Eliana inhaled sharply but said nothing. Matt went to gestalt mode and became one with the outer and inner ship, albeit at slow organic speed. Squinting his eyes at the telescopic image of the casino that lay two thousand kilometers below their orbit, he visualized a targeting bull’s eye and thought the command.
Two coherent antimatter beams shot downward, one from each pontoon. Their blackness was a match for the black rock surface of Omega’s airless surface. Brilliant white light filled the holosphere until dampened automatically. Though there was no air to carry the sound of a miniature sun suddenly creating a hundred meter deep, six kilometer wide crater where once the casino and outbuildings had stood, he imagined it. From his memory of Suit combat on planets and in Despot Ioannis’ space station recently, he added sound to the light picture of his vengeance.
“Helen, I remember you,” he whispered softly. Then, looking briefly at Eliana and ordering Suit to magnetic lock with the Bridge hull plates, he turned back to the front holosphere, which his thoughts had changed to image the outer third and fourth planets as the vector line of their departure. He ignored the other escaping starships, all of which were heading for the heliopause of Zeta Serpentis in a direction the opposite of his. Seems like the liberated aliens wished to be far away from Matt and his starship. So be it. “Mata Hari, take us out on deut-li fusion impulse drive, working up to one-half lightspeed.”
“Complying Matthew,” said his partner in a tone that sounded normal, not miffed, and focused on doing her job as perfectly as a smart AI can do a job.
His cyborg senses were the first to detect the gravity waves that arriving starships emit when materializing in normal space-time from Alcubierre Drive Translation.
Ahead of them the gas giant fifth planet shuddered in its orbit as two Anarchate battleglobes appeared deep within the gravity field of Zeta Serpentis. He saw their physical form because of the tachlink sensor Remotes that Mata Hari had spat out like beads during their slow entry into the system from the heliopause. It seemed as if the Anarchate did not care if their arrival caused planet five to change orbit. Or that both ships had taken a gamble that no asteroid occupied the same space-time locality as their arrival spots. He sighed as half the holosphere glared red Combat Alarm with the battleglobe images.
“The Anarchate arrives,” he said, mostly for Eliana’s benefit. “They are decelerating. I estimate we will meet them just beyond the orbit of the fourth planet. Mata Hari, please increase our deut-li drive power but keep us below our three-quarters lightspeed maximum. I do not wish any survivors to know our full capabilities.”
“Survivors?” Eliana whispered, her voice fearful. “Matt, there are two of them. Shouldn’t we head away from them, escape at an angle they cannot match? Or just Translate out of the system right now? We’ve done it before.”
Matt shook his head. “Stage Two of my plan—”
“Anticipated,” interrupted a harsh growl from a holosphere to his right as the dragon shape of BattleMind suddenly appeared, “the opportunity for further Anarchate defeats. Two ships together is a new, welcome challenge to my weapon senses. Matthew Dragoneaux, we now partner in fighting these stupid lifeforms. And I choose . . . a different Battle Configuration for this starship. Observe but do not interfere. Though I do accept any ‘sneaky’ tactical concepts you wish to offer.”
“Understood,” Matt said.
He and Eliana went silent. She watched the forward holosphere, while Matt’s gestalt sense saw and felt the changes ordered by BattleMind.
In the deep dark coldness of space, starship Mata Hari changed its inner and outward appearance.
Inside him, in Matt’s gestalt perception, there flowed over the PET relays something he had experienced only once before.
Those parts of his cyborg self that matched to various ship systems, hallways, storerooms, fusion plants, armories and scores of other facilities he was used to sensing, those parts changed. They changed as, slowly, the Restricted Rooms of the ship came on-line. They opened up, for the second time in seven years. And all the while, the dragon persona of BattleMind kept him from affecting anything that now happened. Fortunately, the T’Chak AI was buffering its datafeed to his mind. But once he went to ocean-time Matt would be flooded by a computer dataflow that felt like a tsunami of images.
In the neurolinked senses of his mind, Matt felt deeply this new change as BattleMind unfolded all of the ship’s weaponry capabilities. Things of unimaginable power and ferocity were coming online. Compared to these things, appearing by the will of BattleMind, Matt felt the weapons he’d used at SAO 47250 were puny. These . . . these things were at least ten orders of magnitude more powerful than anything he had ever used in his seven years as a Vigilante for hire. Once more, the Restricted Rooms lay open to his gaze.
Matt entered, recognizing each wonder from their prior appearance at Sigma Puppis.
To supersede his old Bethe Inducer that could make a sun go nova, online came a quark-based graviton beamer that would emit a brilliant yellow beam of coherent gravitons. This beam would literally compress any object into a miniature black hole, as had happened at SAO 47250. It was the final weapon that no one but the T’Chak possessed.
Next to the graviton beamer loomed something else. Something that did not exist fully in this space-time. Something that only glowed. It glowed with escaping neutrinos. BattleMind had told him this neutrino-emitting room could turn any planet into a miniature star of pure plasma. Matt called the device the Sun Glow. It too was unique to the T’Chak aliens.
In a different Room lay something Matt understood. Supplementing his two neutron antimatter pontoons, four more pontoons appeared, for a total of six AM cannons that could spit antimatter annihilation at any opponent. And because the antimatter was coherent neutrons, which had no particle charge, the AM beam could not be deflected by any electromagnetic deflection field.
On the outer hull, the bristling HF and CO2 laser projectors were crowded aside by five new bulging pods that connected directly to the Alcubierre Drive fusion bottle, and to subsidiary fusion backups. Flickering about the five pods hung a sense of unreality, of time disjointed. He recognized the sense from every Translation he had experienced. These five pods could project Alcubierre pocket universes—just like the main drive. But they appeared as flat sheets, rather than an encompassing Translation globe. The sheets had protected the starship from the Anarchate’s own antimatter beams during the Sigma Puppis battle, and during the Intelligence dome battle.
Then, like a giant clearing its throat, a two kilometer-long accelerator funnel took form in the central axis guts of Mata Hari. At its base flared the largest plasma generator he’d ever seen. Along its length and at its front end spiraled superconducting magnetic field coils. The magcoils would direct the resulting plasma globe outward, then up, down, sideways—in any direction. But unerringly at any foe. His mind churning with log scale math figures, Matt realized that this axial plasma gun alone contained enough energy to shatter the crust of a planet. With one shot. This weapon was a world-wrecker.
The Restricted Rooms he had met before. But the new, outer shape of starship Mata Hari was something new. Something reflective of BattleMind’s front row seat in this combat.
In space, a dragon spread its wings.
While keeping the standard central tube and side AM pontoons, his starship now sported a flexmetal shape that closely imitated the T’Chak dragon shape. A long tail and long neck with nodules that housed energy projectors for point defense action covered all portions of the central body. But now, two giant wings carried the original antimatter pontoons at their tips. Joining them were four more AM projectors between the central hull and the outer wingtips. Now, six AM projectors could fire ahead, rotate rearward, or fire in any axis chosen by BattleMind. And at its front, just below and ahead of the Bridge, there appeared the shape of a crocodile’s head, red laser eye mounts gleaming in the night, with its interlocking teeth ready to open and spit forth world-wrecking fire fr
om the axial plasma gun.
In truth, a dragon flew through space, its tail streaming golden fire as its purple scales gleamed with energy and threat.
He wondered what the Anarchate commanders in each of the twelve kilometer-wide Nova battleglobes thought of this alien ship that rushed toward them, rather than away.
“Mata Hari, what is the approach speed of these battleglobes?”
“One quarter lightspeed and slowing, Matthew,” she told him. “It appears they wish to encounter us near to the fourth planet, which is twenty light minutes to our left side.”
While Eliana watched the oncoming Anarchate ships on the forward holosphere, Matt kept one mind-eye on the holo shape of BattleMind while thinking of options that would allow them to survive. The steady approach and in-system materialization told him these Anarchate ship commanders had a plan for fighting Mata Hari. And confident ship commanders made Matt feel . . . uneasy.
“Mata Hari, your sensor Remotes that you seeded on the way into this system. How many of them lie along the path the Anarchate ships are taking to meet up with us?”
In his mind’s-eye his Mata Hari spy partner tilted her head slightly, as if trying to read his intentions. Not yet, so far. His mind thoughts were private to him, until he spoke aloud or PET thought-imaged a communication.
“Three hundred and twenty-one sensor Remotes lie between them and us. Each Remote has tachlink capability,” Mata Hari said. “However, tachlink requires tremendous power, and as soon as one of them emits a signal to us that Remote will be detected by one or both battleglobes. Shortly afterward the Remote will be destroyed by either the Anarchate point defense lasers, by pressor beam deflection or by KKPs launched against them.”
“So,” he mused. “We have better real time tachyon images, when we ask for them, but the Anarchate ships have more small Remotes running in convoy with them than we do. You can carry a lot of throwaway tachBeads, plasma torps, nuke torps, Sensor sleds and laser Picket Globes in a twelve kilometer-wide Nova.”
“Irrelevant,” growled BattleMind. “My flat Alcubierre space-time fields soak up anything that comes against us, large or small, beam or pressor field.”
Matt wondered about that. Could any attacking beam or torp eventually overload the field stability of the grey Alcubierre fields? He thought that question over the observation link he had with both BattleMind and Mata Hari. “Yes, but could your Alcubierre fields ever become unstable or collapse? From weapons impacts?”
“That has never occurred in our history of using such fields,” BattleMind said both aloud and in Matt’s mind.
“But is it possible?”
Irritation filled the mind flow from BattleMind. “There is much in the universe that is possible, but which only occurs every billion cycles or so. Do not worry about a weapon that is new to you. I will control its use.”
Matt nodded and thought acceptance, though his human memories argued that nothing is perfect. He focused on the obvious issue involved in getting close to the Nova battleglobes.
“Well, our combined speed of closure will shortly put us within the five light minutes range of their directed energy weapons, with some of their Remotes convoy preceding that range,” Matt said. “How do we close with them without using the Alcubierre fields to absorb the Remotes? Beyond slowing down to reach local combat speed at the fourth orbital?”
Mata Hari, sensing BattleMind’s irritation with his questions, answered. “Matthew, our forward hull weapons domes will emit long-range pressor fields that will keep any Remote device at least twenty kilometers away from us,” she said. “And once we begin ship-to-ship combat, the Alcubierre fields will absorb any Remotes or limpet mines that try to reach our hull.”
Eliana looked his way. “Matt, shouldn’t we alert the refugees to sit in chairs or couches so they can be inertial field protected if the ship has to maneuver abruptly? You’ve put me into a crash cocoon in the past. And now.”
“Agreed,” he said aloud as his gestalt mind perception told him he would shortly have to enter ocean-time in order to lightspeed communicate with the two AIs. “Record a warning and have Mata Hari transmit it to every wallscreen in every place that humans are present. Thank you, dearest.”
Her smile said she appreciated her chance to participate in the upcoming battle, as she had helped the Derindl Autarch during Matt’s battle with the Halicene ship Obliteration. This time, though, too much would be happening at computer speed for her to assist. Matt had a feeling that while it would feel like hours to him, the oncoming battle would be decided in five minutes or less. Lightspeed weapons and advance prep like tachBeads would cause each ship to be enveloped in a variety of weapons attacks that would soon prove fatal to someone. Feeling glad he had eaten a decent meal with high energy nutrients only a few hours ago, Matt settled into his Interlock Pit seat and sought full linkage with the AIs.
Ocean-time filled his mind and inner self. Femtoseconds rushed by as picoseconds moved tick-tock past his awareness, and nanoseconds felt like long minutes.
“Hello Matthew,” whispered the mind-voice of Mata Hari as she fed him all starship perceptions, interior and exterior, along with the total space-time environment out to five light minutes.
“Hey there, pretty spy. Is your friend Gatekeeper helping the humans get settled into inertial fields?”
Her mind-sense stiffened at his mention of the third AI on board, but then acted as if it were a normal question. “Yes, after your Eliana made her vid announcement. I allowed it to interact with ship internal ecofields since you made its duty that of taking care of the human refugees.”
Matt smiled, then leaned his mind in the direction of BattleMind. Though the alien AI’s mind-pulse sped by his awareness in a mode buffered by Mata Hari, he felt inner exhaustion just watching the T’Chak AI as it simultaneously reduced drive thrust, emitted several forward pressor fields that were already deflecting Anarchate Remotes, powered up the axial plasma generator, fed antimatter to all six antimatter pontoons, dedicated four of the ship’s twelve fusion power planets to feed energy to the various laser mounts on the ship’s hull, adjusted the sapphire crystal skin to shift optical deflection frequencies to match the recorded laser frequencies from their two battles with Anarchate battleglobes, added more carbon-carbon ablative skin underneath the sapphire layer, extruded the five Alcubierre space-time pods at the ship’s top, bottom, both sides and forward hull placements, activated the field for production of the Bethe Inducer beam, and emitted thousands of Remotes to serve as holo decoys, Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells, Seek/Identify sensors, white noise generators, Defense torps, Offense torps including several thirty-megaton behemoths and brought to full power the Sun Glow neutrino projector. Lastly, the flat Alcubierre space-time fields wrapped around Mata Hari, their edges overlapping so no solid object or beam could penetrate the field edges. And their fusion pulse exhaust at the rear was sufficient to vaporize any beam or object that approached from behind them. Also, the Alcubierre fields made their ship ‘invisible’ to the battleglobes due to their absorption of all EMF frequencies, including light. However, they could be tracked by the ship’s blacking-out of stars behind them.
Matt sighed. Clearly BattleMind was preparing for many battle options. Though there was one tactical option that now occurred to him.
“BattleMind, we should head between the two Nova battleglobes. View my mind-image of the tactical option that the move gives us,” he said hurriedly, his ocean-time senses struggling to match speeds with the flood of millions of databytes being tracked by the T’Chak AI.
Intense irritation washed over him, but the five nanoseconds that BattleMind took to review his tactical idea was answered with “Sneaky. I like. Will do.”
Matt’s mind swirled with the impact of being touched by a computer mind that thought so much faster than his organic neurons. Before he could blink, they arrived within five light minutes of the Novas and combat began.
In long seconds many things happened.
&
nbsp; The two Novas both fired CO2 laser, neutral particle beam and free electron lasers at Mata Hari, while a dozen laser Picket Globes hit the side Alcubierre fields with thermonuclear-powered x-rays. Both ships also shimmered with the visual space-time haze that indicated Bethe Inducer power up.
The attacking beams disappeared.
Nothing penetrated the flat Alcubierre space-time fields of blackness that enveloped the top, bottom, sides and front of his starship. Meanwhile, BattleMind acted.
The space-flying T’Chak dragon opened its toothy mouth and belched out a 200 meter wide purple ball of pure, magnetically contained plasma, which BattleMind directed through the front field and toward the Nova on their right. It would reach target in around four light minutes.
Two neutron antimatter pontoons, one on each wing, shot coherent black beams at the two Novas, one for each ship, but with an aim towards the outside curve of each battleglobe. Matt understood BattleMind’s tactic in the outside aim. Each Nova would receive a tachlink alert to the AM beams via tachyon comlink and move away from the projected impact point. Thus causing both ships to come closer to each other. The other four AM pontoons each aimed at where his ship expected the Novas to be in four light minutes.
Ahead of them two large Remotes, each loaded with 30 megaton thermonukes, moved to either side of Mata Hari and sped toward each Nova using onboard Repulsor power. Nanoseconds later both Remotes exploded, creating a decent plasma fireball but, most importantly, creating an EMP pulse that would impact the Novas in just less than three light minutes. His ship was protected from the EMP pulses thanks to the Alcubierre sheets, but the Novas would feel some effect in areas not shielded against hard x-rays and gamma rays emitted by the EMP blasts.
In the forward holosphere there appeared a tachlink image from a Mata Hari Remote that was close to the Novas. It showed both Anarchate ships firing neutron antimatter beams at the spot where they expected Mata Hari to be at one light minute out from sharing the same special location.
Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Page 7