Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (6 page)

It was a task he took pleasure in. Execution was the usual punishment for any battleglobe commander who survived the destruction of his vessel. Which was one reason so few battleglobes had been destroyed in the two million annual cycles of the Anarchate’s history. Only his interviews
with Autarch Dreedle and the Human Despot Ioannis, and the vidrecords of the fights that Dragoneaux had involved himself in during his Vigilante defense of Dreedle’s home world, had saved his whiskers. He brushed them back from alert stiffness and told his tail to stop whipping about. Fear he would not show to his nearby assistants, nor to the Monitor globes that filled every installation of Combat Command. The only way he could survive was to provide Intelligence High Commander Brrzeet of the Orko species with Tactical Intelligence on where this Human would likely strike next.

An impossible job so long as the Human kept to random Hit-and-Run strikes, to use a term he’d learned during his stay among the tail-less bipeds of Halcyon who
called themselves Humans! At least the native Direndl tree-dwellers had tails, though they lacked any Whiskers of Distinction. His were carbon black, as long as his central finger-claw and his whiskers spoke in a way understood only by other Spelidon. Of which there were many on the thousands of bases maintained by Combat Command. But few served in Intelligence, to his benefit. His involuntary reactions to the horrendous appearance of Brrzeet’s four legs, four yellow eyes, scaled body and ponderous movement was a secret he could keep from competitors for the favors of the High Commander of this Intelligence base in Perseus Arm.

“Commander Chai, a tachlink signal has been received from the
Observer Globe ejected by the three battleglobes you sent to the home star system of these T’Chak aliens,” reported his chief assistant, a Loglan alien able to deep-research antique datapods while also reporting the attacks of his Human opponent in the holo he now focused on.

“What does the signal relate?” he muttered in a tone guaranteed to warn the
four other assistants in his globular research node to be silent. His node was one of nine hundred nodes that floated about the orange-yellow star of system CC93721. They were interlinked by access tubeways and surrounded by black vacuum. The ecofields of each node were controlled by High Commander Brrzeet. The threat of breathing vacuum served as a notable motivator for every lifeform in this Combat Command installation.

The Loglan’s four
eyestalks glanced his way. “Destruction of all three battleglobes, my Commander.”

“How!” he
growled at the hard-shelled Loglan, an amphibian who no doubt yearned for a salty bath after its long service in this dry aired node.

The Loglan’s oval shell
sank lower to the cold metal deck on which all of them worked at WorkPads that responded to touch input. “Commander, the starship ruled by the Human Dragoneaux was already present in the T’Chak home star system in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It Translated out to the arrival site of the three battleglobes with two automated Offense vessels, leaving the alien’s home world unguarded.” Chai focused on the cross-linked imagery that the Observer Globe had recorded when it was ejected upon arrival, an early tactic he had ordered when it became apparent the T’Chak starship could defeat any single Nova-class battleglobe. “While two battleglobes sought to destroy the Human, the third battleglobe Translated into the system in an effort to prevent the Human from gaining any more Dreadnought starships from the ancient T’Chak.”

“And?” Chai growled deeply even as the Spelidon-size holo in front of him filled with the antimatter destruction of two battleglobes as the one commanded by his Academy nest-mate Beegan disappeared on its mission to use its Bethe Inducer to reduce the alien home world to a few particles of neutron star substance.

The eyestalks wilted a bit. “Commander Beegan’s ship arrived in a space between the alien planet and its largest moon. Just as the commander began the Bethe Inducer sequence the Human starship arrived between Commander Beegan’s ship and the planet. It emitted six antimatter beams upon arrival.”

The holo imager shifted to show the second battle in the T’Chak home star system, a battle that should have given his nest-mate a chance to destroy the T’Chak home world even if he died in the effort.
But the Translation arrival of the Human’s T’Chak starship, its flexmetal skin now distorted to resemble the body shape of a T’Chak alien, said the outer system battle by two battleglobes had been lost. He looked intently at the tachlinked vid that his nest-mate’s battleglobe constantly transmitted to the Observer Globe whenever it encountered the Human renegade.

“Commander Beegan’s ship disappeared in a total matter-to-energy conversion,” his Loglan assistant said with tight clicks of its mouth palps. “As you can see from the globeship’s rear-monitoring videyes, a pink beam came from the moon prior to the arrival of the antimatter beams emitted by the Human. The beam must have transmitted a large globe of antimatter to the site of your nest-mate’s battleglobe.”

Chai saw that lightspeed image just before the entire holo image disappeared with the vaporization of his nest-mate’s battleglobe. The Observer Globe shifted back to the fragments of the other two battleglobes that had been destroyed by the antimatter beams of the Human’s ship before it Translated in-system, leaving two powerful Offense Remotes to hammer the remnants of the task force into small fragments absent of any surviving lifeforms. With a sigh, Chai tilted his support stool backward, his long tail lifting to curl over his left shoulder as both disappointment and deep thought filled him.

“How long did it take our battleglobes to reach the Small Magellanic Cloud home star system of these T’Chak aliens?”

The Loglan’s four eyestalks perked up. “Three point five months as reckoned in Belizel,” the amphibian said.

So. Combat Command had that long before this Dragoneaux Human returned to pursue his self-declared “war” against the Anarchate. An absurd statement given the two million cycle history of the Anarchate.
Stupid, even, in view of Combat Command’s thousands of bases spread across the galaxy and its 11,321 battleglobes that ensured the ability of rich trading conglomerates to buy low and sell high to solo star systems. The Anarchate cared not how any local planet conducted its affairs on-planet. So long as it did not seek a Trade or military alliance with another star system. The rule of galactic evolution, he had been taught long cycles ago, was that anarchy was not only profitable, but good for every star-traveling species. Any colony world too weak to defend itself from a genome slaver ship deserved to have its genome sampled and sold at the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops. Those colonies that could mount a defense against the genome raiders, like the Sigma Puppis B system of the Direndl or the Sol system of these tail-less Humans, was a useful Trade partner for the conglomerates that paid taxes for protection of their Trade zones. His destruction of a Halicene mining ship and his removal of the Sigma Puppis B star system from exploitation by the Halicenes was a minor loss for them. And a salutary lesson to all the conglomerates that the Anarchate ruled everyone. While bribes were valued by local Combat Command chieftains, the Four Rules were inviolate. Except this Human Vigilante now sought their overthrow.

With a wave of his finger-claws he reset the holo to show the green-speckled track of the Human’s attacks so far. With a tilt of his head he recalled their names once more.

Sigma Puppis B system of the Direndl. SAO 47250 of the outlying Intelligence Dome where its non-AI occupants had revived after the departure of the
Mata Hari
starship. Next came Zeta Serpentis, home to the now destroyed Omega Casino, and former workplace of this Dragoneaux creature. CC41324 in the Keyhole Nebula, home to a naval shipyard that had been destroyed, even though its thousands of workers had been allowed to live. And thereby spread seditious word of this Vigilante who challenged the Anarchate. Next came CC1939 in the Omega Centauri star cluster, deep within the Norma Arm of the galaxy. A Meligun merchant had alerted a nearby Combat Command base of the arrival in-system of the Human’s starship, which sought fuel and supplies. Regrettably, the local merchant fleet had been unable to delay the Human, while the battleglobes sent to capture him had been defeated. As shown by the Observer Globe they’d left at the outer system upon arrival. Again per his order. Then came the disaster of Megadeen, a galactic communications sector node that orbited CC4137 in Norma Arm. Not only had the Human destroyed the multiple guarding starships that had circled the methane-clouded moon of Megadeen, but it had also defeated
four
battleglobes! And now, Belizel months later, it had defeated the three battleglobes he’d sent to the distant small galaxy that research showed was the home system of the long-dead T’Chak species.

“Commander Chai?” called Kontine, his Loglan chief assistant.

He sat back from his intense focus on the green-speckled track of his Human adversary. “Yes?” he said, keeping his gaze on the holo as he desperately wondered what he and Combat Command could due in the three point five months that remained before his adversary returned to ravage Anarchate bases and shipyards.

“High Commander Brrzeet has called for your . .  . attendance before him. Immediately, the signal indicates.”

Kontine’s click voice carried no emotional tone of reaction to what it knew as well as his other assistants was an Explain-or-Die appearance before the Intelligence High Commander. Well, he was able to think on his two feet even if his whiskers and tail betrayed his nervous worry.

A Plan he must present, since it was clear his boss had just reviewed the tachlink record of the disaster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. He would come up with something. He and his Spelidon brothers always came up with a promising plan. That was why his species made up the majority of sentients now serving in Combat Command. While they had evolved to be excellent one-on-one fighters, their minds were even better at tactical and strategic planning. Their 57 colony worlds required excellent administration. And planning. Now, he must come up with a combat Plan for defeating a ghost-like bipedal alien with only a single starship, while his fellows commanded multiple fleets. That was it! If they could respond quickly enough with a small fleet of battleglobes
, they could surround this alien starship and fire enough beams until one antimatter beam slithered through its overlapping Alcubierre space-time shields. It was a gamble, of course. But better to lose the lives of others than his own life!

Matt sat in the Interlock Pit of an alien starship like an olive in a martini glass, naked as the day he’d been born. The recent discussion with Eliana and Suzanne had been unsettling. It was clear he and George could no longer treat the two women as beloved “subjects” to be protected from all harm. Now, they insisted on going into harm
’s way! Although each would have the aid of a T’Chak self-aware computer mind in a two-kilometer long Dreadnought-class starship. A starship capable of changing its outer body shape from a central tube with two outrigger pontoons, to a dragon-like shape that resembled BattleMind to an unnerving degree. But could they feel comfortable doing what he did now?

His bare skin soaked in thousands of lightbeam inputs that talked to his skin, inputs that came from the control devices that lined the cone-shaped Interlock Pit. Light moved so much faster than electrons-down-a-
nerve, and the beams caressed every inch of his body. Touching here. Touching there. Whispering. Cajoling. Making direct contact with electrochemical receptors, firing down nerve fiber pathways, filling him with, with . . . .

Ecstasy could not begin to match it.

He’d called it
ocean-time
the first time he’d gone on-line with the feminine Mata Hari mind persona. She had first appeared as the mind image of a late Victorian-dressed, amber-skinned young woman with long black hair piled atop her head. And the AI had no special phrase for what she and Matt did—lightspeed neurolinking was simply how she thought, lived, felt and ran the mech-tech construct called a starship. In-link with Mata Hari was more than the out loud talking used by organic beings. It felt like a continuous electrocution, but one which did not burn him out. Together they were the symbiosis
::,
a group entity that could think, move and act faster than any organic lifeform. It was also an exhausting experience that he did not now repeat.

Then again, Eliana had had her first experience of
ocean-time
when she piggy-back rode on the red cloud mind of Mata Hari as his AI partner had lightspeed linked into his mind. Mata Hari had appeared during the worst of his mind-to-mind encounter with Eternal Love of the Lacunae Mindworks. Perhaps her buffering had saved his sanity. But by being there, Eliana had experienced lightspeed thinking and the exhaustion it always brought him. She had been exposed to his deep memories even more than through the memory crystal record he had shared with her that showed his family when it had been whole, before the genome slavers captured his Mom, Dad and four sisters. What did she think of the hard knocks schooling he’d undergone as a stevedore on a freighter, then later a Protector for rich alien Owners?

He shrugged mentally, turning his attention to the forward holoscreen that depicted the deep black space of Lacunae’s outer star system. They and their convoy of interlinked T’Chak starships were heading for the heliopause of this system. That was the normal place at which a starship
would appear from FTL Translation, or enter Translation on a trip to elsewhere, with the least chance of gravity tides harming local planets or intersecting an asteroid.