Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (39 page)

“George! You need to head for the slaver ships with our shuttle
Ariadne
. Mata Hari will operate the shuttle. She also will use the Stasis Beam on the captives in the ships. Get all the captives out of those twelve ships and then back here to the cargohold. I will head for Chai. BattleMind will give us both covering laser fire. Suzanne will take charge of Hexagon Prime and Ocean Fleet as they finish off the last battleglobes and anything else that attacks us!

Suzanne’s tired face blossomed in his mind. “Matthew
, hurry! Brrzeet is getting close to whatever he plans!”

“We are here,” said Suit’s Tactical CPU as it came to a stop beside the Interlock Pit. “Do you require tractor beam help in escaping your pit?”

Matt liked how Suit, long neglected as he fought most battles from within starship
Mata Hari
, sought a dry humor way of putting down his mindlinks with the T’Chak Dreadnought. Nice how Suit was developing a level of self-awareness!

“Actually, Suit, that is a good idea. When I break neurolink with the Pit’s cable, lift me with a tractor and bring me inside you. Quickly but without harm to my corpus.”

Was that a touch of amusement he felt from Suit’s Tactical CPU? “Complying.”

Losing
mind communion as he was lifted out of the Pit and into Suit lasted only four hundred milliseconds. But much can happen in less than a second.

Chai
tried to ignore the flashing Purple Alert lights and sonic hoots that warned of eco-field loss. Four of his staff were running or flopping toward the entry hatch to don vacsuits. His Loglan ally Kontine stayed with him, working his own holo pedestal in their efforts to contact Brrzeet, Yorkel or both of them. The disaster that had unfolded in the last four seconds could barely be believed. Blue-white matter-to-energy explosions, the gravity pulses that hammered the habitat globes, and the deaths of thousands of Anarchate beings as battleglobes vanished from the defense shells arranged by Yorkel made his fur stand on end.

“
Commander, a T’Chak warship has appeared just a few
nipads
from this globe,” called out Kontine over the noise and movements of his fleeing staff.

Chai saw it appear on one of his pedestal holos, then disappear into a gray oval that seemed to be one of the Alcubierre space-time energy shields that Yorkel had described. But why was it so close to them when hundreds of other enemy ships lay thousands of
nipads
away?

The globe’s wallscreen brightened with
a flat image. It was the human Dragoneaux. Dressed now in a white combat suit that had laser pulse cannons mounted on each shoulder. The Human seemed to be flying among nearby habitat globes. The nearly hairless face of the human was visible through the clear faceplate. “Chai, I’m coming for you. Don’t try to flee. My ship and I control this local space. Anyway, there are so many nanoShells and drifting energy cubes you could be injured if you left Globe 841. But do put on your vacsuit. As should your amphibian ally.” The Human’s laser cannon shot out a green beam that hit something off image. “And the reason you cannot contact High Commander Brrzeet is because the Orko has left his Command Node and entered the Courier that was attached to his globe. He plans to escape. And to do something deadly to this entire installation. Be ready for pickup!” The image blinked off, to be replaced with jagged curves indicative of signal overload.

Brrzeet not in command anymore? Fleeing? Chai had wondered about the Courier but had assumed it was to facilitate meetings between Brrzeet and Yorkel. No so, it seemed. Kontine turned all four
eyestalks his way. “Commander?”

He stiffened his whiskers to the mode of Determination Aroused. “Do as the hairless biped says! Find a vacsuit. As I am doing!”

The two of them scurried to different parts of the globe, opening storage bubbles until each found a vacsuit that would fit their shapes. In his mind, Chai felt anger at Brrzeet. Threats and fear words he was used to. Leaving one’s command at the moment of ultimate crisis was not . . . the action of a member of an Ancient species. If he lived, Chai knew he would report the Orko’s dereliction to some lifeform on the Council of Sixteen.

Skyree gave thanks for his wings. Only
by flying down transit tubes had he been able to reach Globe 001. Now he fought for access to one of the Supply Tubes that was outfitted for passengers versus cargo. With a downward slash of his beak on the body part of a large Orko, he gained entry through the mid-body hatch. Entering, he took to the air again as the ship’s gravplates kept ground-bound species tied to the floor. Flying half-dressed in his vacsuit was not his normal mode of travel. But it promised him survival and the chance to live another day.

He took roost on top of a
n eco-field generator at the back of the passenger hold, ignoring the fifty-group of beings who’d also reached Globe 001 and this ship. Now, if only the pilot-captain of the craft would close the access hatches before the horde of refugees outside filled the Supply Tube to eco-overload, he might find a cosmo-astronomy perch in another star system. Hopefully one without the blue-white explosions of battleglobes becoming metallic vapor.

Brrzeet settled onto the pilot bench of his Courier ship, slapping on the NavComputer with one hand. While not an AI, the device did accept voice commands.

“Detach from Globe 223! Move out! Avoid other traffic and seek open space for Translation.”

“Translation from within the heliopause of this star system violates—
”

“Override Sigma fourteen thirty-two! Now move!”

“Complying.”

He reached out and tapped on the control pedestal that linked him with the
Offense sled which floated nearby. Its simple Control Mind also accepted verbal direction.

“
Offense sled 42! Activate the Bethe Inducer! But do not fire until you receive my verbal and touchkey commands!”

“Activating,” muttered the sled in simple Belizel.

He saw from the front holo that the sled was not following. “Follow this Courier, you neuron-dead device! Follow until given orders otherwise.”

“Complying.”

Brrzeet now knew there was an entity more mentally deficient than the personal cook he had brought into private service last month. The sled. Or, the sled’s Control Mind lacked the neuron capacity of his cook. Feeling relief that he was now
nipads
away from his Command Node, he awaited eagerly the moment when he was clear of the globe cluster that made up Sector 14 Intelligence base. Once clear, he would order the Offense sled to fire its Bethe Inducer at the star and cause a nova explosion. With the Inducer it mattered not that the local star was an F-class main sequence star which did not meet the mass requirements for a core collapse by natural means. Once the Inducer fired, he and the Courier would enter Translation, headed for Central Nexus to report on the sad loss of his base due to the insane attack by this renegade Human. And no one would be left alive to say otherwise.

“Matthew!” cried Mata Hari in his mind just before he reached Globe 841 and Chai. “Brrzeet is leaving in his Courier and has activated the Bethe Inducer onboard
the Offense sled he controls! My limpet complink reports he plans to make the local star go nova once he clears the base habitats.”

Why did everything complicated happen when he was in Suit? While he thought
at
ocean-time
superspeed, dear Suit could only move at slow real-time velocities. Though his shoulder cannons did offer lightspeed lasers.

“Matt?” called Eliana from the Interlock Pit of
Altuna
. “I heard that! The fleet is now safe, all battleglobes are dead except for Yorkel’s, and George is evacuating slaver captives from the slaver ships. We can’t let the star go nova while so many people—”

“Understood,” he said mentally, feeling the presence of his Hexagon Prime allies. “I’m taking care of it. Now.”

“
Six seconds, 34 milliseconds, 80 nanoseconds, six picoseconds and three femtoseconds
.”

PET thought-images flashed over the tachlink to Mata Hari. She nodded, shifted stance in her chain-mail, and pointed her sword at the image of the fleeing Courier ship.

“Limpet, tell the sled’s Control Mind to hold its fire until beyond the base habitat globes, then change its target coordinates to match those of Brrzeet’s Courier.” Matt’s boots mag-connected to the transit tube that gave access to Chai’s globe. “Have the sled fire the Bethe Inducer at the Courier once both ships are a thousand kilometers out. Have it change from nova fire to neutron star particle conversion. Don’t want the heavy neutron particles to latch onto us!”

Eliana looked briefly worried, then smiled. “Mata Hari has a sense of humor, Matthew. That small a mass, condensed to a mass small enough to create
neutron star particles, would not gravity-tug anything that lay beyond a kilometer!”

He smiled, waiting as one shoulder laser cut through the transit tube metal skin. The laser happened at lightspeed. Every other action of Suit seemed slower than sunrise on the dark side of Earth’s Moon. As he waited in
ocean-time
, he rewarded himself with vidimages of the captives rescued by George and
Ariadne
. The shuttle had already matched airlocks with four of the twelve slaver ships, allowing George to enter, locate the place holding the captives, then move the hibernating captives into
Ariadne
since none of them wore vacsuits and all of them had need of handling by the shuttle’s servebots.

“Matt, this is the kind of work I love!”
George said.

“Agreed. It is the small part of what comes with ending cloneslavery. Even if only on the local level, a few people at a time.
” Matt gave a new PET thought-image order. “I’m having Mata Hari attach limpet complinks so she can move the slaver ships out of the base and into open space where a fleet ship can vaporize them. Including any flesh samples already taken for planned cloning!”

George’s mental disgust matched his. Captives taken by genome harvester slavers were simply walking reservoirs of living cells. Keeping the captives alive until they reached a planet with cloning manufactories allowed the slavers to avoid investing in expensive refrigeration units. Minor amounts of food and water cost nothing beyond what they already carried for the crew. Well, this time these twelve slaver ships would never again harvest any lifeform for cloning!

“
Seven seconds, four milliseconds, nine nanoseconds, 53 picoseconds and 70 femtoseconds
,” said his cyberclock.

Suit’s
Tactical CPU spoke. “Cutting through completed. Boot magfields activated. Shall I transport your corpus into the globe?”

Matt smiled at the small element of humor that his seven-year partner, Suit, had learned, like Mata Hari, from its long association with his mind. While Suit’s weapons and functions like the Nullgrav plates in his boots operated at slow speed, it thought every bit as fast as Mata Hari.

“Yes, Suit, transport me into the globe. Be on Threat Alert with your weapons, but there should not be any opposition.”

“Complyi
ng. Shall I broadcast your thought-words by radio to the two lifeforms inside? Since they and my shell operate far slower than we think, you could remain in
ocean-time
link with the fleet.”

He liked how Suit had grown beyond offering weapons options, status updates and Threat Assessments. “
Yes, do so.”

Mata Hari’s awareness grew larger in his mind. “Matthew, High Commander Brrzeet’s Courier ship has left the base locality. Do you wish to link into my limpet and observe the demise of this lifeform?”

It would be selfish of him to observe the Orko by vidimage and translated speech, but he and Mata Hari had taken risks in their Dark Energy arrival in this system. It was only fitting that he observe the completion of one matter. And recording the Orko’s effort to make the local star go nova would make for instructive education for Yorkel and Chai. And for alien species elsewhere in the Milky Way.

“Yes, Mata Hari. Link me in.”

Chai stayed very still as the Human Vigilante walked into his globe with the metal feet of its combat suit gripping dead gravplates with magfields. They’d lost all eco-fields, gravity and air a moment earlier. He and Kontine were in vacsuits with external Ears attuned for radio comlinks. The white armor of the Human’s suit showed the head and shoulders of some kind of animal predator, a lifeform that had not been mentioned in his studies of the Human species. Perhaps he would have a chance to study the biped’s home world later. If he survived this encounter.

“Your commands?”

The helmet faceplate cleared to allow him to see the alien’s two brown eyes. No Spelidon had brown eyes. Only black eyes with oval irises. But he was used to the eyestalks of Kontine. He could cope with this minor strangeness. The Human’s combat suit did not move, although the shoulder laser cannons swung apart, with one focusing on him and one on Kontine.