Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3)

by King, T. Jackson

  He smiled at the concerned look of Eliana. “Thank you, good lady. Yes, I know why we have to fight. And win. And seek to harm as few people outside the Anarchate as possible.”

  Suzanne’s golden mindsense flowed into his, carrying both her face and the feel of her inner spirit. “My love, what we do now is essential. You do not awaken a monster by nipping at its toe-claws. And once we awaken the Anarchate, we will have to split the fleet into many segments for more Hit-and-Run attacks.”

  “Will we win the war?”

  Suzanne’s face looked sideways to the mind image of Eliana, then back to him. “Good George, I cannot see that far ahead in time. Our upcoming battles, yes, we will win. But there will be surprises, difficulties and more casualties among our forces.”

  “You? Eliana? No!”

  Suzanne shook her head. “No, George, she and I are sisters of the mind and of the heart. We will survive our battles. As will Matt and you and Sarah and Rafael. Beyond that, the haze of time obscures my reach forward.”

  George nodded mentally, aware that the battle simulation had finished and that his mindpartners now were these women, Sarah and Rafael, and the AIs Altuna, Lorelei, Gondu, Imperial, Flowering, BattleMate and his own Inevitable. She of the black wings and green mindglow who felt as real to him as his human fellows. “Thank you, partner in mind and in love. Thank you, my Suzanne. And yes, we must be ready with a trained battle fleet when Matt arrives. Eliana, is he on the way?”

  Their crossbreed friend of the albino white face and jade green eyes showed a ‘distant’ mindsense, then grimaced. “He has decided to fight one more battle on his way here.” She lost the ‘distant’ look and fixed on the human and AI minds who were in tachlink communion. “My friends, Matt will call me shortly. And I must be there for him. So goodbye to you all. And may our volunteers enjoy a well-earned rest aboard their own ships!”

  Matt mentally viewed the three dee graphic of Sector 14 Naval Academy, which orbited a yellow G-class star that lay on the outskirts of Owl M97 Cluster. Translation travel always left him feeling bored, unless he was weaving or playing with the puffer fish in his aquarium. They were two days past the battle at Halicene shipyard, and on the way to Morrigan. But the nanobyte datacubes resting in his visual cortex had a bad habit of popping data into his mind’s-eye on any matter that he thought about. He had been thinking about just where Commander Chai and High Captain Yorkel had learned their naval tactics. The answer, according to both the Intelligence data crystal he’d stolen from the Intelligence Dome at SAO 47250 system and the datacubes, was this place.

  Before him floated a near copy of Earth. The planet Salem was a watery world with the land being mostly archipelagoes and volcanic seamounts. There was one equatorial continent with a central plateau much like the Tibetan plateau on Earth. Except this place was warmer, had rivers flowing through it and had been colonized by many Anarchate species millennia ago. The native Dweedle species were two-legged, two-armed mammals who bore a striking resemblance to the sloths of Earth. Their four-clawed hands had evolved as the species dug burrows to hide from six-legged predators. As they gained intelligence and began growing crops, they developed a system of matriarchs who spoke for each family, clan and city-state. The Anarchate naval academy occupied a high bluff where two rivers joined to form a wide, shallow river that eventually became a waterfall dropping off toward the southern ocean. While the Dweedle worked willingly in mines and on food farms, they kept to themselves. Their technology had not progressed beyond that of 1920s Earth, after the arrival of Anarchate occupiers. But their astronomers had mapped the six other planets in their system. And discovered how vital was the single moon that orbited their planet to the rise and fall of tides, and the growth of sea-life.

  “They are an interesting lifeform, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in her Spy persona. She fingered the pearl broach that was affixed to her high-necked, frilly white dress that bespoke a 1912 party style. “There is no need to vaporize the planet in order to remove the academy.”

  “Agreed.” Casting his eyes over the planetary holo he noted starship shuttle launch facilities lying beside the high rises, domes and cubes of the academy. Defensive anti-missile and anti-ship sites were at the north and south poles of the planet, each site automated long ago. In orbit was an ancient battleglobe hulk that, according to records, could not move but was a source of class pride. Two other armed and mobile Nova-class battleglobes were always near the planet Salem and its moon Lileen. Sensing his interest, Mata Hari expanded the holo to depict the layout of the six planets and outer cometary cloud.

  “What is your wish, Matthew?”

  He gritted his teeth. “To hit Chai and Yorkel in their gut! If I destroy the naval academy where they learned how to be the ship commanders they now are, it will hurt. It will hurt every battleglobe captain in Yorkel’s fleet. It may even make them so angry they do things out of emotion, rather than logic. Understood?”

  Mata Hari stood tall, slim and thoughtful in his mind. Her dark eyes, long black hair and amber skin suggested a Eurasian heritage that did not match her Dutch birth. But it did match the grown woman who had created a persona of sensual intrigue that had proven highly useful during parties for high-ranking German and Russian generals. Everyone who saw her perform in Paris hoped to bed her. The smarter men admired her at a distance, understanding the danger of being too confiding after a bout of love play. But many generals had believed themselves immune. Which is how she became a great double-agent for the British and French. She lifted one slim white hand, palm outward.

  “Understood. You wish to make them incautious, Matthew. But why?” Mata Hari flashed him an image of the 506 T’Chak dreadnoughts that now made up Ocean Fleet. “We have a massive fleet. It is nearly invulnerable. Your Eliana, with the help of Suzanne and George, has been training the ship AIs and human volunteers in fleet maneuvers. Why hit them in their gut, to quote your phrase?”

  Matt knew the answer. He knew that he still hurt from the loss of Marilyn Bochansky, the mother who’d died in front of her daughter. William Bochansky had hugged his sole surviving daughter Colette as Matt sought to console the husband and father. The man’s anger at the death of his wife Matt understood. He had lost his first love, Helen Sayinga Trinh, to a raid by resource pirates on their freighter as they fled to a Sixth Wave colony. Now, his Eliana was at risk. Even though she had the immense powers of a T’Chak warship at her command, still, he feared for her.

  “Matthew?” called Eliana across the thousands of light years that separated them. “You are planning another battle before you join is. I see it happening. Must you?”

  The tachlink node behind his left ear gave him and all the ship captains instant mental contact with everyone else, thanks to optical neurolinking and FTL tachyons. Eliana’s sudden appearance in his mind was always welcome. He missed her. With a sigh he gave Eliana a half-smile. “My love, you are correct. As I was sharing with Mata Hari, I think it a good tactical move to destroy the naval academy where Chai and Yorkel studied. Do you foresee any major problems with my plan? Or within the star system of Salem?”

  Eliana’s green eyes bored into him even as her facial expression went ‘distant’ as a part of her mind looked ‘ahead’ in the time streams. She blinked slowly. “No, my Matthew. No major problems. Or even small ones. So long as you leave the planet intact and the Dweedle species alive, our future crusade will not be harmed. But . . . but I foresee Chai and Yorkel being rather ticked off at your action.”

  “Good!”

  Mata Hari joined their mind conference, folding her legs under her to sit on the grassy sod that filled the Park created by Gatekeeper. Her own AI lifepartner, who was more than the stocky, grey-haired Greek in khaki pants that his holo showed. Gatekeeper had taken on the job of working with the 72 alien and human captives he had rescued during the attack on planet Megil of Alkalurops C system. He nodded to the brown cloudmind who was Gatekeeper. Mata Hari smiled briefly.

  “Matthew, it is
good that you remember this ship is for more than achieving your personal vengeance. We have other lives to preserve. And other lives to lead in battle. Eliana, have you gained many pilot volunteers from Morrigan?”

  Eliana’s mindimage smiled happily. “Oh yes! Forty-three arrived recently. Including Sarah Vasiliades and Rafael Dominguez, Matthew. Already they are becoming fine pilot partners for our T’Chak warships!”

  He felt mental relief. Eliana’s shared mind image showed him the intricacy of their recently concluded battle fleet simulations, including tactical innovations he would not have done. His women were indeed full members of the battle team. Eliana smiled at his reaction.

  “Thank you! It will be great to share with Suzanne how much you liked our battle maneuvers, my Matthew.”

  “I do,” he said even as a small part of his mind said his ship was nearing the 2,000 light year distance out from Earth of the Owl M97 Cluster. “Have got to recompute a Translation exit for the raid on the academy, dear Eliana. Thank you, thank Suzanne, thanks to George and tell Sarah and Rafael I feel honored by their presence in our fleet!”

  In their mental communion of three mind-bodies resting upon a grassy meadow in the ship’s Park ecosystem, the mind image of Eliana smiled, nodded, blew him a kiss and then vanished. Leaving just him, Mata Hari and a preoccupied Gatekeeper to plan their entry into system CC 7843 and the attack on the naval academy. Mata Hari stood up, her mind image brushing out wrinkles in her formal party dress. A side glance fixed him.

  “Matthew, we can destroy this objective. But Chai and Yorkel have become inventive in their ways of opposing us. I urge you to conduct future battles with at least Hexagon Prime fleet, and eventually all of Ocean Fleet.”

  He nodded, standing up and making ready to leave the mental comfort of a park for the cold instrumentalities of the Interlock Pit, wherein his body had sat during the entire group mind communion. “I agree. More ships are better than a single ship raid. And I do not plan any kind of kamikaze attack, now or in the future.”

  “Kamikaze? Oh. Your mind memory provides the reference.” Mata Hari’s mental presence enlarged so that the classical shape of her finely sculpted face filled his mind. “But the Anarchate ship captains have already tried that tactic on us. Twice. So we need to be extra careful. And variable in what we do. Yorkel has already adjusted to our normal Hit-and-Run tactics.”

  Looking now at the front holosphere on Bridge, Matt paid close attention to the three dee graphic of how the Salem system was laid out. Two outer gas giants. Planet four was Salem and its large moon. The inner three planets were analogues of Mercury and Venus. Unoccupied and without bases of any kind. The Anarchate presence was limited to the academy city, the orbiting battleglobe hulk, mobile battleglobes and a resource mining base on the moon Lileen.

  “Mata Hari, I agree. Instead of our usual approach from the outer star system, let us Translate into space-time between Planet Three and Salem, heading outward at three-fourths lightspeed. We can time our arrival so the academy city is on our side of the planet and while the moon base also faces our vector line.” He paused, thinking about the presence of at least two battleglobes on active duty. They had surely been given details of his prior battles and orders to fire along the vector line of his gravity wave pulse. As Yorkel and his fleet members had done at Upsilon Carinae. Well, he doubted the academy system would be drenched in sensorRemotes and tachRemotes like the Halicene shipyard. But still, moving off their vector line once they dispatched their own cloud of Remote sensors would be smart. He thought the change in approach and in vector diversion to Mata Hari.

  “Looks good, Matthew,” she said, materializing to his left in a full-size holo even as on his right there loomed the giant holo of BattleMind.

  “We do not vaporize the planet?” growled BattleMind in a hurricane of emotive thought that dear Mata Hari buffered. Its giant black wings half-filled the Bridge room.

  Mentally he winced. “Uh, no. The precognition of Eliana and Suzanne says we have to leave the planet and the native species intact. But why not use your Graviton Beam to reduce the orbiting hulk to a tiny black hole? Will be a nice message to future Anarchate crews!”

  BattleMind’s spine ridges hunched together into a line of sharp purple teeth. His red eyes fixed on the holo and the attack plan in Matt’s mind. “That is one target. There are the academy on planet, the moon base and two mobile battleglobes. They would all disappear if we used the Bethe Inducer to cause the local sun to go nova.”

  “Too efficient,” Matt said mentally before Mata Hari could intervene. “We leave this system mostly intact. For the other targets in space, there are our antimatter beams. For the land bases on the moon and on Salem, I favor 30 megaton thermonukes delivered by hyper-fast missiles. Mata Hari, can your laser pods take out the polar anti-missile sites so our nuke hits on target?”

  “Yes, Matthew,” she said, even as a part of her feminine mind maintained a mental buffer between his awareness and the mind force of BattleMind.

  “Then reset our Translation exit coordinates for inner system arrival with an outward bound vector. Time to go to battle.”

  Once more he reached for immersion into the eternity of lightspeed optical neurolinking. Within his mind, the dam burst. The personalities of Mata Hari, BattleMind, Gateway and the dozens of cloneslavery captives receded. Ocean-time overwhelmed him.

  Seven picoseconds.

  The Dreadnought-class battleship built by the ancient T’Chak aliens, a shape-changing wonder able to destroy a star, now did his bidding.

  Moving swift as a hawk, Mata Hari left Translation. They re-entered normal space-time at three-fourths lightspeed thrust. Briefly, he was pushed back into the molded-glass chair of the Pit—until the inertial fields came on. Matt didn’t notice the slight weight gain. Other things overwhelmed him. For within his mind, within his body, the avenging force that was a two kilometer-long starship changed form.

  It changed into Battle Configuration.

  Two nanoseconds.

  The ocean filled him. The ocean enclosed him. The ocean sang to him. He was one with Mata Hari, the ship itself was one with them, three were as One, they had become the entity ::.

  Two and a quarter nanoseconds.

  Both biceps clenched.

  Distantly, Matt felt the six pontoons of the neutron antimatter cannons power up and move to Standby as both wings of the ship’s T’Chak dragon form flared out to either side of the ship’s main body.

  Three nanoseconds.

  His heart beat faster.

  Within her dozen fusion power plants, Mata Hari sped up energy production.

  Three and a quarter nanoseconds.

  His fingers twitched.

  Outside, on the outer hull, dozens of beam-weapon projectors came on-line, spotting the ship’s skin like an attack of giant warts. Some were low frequency carbon-dioxide gas lasers, some were excimer lasers, some proton beamers, a few hydrogen-fluorine metal-punch lasers, several free electron lasers, and multiple plasma cannons, while others carried neutral particle lasers. They all flowed with energy, they all sang to him—we are ready. Ready! Ready!

  Eight nanoseconds.

  His groin twinged.

  On Mata Hari’s top and bottom, giant pods now protruded on pylon arms. They contained torps ready for Defense, for Offense, ready even to give their own lives as decoys, if necessary. And as they protruded, his hull skin flowed like water. Flexmetal and adaptive optics on the hull moved like something alive, reshaping him into a dragon-shaped spacegoing fortress. The long crocodile snout gleamed with silvery teeth, the two red eyes hummed to full thousand-megawatt laser power, and the ship’s tail lengthened even as magfield reservoirs fed positron antimatter into the deut-li fusion thrust gases.

  Ten nanoseconds.

  Matt clenched his jaw muscles.

  The winding coils of the axial Plasma Cannon went to high magfield multiples as the ship’s inner guts prepared to emit two hundred meter-wide purp
le clouds of plasma. Those clouds would consume any matter lying in the way of their advance. Other accelerators fed neutron antimatter to the wing cannons, charged protons to the proton lasers, or pure plasma to the scores of hull projectors waiting to defend the ship. The plasma projectors were for close-up solid projectile defense. Nothing stopped a Nanoshell, a MIRV’d smart rock or a nuclear torp like a 10,000 degree mini-sun. Of course, those hull defenses were unneeded once the Alcubierre space-time fields wrapped around the ship’s body. Which they now did, rendering starship Mata Hari invisible to any Anarchate captain, student or professor looking their way. Which would require looking into the thermonuclear furnace of their local star. Matt smiled mentally. Entering a star system camouflaged by the neutrino blasts of the local star appealed to him.

  Other changes occurred inside the ship.

  Fourteen nanoseconds.

  The Spine’s airtight slidedoors all closed down, compartmentalizing the ship. Subsidiary AIs secured the cargo holds and the shuttle Ariadne.

  Sixteen nanoseconds.