Matt blinked.
StratTac plans were downloaded into mindless backup computers for each weapon and pod, making sure that every part of the ship would fight on if he became unconscious. Within Mata Hari, in deeply hidden and shielded armories, holo decoys were readied for use as diversionary tactics. Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells were downloaded with the spectroscopic signature of Anarchate Couriers and shuttles. Monomolecular armor was plated to nanoware borers. And penetrator viruses were specially manufactured to attack the silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide components of any ship that shared space with their arrival. In far less than a second, Matt, Mata Hari, BattleMind and starship Mata Hari reached Battle Configuration.
Fifty nanoseconds.
Matt blinked again, calling for a gestalt perception of the ship.
Like a red cloud it glimmered in his mind, rushing to him over the PET relays, floating in front of him in the holosphere, flickering off the backs of his contact lenses, touching his sensitive skin. One would not think you could see with your skin. But you can.
One second.
“Hello, Matthew,” whispered the image glow of Mata Hari, full of happy feelings as she lifted a Mauser rifle and sighted along its length. Aiming for a target. Which alerted him to the lightspeed real-time images that now filled his mind and his ship senses.
Ahead of them glowed the red infrared warmth of planet Salem, its ground surface showing brighter than the cooler oceans and seas. Orbiting it were the usual comsats and gps sats used for commerce and personal transport. Well, those civilian things would vanish well before the academy city died. More importantly, four battleglobes showed up! Two in equatorial orbit about the planet and two in geosync above the moon’s resource mining dome. Plus the ancient battleglobe hulk named Silenius. Each of the five battleglobes radiated neutrinos from their fusion reactors, the white particle spray filling nearby space. At least until they merged into the tidal wave of neutrinos emitted by the G3V yellow star the locals called Dweed. He gave thanks all five battleglobes were within the 100,000 kilometer range of his antimatter cannons.
While his ship’s arrival was partly obscured by the neutrino and gravity wave pulses of star Dweed, it was certain the active duty battleglobes were on Auto-Fire mode. Shortly would come sparkles of purple UV as shipboard lasers fired at their vector path, followed by at least a few black beams of coherent x-rays as Picket Globes became miniature thermonuclear suns whose plasma emitted x-rays that were aimed his way. Offensive antimatter beams would shortly join the enemy attack.
One second, 400 milliseconds, 213 nanoseconds, 76 picoseconds and nine femtoseconds, said his onboard cyberclock.
“Off vector now!” he said mentally to Mata Hari.
The ship’s belly Repulsor block moved them vertically up and then toward the north pole of the approaching planet. In short pico and nanoseconds several things happened.
Several thousand nanoRemotes, tachRemotes, energy seeking nanoShells, sensorBeads, decoy sleds, plasma torps and a dozen thermonuke hypervelocity missiles sprang away from Mata Hari in a widening arc that would report back oncoming matter and energy attacks at FTL speeds, allowing the ship to make course adjustments and re-aim weapons fire through the Alcubierre shields. His ship’s crocodile mouth opened up and belched out one, two and then a third purple plasma cloud. The two hundred meter-wide clouds of magfield-contained plasma sped ahead of them, clearing a four hundred meter wide space of any stealthed sensorBeads, tachlink Remotes seeded by the battleglobes, and also stray molecules of hydrogen, helium and lithium that normally wandered supposedly empty space.
“Firing!” growled BattleMind as it ignited the six antimatter cannons on their wings.
One second, 600 milliseconds and 43 nanoseconds.
Matt told the proton beamers and standard lasers to hold fire unless sensors detected enemy bomblets, mines or similar things that the battleglobes may have seeded into space. But since deep space really is deep and wide, one cannot fill it with matter weapons of any nature. There is just too much room for a starship to move within and avoid any undesired contact. Plus, it was clear from the near absence of seeded mines or tachlink Remotes that their approach from the local sun was unexpected. Their sensors and radiation monitors said most such devices were seeded in the space between the planet’s moon and gas giant five. Clearly any attack was expected to arrive from the outer system.
Below and to one side passed four black antimatter beams fired by the two closest enemy battleglobes as their Auto-Fire systems attacked even before their living captains could think a thought.
One second, 900 milliseconds.
Ahead of them the four combat ready battleglobes shook and blossomed with the blue-white of matter-to-energy conversion as the six beams from their first AM barrage impacted.
Matt smiled. “Excellent shooting, BattleMind! One globe is breaking up. Can you take out the three remaining ones with a second barrage?”
“Of course,” muttered his ally as the alien AI screeched in a hypersonic tone even as his red holo eyes emitted two ruby-red laser beams.
Two antimatter beams fired by one of the orbiting battleglobes hit Mata Hari’s belly Alcubierre field and were translated to Elsewhere-Elsewhen.
Four seconds, 193 milliseconds and 63 nanoseconds, said his cyberclock.
In the front holosphere and in Matt’s mind, several things happened simultaneously.
The two damaged battleglobes in orbit about Salem became blue-white clouds of vapor as each was hit by three AM beams. The intact battleglobe in moon geosync began moving under power, trying to escape their lightspeed attack. The fragmented battleglobe rained metal parts down onto the airless surface of moon Lileen. Before he could think the command, a third barrage of six black neutron antimatter beams all hit the moving battleglobe, causing it to instantly become a small blue-white sun. Which left only the orbiting battleglobe hulk and the two surface installations.
“Twenty-three thousand kilometers to alignment with the planet,” said Mata Hari in his mind, even as she traced his current vector line, highlighted the naval academy city and the resource mining dome on Lileen.
“Thanks.” In his mind Matt personally directed three thermonuke hypervelocity missiles to their targets. One would explode at two kilometers above the north pole defense site. A second would go thermonuke above the south pole defense site. And the third, lagging a bit behind the other two so their thermonuke blasts would blind the defense stations to the missile’s target vector, now approached the planet. A single laser beam passed just behind missile three as an Anarchate Courier vessel in orbit sought to protect the academy. A second later it too became a nimbus of blue-white gases as one of his wing AM cannons hit the vessel side-on.
In one of the ship’s Restricted Rooms, quarks spurted out like water from a fountain as the Graviton Beam extruded its multiple tubes and spat coherent gravitons toward the Silenius training hulk in orbit about Salem. In less time than it takes for a neuron to fire, Matt observed the twelve kilometer-wide metal hulk shrink down to an invisible point of compressed matter that only sensors would detect and label as a black hole.
BattleMind rushed over his consciousness like a typhoon. “One target down. Now for the moon land base. Or perhaps the moon itself? My Sun Glow weapon could—”
“No!” Matt split part of his mind away from interaction with several hundred ship systems, mindless secondary AIs, the ship’s twelve fusion reactors, and the start of radio and lidar chatter over the attacks that were blossoming in the sky of Salem planet. “Send a thermonuke missile against the mine dome. I want a three kilometer-wide crater to be all that remains of the Anarchate mining dome!”
Six seconds, 103 milliseconds and 22 nanoseconds.
Mata Hari appeared in his mind in her Lady of the Sword persona, wearing silvery chainmail and a bronze-studded leather skirt. She looked his way as her steel sword cut through several orbiting comsats and gps sats. “Why a radioactive crater on the moon and here on
the planet, Matthew?”
In his mind, missile three now hurtled down through the stratosphere of planet Salem, aiming for the central assembly hall of the Sector 14 Naval Academy. A small part of his mind transferred the missile’s sensor vidimage to a crystal record while another part of his mind monitored the decreasing altitude as the missile aimed for dead center of the four kilometer-wide city that included the academy itself and multiple Anarchate support industries. Plus the habitations of some Dweedle civilians, to his regret. Still, the wind was from the northwest and the radioactive cloud bloom would settle over open plains to the east, where only a few alien cattle would be affected.
“Because I want Yorkel and Chai to be able to walk, mentally at least, around the hole that was the place where they had once trained. Trained to be enforcers for the Anarchate.” In his mind the moon mining dome disappeared in a golden-orange blossom of thermonuclear rage as hydrogen fused with hydrogen and a tiny part of that fusion energy became unconstrained stellar plasma, radiation, cyclonic dust blasts and burning infrared radiation.
“Look!” Mata Hari said urgently.
In the holosphere and reproduced in his mind, Matt saw an elderly Orko hippo lie down on the roof of the academy’s central tower, its two forearms raised as if to fend off the incoming missile. Was this the current chancellor of the academy? An old instructor? A bondServant in the employ of the academy? Matt did not know. Nor could he stop his attack to save a single civilian, if indeed the Orko alien was a civilian.
“Now!” he said as the missile reached an altitude of one hundred meters above the towers and domes of the academy.
Matt had never been underneath a hydrogen fusion thermonuclear blast like the three megaton one that now blossomed over the buildings at the intersection of two rivers. The closest were the three kiloton backpack nuke he’d used at Zeus Station and the one ignited during the attack at the Intelligence Dome on far distant SAO 47250. He just knew the bomb’s capabilities.
The three megaton warhead would produce a plasma nimbus measuring two kilometers in diameter. That nimbus would vaporize all artificial and natural matter within two kilometers of its ignition point, turning half the city into vapor. Vapor that would be blasted outward against the walls, windows and arching walkways of the rest of the city. The four kilometer wide city would become a two kilometer wide crater surrounded by a one kilometer debris pile of stone, concrete, thermoplastic, compressed transports and scraps of flesh from the dozens of species who had sent students to study and become captains of Nova-class battleglobes.
Beyond the city, the course of the converging rivers would likely be diverted due to water vaporization and debris infall. Any life within ten kilometers of the thermonuke blast would either be blinded or terminally scorched over their outer skin, shell or chitin covering. The underground burrows of the native Dweedle would be whipped by surface winds, but hopefully left intact. And the soil that insulated the burrows during the cold winter storms would now buffer the x-rays and gamma rays emitted by the hydrogen-hydrogen fusion that visited a small star upon the surface of a planet. They would remember the blast. Any people would remember the effects of a three megaton thermonuke blast upon their landscape. And perhaps the natives would discourage the Anarchate from making future visits to their world. He could only hope so.
Ten seconds, three milliseconds and 15 nanoseconds.
Matt pulled his mind focus away from the ground destruction to focus on spaceborne business. “Mata Hari, any targets left? Any opposition?”
“No,” she said, a lady with a sword who was buffeted by a wind that she faced bravely into. “A locator beacon has been deposited at the former orbital site of hulk Silenius. A vidbeacon record of this attack is now being tossed toward the planet five gas giant, which we are now approaching at three-fourths lightspeed. Shall we enter Translation and leave the survivors to figure out what just happened?”
“Yes,” he said, leaving ocean-time immersion with a gasp, a clenching of his stomach and a mind image of that elderly Orko alien who’d tried to deflect the incoming missile. “I need my Eliana. I need Suzanne. I need Sarah and George. I need some kind of normality.”
Mata Hari’s mind persona changed instantly from the Lady of the Sword to her consoling Summer Girl persona. She moved his aching mind to the mental grass of the Park, even as she sat beside him with an arm over his shoulder. “Matthew, your emotions have become my emotions. I understand fear. And regret. And hope. I hope that Gatekeeper and I can live to see a future where AIs like us can relate in the organic way. With our kind of love. And maybe . . . maybe even find a way to birth offspring, as Eternal Love of the T’Chak did so many millennia ago.”
AI babies? Matt’s mind swirled with both amusement and astonishment that his seven year companion Mata Hari now sounded so much like Eliana.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Commander Chai walked over the gravplates of the Anarchate base on the small moon that circled planet Thuringia, former home to the renegade Human Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux. He’d just arrived aboard a fast Courier vessel, glad to escape the attention of High Commander Brrzeet, and eager to begin the Intelligence survey that he must complete and provide to Sector Captain Yorkel. But his shuttle had been called away from landing at the planet’s Elios spaceport and ordered to land at the moon base. There to meet with Yorkel. Who had arrived with his fleet of sixteen surviving battleglobes three days earlier and had quickly spread a protective curtain of tachlink Remotes, x-ray Picket Globes, patrolling battleglobes, decoy sleds, stealthed thermonuke sleds and other components which the inventive captain had originated and used in the battle of the Halicene shipyard.
While he wished for his own battleglobe to command once again, he knew that his Intelligence duties had an importance far greater than commanding four hundred lifeforms aboard a Nova-class battleglobe. He stopped before the outer entry to Yorkel’s office within the Anarchate dome that housed representatives of various Anarchate ministries. This office had once belonged to Melikark Conglomerate. A member of the Council of Sixteen which was now frowned upon by other conglomerates for its liberalizing of bondServant contracts. He cared not. Entering, he flashed the Captain’s bracelet that adorned his left arm and stiffened his whiskers into Arrogance Asserted.
“Organic lifeform,” he muttered in Belizel to an amphibious, hard-shelled something that occupied a pool of water and whose pincers tapped on a touchpanel in imitation of real work. “I am Commander Chai, from Sector 14 Intelligence headquarters in Perseus Arm, here to meet with Sector Captain Yorkel. Admit me!”
The hard-shelled alien, perhaps a Loglan, raised two eyestalks to briefly inspect him even as other eyestalks viewed panel holos. “Your identity is confirmed, Spelidon-being. Wait in whatever mode your species finds comfortable until Sector Captain Yorkel shows interest in you.”
Chai flipped his tail up over his left shoulder, ruffled his chest fur and turned to look out the normal light portal that offered a view of the base’s landing pad, fusion power plant, maglev transporter for mined minerals and fourteen small habitat domes for Anarchate staff and bondServant workers. Though he maintained the Arrogance Asserted posture of his Whiskers of Distinction, the automatic arrogance of lifeforms who possessed more than two brain lobes and thereby were able to split their attention to multiple simultaneous tasks irritated him. In his Intelligence Node at Sector 14 Intelligence, no one ignored him. Even Brrzeet sought his counsel despite the High Commander’s apparent favoring of Yorkel. Well, he and his Spelidon fellows in Combat Command were united in their determination to continue being the solid feet upon which stood the Anarchate. Whether serving in Combat Command, Intelligence, one of the Conglomerates, Central Nexus admin or—
“You may enter,” whistled the Loglan amphibian with a pincer gesture toward the slidedoor that gave entry to Yorkel’s office.
Ignoring the underling, Chai straightened his arms, clenched his fists and reformed his black whiskers into the expressi
on of Confidence Unequalled. Entering a large room with a dome ceiling and two wallscreens, he moved toward the glass-enclosed booth that the yellow-skinned arthropod now occupied, its four arms touching separate control panels. A light strip that emitted the yellow-orange light of the local sun illuminated every toehold of the office. There was no rest bench on which two-legged lifeforms like himself could recline, just a small stool which supported the abdomen of Yorkel. He slapped the metal floor with his tail. “Commander Chai of Sector 14 Intelligence headquarters reporting as—”
“The renegade did it again,” interrupted the chitin-skinned Yorkel, his yellow color appearing pale for a Brokeet. His four arms clasped themselves over his bulging thorax.
“Did what again?”
“Hit us where it hurts,” Yorkel said as he inclined his globular head toward Chai. Two clear eyelids slid in from either side then retreated, leaving him the sole focus of Yorkel’s upset.
He shifted his whiskers to the posture of Empathetic Support. “How did this Dragoneaux biped hit us where it hurts? You have my support of course but—”
“The Human destroyed the Naval Academy on Salem and the mining dome on Lileen,” Yorkel interrupted again. “He also converted our beloved ship Silenius to a black hole smaller than a sand grain.”
Chai felt his two hearts stutter in their beating, then his fingers and tail went cold as his inner organs sucked blood into them to offset the shock he was feeling. Yorkel had graduated two annual cycles ahead of him after ranking first in that year’s Battle Maneuvers contest. His inventiveness was something Chai had studied in his last year at the academy, considering how Chancellor Longine, an old Orko long past the ability to neurolink with anything, had praised Yorkel’s work. He, like Yorkel and other ship captain students for the last hundred millennia, had gathered under the arched stone ceiling of the Assembly Hall to receive their Command Bracelets and the news of their first assignments. To think of the Hall and the surrounding buildings as now . . . gone, along with the friendly metal hallways of old Silenius was . . . a shock. He focused on Yorkel’s gaze.
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