“My dearest, destruction of this place is needed as a lesson to the Anarchate. It is a plan I discussed with Mata Hari and BattleMind while you were doing laser gun practice in the armory hall. This is only Stage One of a bigger deal that will involve—”
“Matthew Dragoneaux? Is it really you in all that fanciful combat armor? Well, perhaps we will be paid—”
“Shut up,” Matt told the bear-like Meligun alien, one of the casino Owners who had quoted the impossible price for Helen’s contract release. He finished turning away from Eliana to face the black-furred alien with two pink eyes, large elf-like ears, two legs and four arms. Evolved from a sextupedal ancestor, the Meligun, like humanity’s tree-living ancestors, have developed into an upright, walking version of a bear that had arms at the waist and shoulder levels, all the better with which to crumple opponents, he thought. This alien was the one who gave him and Helen the toothy smile when it said two million platinum Standards was her buyout price. Beside him, Eliana stepped back and turned round to cover his back. Redundant given Suit’s 360 All Surround perception zone, but thoughtful and in keeping with the basic covert training he had given her. But now that he had been recognized, things must move a bit faster.
In Matt’s mind he tachlink signaled Mata Hari to take out the Tachyon Pylon with a few carbon dioxide lasers. Best to save the neutron antimatter pontoons for later. He went to gestalt focus now, simultaneously taking in inputs from a half dozen EMF frequencies, the comlink chatter of the Port bondGuides, the casino dome supercomputer, the Guardian barracks, and the Port AI. He also looked down at the stumpy Meligun.
“Owner Zik tho-mesh, Helen Sayinga Trinh is dead, thanks to you.”
The Meligun bear looked surprised. “Me? She ran off with you. If she is dead, that is your fault, you bipedal silliness that thinks it can bypass the Rules of the Anarchate!”
Matt smiled, showing his teeth. The Meligun took a step back. “Owner who thinks himself superior to all, I do not bypass the Anarchate Rules, I destroy them!” Behind Matt and outside the casino dome, Dreadnought Mata Hari arrived to float 1,000 meters above them all, with three hull blisters emitting orange laser beams that swiftly melted the pylon but left the Guardian box untouched. For now. The Meligun’s pink eyes widened as it saw the sudden destruction and magical appearance of Mata Hari.
“But, but—”
“As you will hear shortly over the dome’s public address comlink emitters, you have exactly four hours to evacuate all 6,114 lifeforms presently in the dome and move them up to the 23 orbiting starships so people, including your arrogant super-rich patrons, can live another day on another world.” Matt’s smile widened so dimples showed. “For in four hours, this dome, the Arrival Hall and every organic-built installation on Omega will be gone. Vaporized. And if any Guardian is stupid enough to run to the hills in a vacsuit, it should seek radiation shelter below ground, far from here. Understood?”
The Meligun bear’s expression turned angry and an alien-sounding snarl touched Matt’s external Ears. “How dare you and your ship threaten this place! We have been in business for four millennia, and if a simple two-legged primate from an obscure part of Orion Arm thinks it can—”
The alien’s voice stopped in a gurgle as Matt’s gauntlet glove tightened around its throat. “I can do whatever needs to be done, in order to teach you, the other fourteen Owners and the Anarchate itself that owning people is wrong. BondServant status is wrong. And frankly, I don’t give a damn for your contracts!” The alien’s pink eyes widened, either from hearing heresy or from need of air. “If you survive the next four hours, ask your commercial allies about what really caused Halicene Conglomerate’s departure from Sigma Puppis B star system.”
“Matt, there are three Guardian uniforms heading this way from the barracks, each with a laser handgun. Holstered for now,” Eliana said, supplementing the gestalt knowledge Matt had received seconds earlier.
“Thank you. And lower your helmet, my dear.” He lifted the Meligun bear off its clawed feet, then tossed it into the pond and its fish. Maybe it would lose a few toenails to the polychrome predator fish before it clambered out. He turned to face the oncoming green-suited Guardians of the Spelidon rat species, whose long black whiskers now flared at the sight of Matt tossing a casino Owner into the pond. He PET thought-imaged an order to Suit. It responded.
His waist level ultrasonic viber flashed high-frequency blasts at the three Guardians, high enough to knock them out but short enough not to kill them. Beside him Eliana gasped, then pointed her Magnum laser gun at the fallen Guardians, using the proper two-handed and eye-level stance.
“Eliana, do keep them covered but be alert for any busy-body visitor who thinks he/she/it should intervene with its own laser gun.” He paused. “Mata Hari, drop out two Offense sleds and send them into the casino dome. I will need their help.”
In buildings nearby a “Whoop, whoop” emergency alarm sounded, alerting other Guardians to Matt’s disturbance and his location. He smiled. Well, time to elevate his appearance. “Eliana, up we go!”
In sync and on-line with a super-strong combat suit that feels like your own body is wonderful. It’s ecstatic. And so very dangerous to one’s opponents.
Matt’s Nullgrav boots shot him up to a ten meter elevation, high enough to see what he needed to see, leaving his left faceplate to ID the surrounding structures and people. He went to Colossus Mode with his boot tractor beams grabbing the walkway below. Both shoulder pulse-cannons whirred On Target. Suit’s internal fiber optic cable touched his neck connection. He moved to the lightspeed link with Suit that he called ocean-time. As before on the desert planet, he thought fast. Faster than humanly possible. Picoseconds blurred past. Nanoseconds zipped along. Milliseconds ticked by, slowly.
Forty milliseconds passed in the outside world, Suit informed him.
The main entry to the Guardian barracks began raising its armored doorway, as three dozen armed Guardians filled the hallway behind it, per the Nanoshell SpyEye that hugged the building’s hallway ceiling.
Two hundred milliseconds stomped along.
He PET thought-imaged rapidly in a coded series.
Six hundred milliseconds lumbered by.
Green light flared as one of Matt’s laser pulse-cannons struck the armor door, fusing its metal into the metal of the track as it rose. The door stopped rising abruptly, a shallow foot high opening at the bottom. Too small for any of the alien Guardians. But one of them was already dropping down to poke a laser rifle through. Enough. Imaging a command to his helmet, two powerful tractor beams grabbed hold of the building’s roof rim, then pulled that rim toward Matt, thereby collapsing the building’s front. He blinked, and the first of the newly arrived Offense sleds did the same treatment to the rear of the barracks, fusing its door into frozen status, then crushing the back roof rim down on top of it.
Nine hundred milliseconds neared a second.
In three hundred milliseconds Matt had secured 32 Guardians from interfering with him, or serving as procurers of human shields for the alien casino Owners. He and Mata Hari had considered what to do if the fifteen Owners, presented with the destruction threat, chose to keep all 6,000 people inside the dome in order to prevent its destruction by starship Mata Hari. That he would not allow, which was why Mata Hari herself had taken over the emergency comlink emitters and even now was ordering all occupants to head for the Arrival Hall for shuttle transport to the orbiting starships.
“Matt, the Port AI wishes to talk with you before it will cooperate in allowing the shuttles to take off or land for people pickup. Can you communicate?”
He PET thought-imaged a Yes to Mata Hari, then accepted an incoming tachlink signal from the Port AI.
“Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, are you receiving my comlink signal?” came a voice that sounded male, though pleasant in tone.
One second happened.
“I perceive you. But I have many lives to save here. Will you assist?”
> A rosy cloud-image of a crystal ball appeared, with no eyes showing, but with a friendly feel to it as the AI presented to Matt its own self-image. “Yes, I will assist. But why are you doing this disruption? Why did you destroy the Tachyon Pylon?”
Matt PET thought-imaged his Helen-Matt love discovery, their escape, his promise to her, her death, and his recent work as a Vigilante helping defenseless worlds and peoples from the ravages of the Anarchate.
“AI who calls himself Gatekeeper, I appreciate your willingness to help save lives and your positive mind-tone.” Matt paused a hundred milliseconds, feeling online with the minds of two AIs, Mata Hari and Gatekeeper. “As you have noticed I can exist at your thought speeds, for a short while. I seek the evacuation of all lifeforms from Omega before my starship partner destroys it as a lesson to Anarchate organics about the wrongness of owning people. Including AI people.”
Matt felt a brief smile come from Gatekeeper. “The shuttle control is released to your Mata Hari AI. She is . . . alien in origin but very nice in mind-link perception. A question for you. Does your plan to evacuate all lifeforms from Omega extend to me? I am the only self-aware AI on this planet.”
“Yes,” he thought-imaged, suggesting the AI might take over a small twelve person staryacht that had no onboard AI, but which had three aliens already onboard and preparing to leave. The departure of which was being blocked by Mata Hari’s tachlink control of that ship’s onboard computer. A control she had extended to all the orbiting starships, thanks to small Remotes that she had Stealth dispatched upon arrival in orbit. “Once all organics have left the planet, feel free to Nullgrav float up to this yacht and use it to travel wherever you wish. Though I hope you will pass on to your fellow AIs a message from me.”
“I will do so,” Gatekeeper said calmly. “What is your message?”
“A change is coming to the galaxy. A change that will involve hundreds of planets, thousands of species, and a great disruption to the established order as alien peoples learn that the way to prevent being owned as bondServants by the Anarchate is to reach out to neighboring stars for mutual help.” He felt a sense of surprise from the AI. “It is similar to the trade that each world now does with each other, but conveying much more. Good people united to defeat organic and inorganic slavery can, perhaps, defeat the military forces of the Anarchate, even if it takes years. Will you share my message?”
“I will,” Gatekeeper said. “And now I work on scheduling shuttle arrivals and departures to handle the flood of sapients who even now are filling the Arrival Hall.” It paused. “And with your permission, I will use several cargo sleds to move food stuffs to various starships, since all of them will be more people-crowded than their owners had planned for. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” He thought-paused. “One other request, Gatekeeper.”
“Proceed, Matthew.”
He smiled at the AI’s organic friendliness in calling him by name. “Two groups of refugees are to be dealt with in a special mode. Hold the fifteen Owners in Lounge C of the Arrival Hall. And motivate the 152 human bondServants to gather in Lounge B—it is large enough to handle such a crowd, and it has food and toiletry facilities adequate for them.”
“They will be allowed to escape eventually?” Gatekeeper asked in mind-link.
“Of course,” Matt said. “But the Owners will not leave until all other organics are gone, thus preventing them from any outgassing of air or other violence aimed at me, Eliana and their former employees. As for the humans, I will arrive shortly and speak to them about their choices. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Gatekeeper murmured, then mind-focused on handling several hundred tasks involving organics and unthinking machinery in the Arrival Hall.
One and a quarter seconds moved slowly.
Three laser beams hit Suit’s outer skin nearly simultaneously, while one struck Eliana’s combat suit. They were reflected away in thousands of low power beams as the sapphire crystal coatings of both suits read the weapons frequencies and adjusted reflective properties to defend from the four separate attacks. He sighed. It had begun. Suit acted in automatic Defense Mode without him having to think an order.
“KABLAMMM!” An antipersonnel rocket flashed out of his backpack and arced toward the kilometer distant locations of the laser shooters. It split into four separate components, each with its own self-guiding mindpak and power. His left helmet quadrant showed the shooters as uniformed Guardians who had entered from the Arrival Hall. No combat suit had yet appeared within the casino dome.
One second and one-third second happened.
As the distant Guardians died from high explosive shrapnel blasts, a pressor beam flared out from the top of Matt’s helmet, pushing back an approaching robot on tracks that must have come from a basement level, since he had never seen its like while living here with Helen. The machine crunched up against the metal wall of the casino owned by the Owner Zik tho-mesh, its ability to grab with metal pincers now blocked by crumpled metal.
Beside him Eliana gasped from the laser attack on them, then slowly began shifting her suit and Magnum laser gun toward a super-rich visitor who sought to ‘fix things’ with its own laser handgun. She moved slowly, organic slow, which his lightspeed senses briefly noted.
Hovering in the air on his Nullgrav boots, Matt saw a second repair robot heading his way, advancing on some kind of local wireless control, presumably doing the bidding of an unseen Owner somewhere. He smiled and PET image-thought an order. Picoseconds later a helmet tractor beam pulled the wheeled robot into one of the other lakes spotting the landscape.
Two seconds had passed since Matt entered ocean-time.
A volley of Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells spit out of his biceps rocket guns and raced across the dome’s landscape, already programmed to emit electronic white noise as a means of stopping further robot attacks. Some of the Nanoshells saw the infrared signature of the 15 Owners listed in the dome’s central computer. Each shell was able to twist and turn in flight as miniature vernier jets steered them after each Owner. He wished to have every arrogant Owner under SpyEye observation until they were each in Lounge C, after which they would be allowed to access orbit and head out of the system.
Three seconds moved slowly by.
Light. Sound. Smell. Confusion.
They all filled the casino dome as aliens of all shapes ran, rolled, tentacle-dragged and scooted toward the entrance hallway, some carrying luggage, some dressed in vacsuits, a few dressed in medium-level combat suits similar to Eliana’s. None of the armed combat suit occupants were headed this way, perhaps discouraged by his AP rocket explosions and Eliana’s laser shot that wounded the busybody rich person. He thought-imaged Eliana that she could stop her laser fire.
“Matt! I’m, I’m—”
He shivered as he thought-blinked and left ocean-time, resuming the slow thought-talk-movement speed normal to most people. He slowed in order to communicate with his smart lover.
“Floating in the air like a butterfly,” he said, shivering from the transition and from a new attack by the Super-Cold that Legion’s slow virus still attacked him with.
“Matt!” called Mata Hari. “Two Guardians in combat suits are in the nearby hills. They shot down my second Offense sled before it could enter the dome. Your wishes?”
“Destroy them. Go to Colossus Mode with your ship pressor beams. Make sure one of the beams that supports the ship is placed atop the two Guardians. Understood?”
“Understood. Complying.”
Eliana looked at him with worried eyes as they floated in the middle of the casino dome, people of all shapes scattering away from them and heading to the Arrival Hall. “I thought we were here to save people.”
“We are.” He side-imaged the invisible impact of the ship’s pressor beam as it crushed the two combat suited Guardians into the black stone of this Mercury-type planet. “But to do that, death must come to some.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Matt rose on his Nullgrav boot
s to rendezvous with starship Mata Hari as Eliana headed for Lounge B to cajole and reassure the humans in that room that they would be safe, secure and gone from Omega when the casino dome was destroyed. It was a slight risk leaving her in the Arrival Hall, but the hall AI Gatekeeper kept a watch on her, while the surviving Offense sled maintained an in-dome security surveillance while outside the dome a replacement Offense sled passed him by, heading downward to monitor the departure of casino shuttles that left for orbit under the control and guidance of Gatekeeper. The hall’s AI worked on this vital job in coordination with Mata Hari, who had the people-as-cargo specs for each starship in orbit, the need for food and fuel supplies of each ship, and the direct control over each ship’s autopilot computer so it would not leave before Matt gave permission. He gathered many upset aliens sought to argue with Mata Hari, but his AI partner had learned how to be both diplomatic and firm from her seven years of Vigilante work with Matt. Their ship’s silvery flexhull puckered out, englobed him and Suit, then delivered him to the Bridge. He sighed, opening his faceplate and turning toward the giant holosphere that even now was filling with the dragon-shape of BattleMind.
“You called for a conference,” the brisk voice of the T’Chak AI spoke to him, its two red eyes fixing on Matt.
“Yes, I did,” Matt said as his eyes fixed on the twelve foot tall alien who resembled an Earthly dragon to a remarkable degree. “There is a problem with finding ship space for all the organic lifeforms now on Omega.”
“Yes?” purred the toothy crocodile mouth of BattleMind. Its black wings unfurled to half-extent, filling the forward section of the Bridge.
Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Page 5