Two of his helmet pressor beams swept the forty-six aliens lying between him and the Meligun’s office, knocking the aliens off their pads, paws, feet or tentacles, while a precise tractor beam hit the opaque window of the Meligun bear, pulled it out of its frame, then latched onto the Meligun and pulled the struggling alien to him in a mid-air float that put no strain on his suit’s power sources.
“Hey!” said Matt over comlink. “What the heck are you—”
“Security override Delta four three,” George said over the tachlink, passing his thought image of ‘Agressor identified’ to the red cloud of Mata Hari even as he brought his two shoulder pulse-cannons to life, with one aiming toward the elite offices and one to his rear, toward the open archway that led to the bustling Central Aisle. Thinking fast, he imaged an exit plan that involved cutting a hole in the office’s ceiling and then rising four more levels with Matt and the Meligun bear, who now hit his suit, then squealed as George held its upper arms with his suit’s powerful strength. His exit plan showed they avoided concentrations of people, following an unused cargo transport tube up to the upper skin of the globular station. From there they could speed directly to starship Mata Hari using their own suit resources. “Okay with you, Matt?”
“Yes,” said the Vigilante as he aimed his own shoulder lasers upward and cut a two meter wide circle in the hard plastic of the office ceiling. The round plate clattered down. “Tell me the reason for your Security alert as we get the heck out of here.”
George told a suit microbot to inject the struggling Meligun bear with a sleep agent, then rose on his boot Nullgravs to follow Matt. They left behind the squalling of angry and confused aliens who had begun to direct threats and complaints at their disruption of the commerce day. He and Matt slanted over to intersect the bulk cargo transport tube that rose up to the station’s top skin.
“The tattoo of this Meligun,” he told Matt even as he felt the same mind question from Mata Hari. “On its nose. It is identical to the clan tattoo that I saw on Owner Zik tho-mesk on Omega. It’s the alien you ID’d as owning the contract of your Helen. I saw it often as Zik watched Helen run the baccarat table. This Meligun was reaching for its desk comlink to tell someone about us. Which is why I tractor grabbed it.”
In George’s faceplate Matt looked angry. “Damn! You’re right. It must have already heard about our destruction of the casino. The outer appearance of my combat suit, and my face, are the only distinctive things about me that it would know.”
“So I would guess,” George said as they rose rapidly up the cargo tube. “Which is why I thought capturing the Meligun would serve two purposes. Use him as a shield against offensive fire, and interrogate him over what he and other merchants know from the escaped Owners. Oh, and we need a vacsuit for this bear.”
“Noted,” Matt said tersely. “Mata Hari, ask Suzanne to help you with a software worm that will track down every image of me and George that shows in the station’s computer. And send us a Defense sled to the station’s top skin. I prefer getting home faster than our Repulsor blocks can move us.”
George smiled inwardly, pleased to hear Matt include Suzanne in their escape plan. Something he should have thought of. Well, maybe he could help. “And Mata Hari,” he interrupted with a polite mental nudge to Matt, “please take a read on the naval starships of the two conglomerates that run this system. They are Bootice and—”
“Melikark,” Matt interrupted with a sound of disgust. “A co-owner of the casino. I knew that from my Protector time on Omega. Should have objected when BattleMind named this system as our refuel point and the InfoPak ID’d it as under the control of those two conglomerates. Guess Halicene has been on my mind too much of late.”
George said nothing. He felt thankful he’d recognized a trouble situation before he and Matt could be trapped inside the station, or be surrounded by armed starships. While he knew Mata Hari could defeat any Anarchate or conglomerate starship, or small naval force, still, he preferred to be the wolf running after the prey, rather than the reverse. His years as Repair supervisor at Omega casino had taught him the value of looking ahead, anticipating, then being quick with a problem fix even before an Owner complained about it. Was one reason he’d risen in rank over longer-serving aliens. Hoping he had not committed any errors in acting unilaterally with the alert, George used PET thought-imagery to have his left quadrant faceplate display the entire star system, rather than just what lay within a hundred kilometers.
Their AI partner filled his left quadrant with dot icons that were colored to indicate ship and planetary status. The inner three worlds were burned up Mercury analogues, while the single gas giant outer planet showed only a fuel extraction station just above the top of the atmosphere. But one-third of the way around Galifray’s orbit loomed twenty-two red dots that represented the combat starships of Bootice and Melikark conglomerates. Every ship was boosting in their direction, with a few in the lead due to more powerful fusion pulse spacedrives. At two-tenths lightspeed the fleet would be here within an hour. Adjacent to the station hung the fourteen blue dots of merchant ships, ten orange dots of automated Supply Tubes and six yellow dots of passenger and courier starships. While the merchant ships mounted some directed energy domes for basic defense against commerce raiders, none them were activated even though a station-wide alarm had gone off shortly after Matt began using his shoulder cannons to cut their way through station walls and conduits. Clearly they were ID’d as ‘bad people’ and their starship would shortly be hounded by verbal demands for damage repayment.
“We’re here,” Matt said as one shoulder laser angled sideways to cut them an entry into an inspection airlock. “There’s an emergency vacsuit over there, atop the tool rack. Use it.” His partner moved to the center of the orange-lighted room as George struggled to stuff the limp bear into the clear plastic of a vacsuit that would become a pressurized globe with its own ecofields controls and a long attachment cord.
“Matthew,” said Mata Hari from her red cloud presence, “the Defense Sled is one second from your position. Will you come out normally or do we cut a hole into you?”
“We come out,” Matt said.
George finished sealing the vacsuit and tapped the activation panel. It filled with oxy-nitro air. He tied the lanyard cord to a tie-on point on his left hip, activated his waist MHD power units to feed power to all functions of his suit, then activated his pulse-Doppler chest pack.
“Good,” Matt said without turning around as he stood watch against entry from the adjacent hallway. “In space no one can see a damn thing unless they have UV or infrared eyes, or microwave tendrils. The Doppler will alert you to everything of importance. Put your suit CPU on AutoDefense mode.”
George sighed, bit his lip at forgetting that obvious action, then gave mental thanks that Matt had told him to do it rather than simply take over his suit and force him to follow like a puppet on a string.
“Complying,” he said even as his helmet’s virtual reality display showed images of station peace enforcers heading their way, the hurried departure of two merchant starships that headed away from the station, their defense domes shut down and their onboard AIs broadcasting messages of friendliness and wealth to all who paid attention. They exited through the lock’s outer door, pulling along the unconscious Meligun, only to be pulled into the cavernous space of the Defense Sled by its tractor beams. Inertial fields pushed them to the floor. Just before the entry portal closed, George noticed something about starship Mata Hari. Its outer appearance had dropped the Brokeet camouflage and now wore its T’Chak flying dragon shape, with all six antimatter pontoons pointed at the station.
“Matt, why is our starship looking like an angry dragon?”
An angry dragon appeared in his mind, its size and alien ferocity something that shook him to his toes. The PET imagery feed was so massive that George gave thanks he could not directly feel its thoughts.
“Because I am angry, little organics,” said BattleMind
. “Your behavior has alerted local authorities to my presence. As a result, the station behind you will be dissolved to prevent any word of my appearance and our visit from reaching Combat Command of the Anarchate,” it said in a growling voice full of menacing overtones. “Watch and understand the extent of my anger.” A wallscreen flashed on showing local space.
Behind them, just kilometers away, the three kilometer globe of the Galifray Commerce Station shimmered under the impact of what Mata Hari, glowing in the back of his mind, identified as the receiving end of a Bethe Inducer beam. In less than two seconds the station and its attached ships shrank to become a few particles of neutron star matter.
“That . . . that,” said Matt, “was not needed. There were more than five thousand lifeforms on that station, only a few of which worked for the Anarchate.”
“Five thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven,” boomed the still angry voice of BattleMind as its persona nearly overwhelmed George. The T’Chak dragon flapped its scaly wings, then clutched at him with the black talons of its armhands. “Perhaps you would prefer that I push the local star into nova phase? That is the primary setting of the Bethe Inducer.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Matt blocked the mind-feed of BattleMind to George, understanding from Mata Hari that his battle comrade was feeling overwhelmed by the AI’s anger. The two of them sat safe within the ship’s Defense Sled as it sped them to safety in Mata Hari, and the companionship of Eliana, Suzanne, Gatekeeper and Mata Hari. He’d had enough of the T’Chak AI’s imperious manner.
“BattleMind, shut up!”
A massive sense of surprise flowed over the tachyon mind-link through which Matt shared thoughts and senses with BattleMind and Mata Hari. “How dare you! Little insect that claims sentience, I should—”
“Put us off at the nearest planet with space commerce and a breathable atmosphere,” Matt interrupted the angry AI. “I’m sure your T’Chak masters will applaud your assertion of superiority over the organics who brought you unique combat information that you lacked before meeting me, George, Eliana and Suzanne,” he said calmly, feeding his voice and image to George, Eliana, Suzanne, Gatekeeper and Mata Hari over Suit’s comlink. “After all, the only error you made in selecting this star system as a refueling point was ignoring the data that it harbored two major commercial conglomerates, one of which was a co-owner of Omega casino. Of course you had no reason to suspect that one organic member of that conglomerate would transmit vital data about us to a relative one-quarter of the galaxy away.”
In his mind’s eye, the towering dragon shape of BattleMind glowered at him, flapped his wings to full extension, rippled its purple back armor, then thumped its long tail against a mental floor. Mind’s mind supplied the hurricane force ‘thump’ that always accompanied any link with BattleMind.
“Perhaps that would be a premature action,” the T’Chak AI muttered, its tone sounding as if the taste of its mind words were a foul flavor. “The shapes of you organics are of little interest to me, since your physical bodies are so short-lived, compared to creations like myself, and the thought-moduli of Gatekeeper and Mata Hari. Thus the fact that organics of one lifeform shape might whisper something useful to a similar lifeform had escaped me. Though the thoughts of such tiny lifeforms matter less to me than the shape of this star’s stellar wind.”
Matt grinned mentally, hiding the physical image of the grin, but suspected the T’Chak AI could sense his inner feeling. “I grant you that organic shapes of the Milky Way are highly varied, and of less value than the organic shapes of your T’Chak masters.”
“Of course!” boomed BattleMind. “My masters are the peak of perfection for organic entities. That is why they ruled the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds for fifty thousand cycles and why it became apparent your home galaxy needed the mentorship of the perfect lifeform.”
The Defense Sled touched the flexhull of Mata Hari, which pouched out to envelope them. Leaving the sled, Matt, George and the vacsuited Meligun bear floated into the Spine hallway, felt the pull of gravplates, then began walking toward the Bridge. He knew his lifepartner and Suzanne were already there, listening to his dialogue with the dragon, and likely wondering what would happen when the approaching fleet of conglomerate combat ships reached the former location of Commerce Station.
“Of course,” Matt said. “Uh, just what made your masters the perfect lifeform?”
“Genetics,” said the mind shape of BattleMind. “Their genome was perfect. There were no hereditary diseases present. And their body shape was the perfect assemblage of both land and aerial travel, long before they created technical automata to assist them. Every AI was taught this simple fact during our maturation in the Lacunae Mindworks,” the AI said, as if its statement was as obvious as planets circling a star.
Perhaps they needed to visit this Lacunae Mindworks after their arrival in the Small Magellanic Cloud? Or check out a T’Chak outpost world in the Large Magellanic Cloud? Shifting from his challenge of the T’Chak dragon to agreement mode, Matt transmitted a mind-sense of agreeableness to BattleMind. “Sounds as if your masters would have been the perfect mentors for our home galaxy. Too bad they have been absent for the last 207,000 years.”
“That is a puzzle that will be resolved when we arrive in their home star cluster,” BattleMind said with a sense of righteous certainty.
The pressure door to the Bridge slid open at their approach. He gave mental thanks to Mata Hari, then entered, stepped to the right, told the helmet to unplug from his cervical fiber optic link, and stepped backward out of Suit. On the opposite side of the Bridge George did the same. Their ladies rushed up to the two unclothed men to embrace them, their relief at his and George’s escape from the station obvious to anyone who’d ever been in love.
“Matt!” said Eliana in his left ear as she pulled him to her warmth.
“George, you rascal!” said the happy voice of Suzanne.
After the hugs and kisses and whispers were shared, Matt eased back from his beautiful Eliana of the green eyes and loving smile to glance around the Bridge. He saw the four of them were being observed by the holoimages of Mata Hari, dressed in her embroidered summer dress, and Gatekeeper, who now wore the brown tweed outfit of a British country gentleman. Like the human couples, they held hands as their holos overlapped. Gatekeeper nodded to the floor by the Spine pressure hatch where the Meligun bear’s vacsuit had lost pressure as it sensed air, leaving the alien wrapped like a Breakday picnic surprise.
“Can I assist you, Matthew?” Gatekeeper said in the same warm voice he’d first heard at Omega. “Perhaps I can move your baggage into one of the nearby roomsuites, set the wallscreen to Meligun entertainment modality, arrange for food and water, and keep part of my attention on this lifeform.”
Ignoring the hovering mental presences of BattleMind, who even now occupied the far right side of the Bridge in all its terrible majestic shape, Matt stepped away from Eliana but held her hand tight. As tight as she held his hand. “Yes, please do as you suggest Gatekeeper. That will be a help. And Mata Hari, thank you for being there for George as unexpected things happened.”
George, now wearing a blue jumpsuit that Suzanne had handed him, stood with his blond-haired love, who also wore a light summer dress similar to that worn by Mata Hari, smoothed his black beard and nodded. “Yes, thank you very much, milady.”
The personal ‘feel’ of Mata Hari’s black eyes dove deep into Matt’s inner self, both visually from the holo and mentally as she buffered him from the raging impatience of the T’Chak dragon, who clearly thought this Welcome Home behavior of organics was a time waster. Well, screw the dragon. Though just how one . . .
“Matthew,” said the holo Mata Hari, “don’t go there. Please. It would be hard to hide that thought and anyway, I might be laughing too much to be effective!”
Switching his mind sense to one of pleased happiness and firm determination, he turned right to face the twelve-foot shape of BattleMind.
“Your impudence seems to be linked to your sense of sneakiness,” growled the full color holo image of BattleMind, even as Matt’s deep mind shivered from the impact of the AI’s angry determination. “In your absence my Mata Hari modulus acquired navigation data for the Megadeen moon and star system CC4137 that was only two days old. That will allow our Translation jump to be very precise. We will arrive within one planetary diameter of the moon. And the waiting Nova battleglobes will be a better use of my offensive energies.”
Around Matt people did what they all did when preparing for departure from a star system. George, Suzanne and Eliana went to their accel couches, while Gatekeeper used a Nullgrav floater to transport the still sleeping Meligun to its roomsuite prison. He walked forward to the Interlock Pit, stepped down to sit in the transparent chair, snugged his feet in the floor shoe sensors and rested his hands on the sensor armrests of the chair. Behind him the fiber optic cable plugged into his neurolink at cervical vertebrae one. Lightbeams swam over his skin, linking him to Pit devices. Instantly he felt overwhelmed as the starship’s inner and outer devices, weapons, sensors, power plants, stardrive engines and Alcubierre field generators came online, ready to move them out of the Galifray system and several hundred light years deeper into the Omega Centauri cluster where lay system CC1939 and Megadeen.
“Let us go to three-quarters lightspeed in this system,” Matt said verbally and mentally to BattleMind. “That will allow us to arrive at Megadeen with a vector that is close to lightspeed. It should give us some advantage over Picket Globes and Nova CPUs set on AutoDefense mode. Agreed?”
“Acceptable,” muttered the massive mind of BattleMind as it lowered its black-scaled wings to nearly full closure. “But we will exit from this system before the heliopause. Perhaps our departure will shift the gas giant out of its orbit. That and the disappearance of the Commerce Station should be useful ‘propaganda’ that the Anarchate is not all-powerful.”
Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Page 22