Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (4 page)

Ruler? Him? Not if he could help it. Matt just hoped he and Eliana could retire to a nice rural farmstead on Morrigan world, and drink a few rounds of their Irish beer at the end of each week of physical work in the real world. A place where time flowed slower, in keeping with natural organic patterns. Though . . . if psychic abilities were part of every species genetic heritage, well, then there was something that lay beyond the Standard
Form of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s Special and General theories of Relativity. Mentally he shook his head, an ache beginning in his back brain.

Thinking a smile at the purple metal globe and the yellow mindglow of Mama AI, Matt sought his leave from the mind embrace of a now sane alien AI. “Thank you for your help, Mother of Minds. My friends and I will do our best—
”

“My name is Love Eternal,” said the yellow mindglow of the person that he and George had labeled as Mama AI.

“Uh, Love Eternal, I thank you. My Eliana thanks you. And so do our AI friends and partners, Mata Hari, Gatekeeper and BattleMind.”

“Of course you thank me, little one,” said Love Eternal with a bemused mind tone. “My offspring are now awake and seek contact with your ship, with BattleMind and with your own mind by the Interlock Pit modalities of the
Dreadnought starship you have named
Mata Hari
. A delightful name for what you organics would consider a . . . a grandchild.”

Matt blinked mentally, then shuddered as Eternal Love’s fiber optic cable withdrew from his neck socket, leaving Suit’s socket open to full linkage with Mata Hari
’s cable.

“Matthew?
” called Mata Hai to his mind. “You are so tired, my Vigilante. So tired. Sleep awhile and I will have Suit transport you back home to your roomsuite. We will come down to Nullgrav hover beside Eternal Love’s dome. She, BattleMind, Gatekeeper and myself have much to share about the growth of emotions among our fellows. Perhaps her 507 offspring can also grow into emotions once they are in mindlink with an organic like Eliana or George or volunteers from Morrigan.”

His Eliana in control of a T’Chak
Dreadnought-class starship? His Eliana with a neurolink socket in the back of her neck? Absurd. When they first met, she hated AIs and thought his cyborg adaptations were abnormal. Not anymore. So perhaps Eliana becoming a cyborg was possible. Maybe even probable. After all, Eliana had caught several tactical problems while he was in combat linkage with BattleMind. And that was when she thought only at normal human speed. A speed of just 120 meters per second. The speed of electrons passing along nerve fibers from brain to toe, as mediated by protein enzymes and muscle fibers. A slow way to think and act, Matt knew after seven years in linkage with Mata Hari. Using the fiber optic cable, he and Mata Hari shared thoughts at lightspeed using infrared laser pulses in the 1,550 nanometer wavelength. They chatted at 111 gigabits a second. In combat Matt took in data at petabit speeds. But could he and George find a way to bring their lifepartners into the crusade against the Anarchate?

“You have no idea of what Suzanne and I have been discussing, dear Matthew,” came the mindvoice of Eliana as she reappeared in his mind
now that Suit’s fiber optic cable had socketed into his neck. Her mind image smiled a mysterious smile. Then was replaced by an image of the two women standing on the Bridge of his starship, their arms resting on each other’s shoulders, as two adult women plotted the graceful downfall of him and George.

Falling asleep mentally as Suit sealed him inside and then lifted him on
Nullgrav boots upward to the T’Chak nursery room and eventual exit, Matt let his worries fade away as restful sleep claimed him. Perhaps to dream?

Surely to dream
came the voice of Suit’s Tactical CPU as it stopped counting his milliseconds in
ocean-time
.

CHAPTER
THREE

Eliana turned in her accel-couch chair on the Bridge of starship
Mata Hari
as Matthew walked in naked and newly awake from his hours-long sleep in their roomsuite. She’d set the side wallscreen to monitor his rest after the mentally exhausting mindlink with Eternal Love and Mata Hari. His curly black hair looked disheveled while dark spaces showed below his brown eyes. His wide-shouldered, two meter tall frame paused just inside the pressure door of the Bridge, his gaze going intense as he scanned the front holosphere, while noting the presence of her girlfriend and conspiracy partner Suzanne, black-bearded George O’Hussey, and the people-size holos of Gatekeeper and Mata Hari. Their AI friend wore her Spy Persona clothing of black hair in a bun on her head, a frilly white dress with high neck, and long sleeves that led to slender wrists. Her amber necklace completed the 1911 image of the AI’s persona that she’d found in an ancient flat photograph of the famous woman spy from World War One. Gatekeeper wore his red shirt and brown khakis that showed dirt on the knees.

“George, why the hell are we in deep space?
” groused Matthew. “We should be in orbit around the Lacunae Mindworks, making linkage with the 507 T’Chak warships that Eternal Love re-awakened.”

“All done, Matt,” said George from the couch-seat behind Eliana and Suzanne’s posts.

“Yes, dear Matthew,” she hurried to interject so poor George would not be blamed for hers and Suzanne’s decisions. She licked dry lips. “Suzanne and I, working with Mata Hari, have already done all you planned to do.”

Matt walked slowly forward, aiming for the hole in the front floor that
was his Interlock Pit, the site where he controlled the starship and their fates. At least in the past. “All?” he said tightly, a side glance at Mata Hari’s image carrying a look of suspicion.

“All,” Eliana said, then stepped out of her accel-couch. She’d put on a green
cheongsam
dress in the hope that it would sooth Matt’s typical male touchiness when someone else took the lead in important matters. “Matthew, you’ve been asleep for four hours. In that time we, Suzanne, myself and Mata Hari, we contacted each AI mind of the 507 warships in orbit. We downloaded the history of our efforts against the Anarchate, the support of Eternal Love and the organic T’Chak leader TrueLove.” She paused as Matt’s intense look grew grim and impatient. “We shared how we arrived here by way of the Leading Arm of the Magellanic Stream from the Milky Way, our need for new fuel for us and for them, and our hope that we would find living minds of Humans and Aliens to partner with each ship once we arrive back home. Sound good?”

Matthew paused by where she stood next to her accel-couch.
With a deep sigh he turned his gaze from the holo swirl of black space and diamond white stars to meet her eyes. His lips curved in a quirky half smile. “Missed you. Sorry to gamble with my sanity despite my promise. Just had a hunch it was the
only
way to reach Eternal Love’s sane mind and thereby bring her into partnership with us.”

Eliana’s heart thumped and the racing of her pulse slowed as she saw Matt’s acceptance of what she had shared with him on the actions decided by her and Suzanne. Hopefully he would be equally patient when the full scale of what the two of them had discussed was revealed. Stepping forward, she put her arms up around his neck and looked deep into his eyes. “Thank you. Again. For saving all of us.”

Matthew’s two dimples showed briefly as he smiled a normal smile, then disappeared quickly as his focus on duty and the memory of his enslaved parents and sisters regained their hold on his mind. He hugged her back, his nose just inches from her own. “You know, those green eyes of yours pull me deep into your heart, dear Eliana.”

They kissed for long moments. The warmth of their embrace and
the renewal of her sense of devotion to the man she had come to love settled her heart. But not her mind. “Uh, Matt?” she said, one hand holding his bare shoulder as he made to head for the Interlock Pit and his lightspeed communion with Mata Hari and the preoccupied BattleMind.

“Yes?” he said, his gaze turning back to her, his black eyebrows lifted questioningly.

“Uh, there’s more you need to know.” She gestured to blond-haired Suzanne to join them in the middle of the Bridge. “Suzanne was the one who developed the Interlinkage software that Mata Hari used to link up with the AI mind of each Dreadnought.” Matt nodded appreciatively as tall, slim, green-eyed Suzanne joined them even as George, Gatekeeper and Mata Hari looked on. They each knew Matt now faced a major shift in their relationships. “Uh, in doing so we realized we needed to organize the Dreadnoughts for the times we will be in Translation transit. Sooooo, we improvised.”

Matthew looked around the Bridge, noticing how the gaze of everyone, AI and organic, was focused on him. Not her. His bemusement expression turned serious. “Improvised. Why do I get the feeling this effort of yours is something I may not like?”

Eliana let go of Matthew’s shoulder to reach out and hold the warm hand of Suzanne Magnusdottor, the Swedish woman who’d joined them right after the destruction of the Omega Casino. The woman who had chosen to be George’s lifepartner even after George had sworn his service as battlemate to Matthew. “We, Suzanne and I, we hope you will approve.”

“Of what?” Matthew said, looking around again with a bit of suspicion at the fixed gaze of everyone who now watched him. He looked back to her, the
zigzag stevedore tattoo on his chest standing out against the reddish-brown of his skin, a color that betrayed his mixed Polynesian-Apache heritage. “Eliana? Tell me everything you two . . . ladies have done or decided on. In my absence.”

Eliana sighed as her Matthew’s last comment suggested she and Suzanne should feel guilty for asserting their rights. Well, that she would not accept. Nor would Suzanne. And stalwart George had come around during the discussion the three of them had had after Matt’s return from the Lacunae dome. She turned away from his questioning gaze and looked at the brown-freckled, pale skin of Suzanne’s high-boned face. “Partner, your turn.”

Matthew shifted his stance to focus on Suzanne. Her gal pal smiled broadly, as if she’d just heard the premier joke of the galaxy. “Matthew, good Vigilante, we are joining you and George in this battle against the Anarchate,” Suzanne said. “Eliana and I, and George too, have decided to accept fiber optic cable sockets in our necks so we can communicate at lightspeed with the Dreadnought we will each be the pilot mistress of. When we arrive in home galaxy.” Matt grimaced but did not interrupt, though he glanced quickly to George, who nodded briefly to confirm his desire for a socket. Suzanne cleared her throat. “Matthew? This also means we want full capability combat suits like you and George have. After all, we women are better shots than most men. And the females of humanity have long been better at multi-tasking than most males. Soooo, we will be able to split our mind attention into a dozen pretzels as we monitor external sensors, order the antimatter cannons to fire, order the Repulsors to move us off our arrival vector in future battles, sense the emptiness of Translation during FTL entry and exit, and also play chess with you and George in normal life mode speed!”

Her Matthew eyed her, then Suzanne, then George, then back to Eliana. “
You, my dear, hated AIs when we first met. And you thought my cyborg modifications were abnormal.”

“Yes, but I’ve—”

“You three have no idea what neurolinking by way of optic fiber cable is like. It’s more than a loud party at your friend’s house. It’s a billion loud parties!”

Eliana reached out with her free hand to touch her Matthew’s stubbled chin. “Dear Matthew, I survived my piggyback ride on Eliana’s lightspeed neurolink with you when she reconnected with you after you linked into the mind of Mama AI. Rather, Eternal Love.” She grit her teeth, recalling how it felt to be in the middle of a hurricane strength flow of thoughts, sensor inputs, gravity field datafeeds, the sleeting impact of cosmic rays mixed with UV light from the nearby star, and the deep mind of Mata Hari, who was so much more than a simple AI controlling life support or starship engines. “Anyway, she and I, we are more than just the love of your life. Or George’s life. We are two smart, highly capable women who can be pilots for two of the
Dreadnought starships you have in our new fleet. With George added, that gives you four human/AI linked Dreadnoughts that can maneuver in sync with your efforts to apply asymmetric warfare against a galactic empire. And I’ve been reading Sun Tzu during the trip out here. That guy was a genius at military tactics and strategy!”

Matthew kissed her fingers, then stepped back from her and Suzanne. “Dear ladies whom we love, human tradition has long been that we males, George and I, protect you females. Future mothers of our children.” Eliana felt Suzanne squeeze her fingers as Matt’s words reminded the two of them of hopes they had shared weeks ago in the Park created by their AI Gatekeeper, who had turned
gamekeeper and gardener after leaving his hotel manager post at the casino. “That said, this is the future. Not the past. And you speak clearly, with logic on your side. Yes, I will need flexible Human and Alien minds to neurolink with the 507 Dreadnoughts of our new fleet. Minds that are devoted to the ending of cloneslavery, but able to fight and shift and pretend with the best Tactical AI computers of the Anarchate!”