreatment by genome harvester ship personnel are not substantiated. This appears to reflect normal commerce that the Anarchate exists to protect.” The image disappeared, to be replaced by the black and white image of a galaxy bisected by a lightning bolt. The emblem of the Anarchate filled the tachnet holo, then vanished. A report on politics in Norma Arm began as a cluster of seven aliens began a discussion that Matt had no interest in.

Nor did George. “Fuck ‘em. Fuck the Anarchate. And I vote we kill every slaver ship captain.”

BattleMind looked at them in
ocean-time
mode. “At least the Human was willing to fight. The others do not deserve to live,” he said, then disappeared from the Bridge.

“Mata Hari, were you able to track that UHF broadcast to a specific slaver ship?”

“Yes, Matthew.” Her female T’Chak form contrasted sharply with her soft feminine voice. She resumed her human form but stayed in their
ocean-time
mind communion. “Shall we approach closer to the base and the battleglobe shells?”

“Yes. But let us skim just above the ecliptic plane as we pass by Yorkel’s fleet. While we cannot be seen or detected, someone might notice our blocking out of reflected light from a nearby asteroid as we pass between them and the asteroid.”

Re-entering their mind communion, BattleMind fixed his red eyes on Matt. “Vigilante, when do we call in the other ships of Ocean Fleet? I wish to see destruction on the scale of our Vela attack.”

Matt felt the same desire, after watching the fake interview of the captives. But that was one of the emotional reactions he must put aside. He had the equivalent of
ocean-time
hours to observe the system, the defenses and the movements of ships and people. Even though his passage from one side of the defense shells to the other side would take only a few real-time minutes. By the time they reached fifty thousand kilometers beyond the base, he must either leave the system or call in Ocean Fleet.

“Soon, my battlemate. Soon.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Matt felt close to calling in Ocean Fleet. But Mata Hari filled his mind with an image of the small limpet complinks that had slowed enough to attach to a few of the habitat globes which formed the Intelligence space base.

“Matthew, important data! One complink has decrypted the location of High Commander Brrzeet, the
master of this base and the person who ordered Chai and Yorkel to bring slaver captives here.” She brought into their
ocean-time
mental communion the image of a large, hippo-like Orko alien, standing before a control pedestal in some kind of office. “This Brrzeet also brought a hyper-fast Courier ship into linkage with his Command Node in Globe 223, along with an Offense sled that contains a single weapon—a Bethe Inducer.”

Why the hell would this Brrzeet outfit a sled with a weapon usually found on a battleglobe? Was this one of Yorkel’s surprises? Or something Yorkel and Chai did not know? “Mata Hari, who has access to this
Courier and the Offense sled?”

Her Spy persona
frowned. “The decryption says only Brrzeet, by way of a bodyheat ID and a verbal Command Code, has access to these two vessels.”

So the big boss of Sector 14 Intelligence spacebase was prepared to escape if things got too risky? Nice. And perhaps something he could share with Yorkel at the right time. “Any other data from this and the other complinks?”

“Yes.” She brought up an image of a Spelidon rat that matched the ID of Commander Chai. “Your enemy Chai has returned to his work station in Globe 841. He works with five other aliens on the defense against our arrival.”