Three seconds, 700 milliseconds and 36 picoseconds, murmured his cyberclock.
“Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind even as Suit used onboard pressor and tractor beams to stabilize him as the shuttle jinked from side to side, up, down and at angles as it dodged laser fire from an Offense blister that lay on their side of the asteroid.
“Yes!”
“Look at this image I retrieved from the Control Mind of the base. Do you recognize this person?”
Matt jerked his mind away from the Weapons Activation status of his starship as the Dreadnought prepared to fire on a cluster of genome slaver starships. He pushed to one side the mental images of his lover Eliana, whose expression showed concern. As did the pale Nordic face of Suzanne. George’s full black beard and grey eyes fixed on Matt as they each stood together within the Park habitat of Mata Hari, dressed in normal clothing. In mind communion, there are no lies and no pretense is possible. Why were his fellows looking concerned?
“What!”
Blinking mentally, Matt focused on the image of a forty-something woman. A woman with grey-streaked red hair, a reddish Polynesian skin tone and Apache cheekbones. Shock filled him. It could not be. Could it?
“Mom! She’s alive? Where? How? What does this—”
“It’s real, Matthew.” In the Park habitat mind communion, Mata Hari’s dark eyes fixed on him even as she gave him a slow, happy looking smile. “Your mother survived the kidnapping of your family on Thuringia! This is a ship record of a captive the ship captain sold into labor slavery. After the slaver ship visited the Flesh Markets on Megil, at Alkalurops C star. She was sold . . . sold to an Anarchate merchant who was visiting Megil. Long before your attack on the markets. The merchant left for parts unknown. But fifteen years ago, your mother was alive!”
Matt swallowed hard, his mouth dry. His heart beat too fast, faster than his cyborg nanoDocs could control. His eyes . . . his eyes blinked faster than normal. Wetness filled them. Through the blurriness of his vision he saw Eliana, dear Eliana of the obsidian black hair and eggshell white skin, she walked up to him and gave him a mental hug.
“She’s alive, Matthew. Maybe other members of your family also survived?”
Maybe. Highly unlikely given the habit of genome harvester crews to ignore captives once they gained snippets of flesh for future cloning of people copies. “Maybe,” he sighed, thinking of his four sisters and his father Benoit. Tough but loving Benoit. And math-challenged Charlotte, his oldest sister at fourteen. Could she, might she . . .
Reality hit him hard. “Mata Hari, thank you! This captive imagery you found in the Control Mind records, does it come from one of the slaver starships parked outside?”
“It does.”
“Which one?”
In his mind, Mata Hari lifted a hand. It held a miniature starship, one with a front globe, two side tubes and a boxy body. “This one. Its . . . designation is Dodemeron. It lies within the cluster that BattleMind has us aimed at.”
Four seconds, 180 milliseconds and 93 picoseconds.
He bit his lip. Tasted salty blood. The shuttle vibrated as it landed inside the cargohold of starship Mata Hari. No more jinking. Soon enough he would be leading the attack against slaver ships and the asteroid base. But this news! It was wonderful and it shook him from a non-emotional focus on the battle plan. Looking outside his Faceplate he saw his three battlemates leaving the shuttle, the three freed captives floating along behind them on suit tractor beams. He followed them out into the cavernous hold that lay a kilometer from his ship’s Bridge. Matt shivered.
“Have your limpet complinks latched onto that ship?”
“Yes.”
“Have you recovered all NavCore data?” he said. “All records of its stops and its cloneslave sales? And labor slave transactions?”
Squeezing tight his Suit gauntlets, Matt gave a mental nod to his friends, to his lifemate Eliana, then activated his Nullgrav boots as he rose up toward the ship’s Spine hallway and access to the ship’s Bridge and his Interlock Pit.
In his mind, Mata Hari’s dark eyes blinked slowly. “Of course, my Matthew.” His AI woman, dressed now in silvery chainmail and carrying a long stainless steel sword in her holo hands, smiled even more. “And now, thanks to my complink, I have more news from the ship’s NavCore. See this image? She matches your memory.”
Matt saw his sister Charlotte, nearly as tall as their mom, standing beside his gaunt and haggard mother in a three dee vidimage that had each woman ID’d with separate alpha-numeric codes. “Charlotte survived the raid? How! Where is she!”
Mata Hari’s mental image reached up to touch the white pearl broach at her throat. Her gaze left humor to focus on facts. “Adult body reserves let them live. And like your mother, Charlotte was delivered to the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops, on the planet Megil. While this ship captain sold your mother to a visiting Anarchate trader, Charlotte was sold to a Megil resident Alien. A Meligun ‘bear’ of the name Nak ho-mesk. Nak manages an interstellar money transfer system that operates outside of any conglomerate. My . . . my records from the Megil planetary civil archive, from after we destroyed the Anarchate ships and returned to Megil to rescue the stasis-sleeping captives, say his residence was in the nearby countryside. Not in the downtown area you vaporized.”
“So this Nak ho-mesk could still be living on Megil? And my sister could be under his control?”
Mata Hari materialized beside him as Suit walked him closer to the Bridge. “Yes. Only now, with the purchase record from this slaver’s NavCore, was I able to cross-check the slaver’s ID record with the Megil civilian archive records. So she likely survived our attack on the Flesh Markets. But this Nak could have fled after our attack, or he could be traveling on business. We will not know until we return to Megil.”
Five seconds, 33 milliseconds and 243 picoseconds, his mind heard.
Matt gritted his teeth. His brief joy at learning his mother and sister still lived was displaced by reality. “The NavCore imagery. Does it show what happened to my father Benoit and my three younger sisters?”
Mata Hari paused in her walk alongside him, then resumed walking in sync with Suit. “Yes.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad. See my mind? They died of thirst, although your father Benoit died when he attacked a slaver crewman in an effort to gain food and water.”
Matt perceived the image snippets, taken from the Dodemeron’s NavCore cloneslave records. It was hard to see his father killed by a laser that slit open his carotid arteries, leaving him to bleed to death on a hallway floor. Worse were the efforts of his Mom and Charlotte to keep his three younger sisters alive. Both of them used a piece of metal to open a wrist vein so his sisters could drink blood. It did not suffice. His sisters Melody, Janine and Sally finally died as their organs shut down from lack of water and food. Just as bad were the other Thuringia captives who made valiant efforts to keep young children alive, usually to no effect.
Matt shook his head, seeking calmness and losing it. Only hatred and determination now moved him. He thought-spoke via positron emission tomography to his four cyborg allies.
“That ship is mine. The other 21 ships are available to Hexagon Prime. My battlemates, let us tachlink with our ships and finish this . . . this dirty business. Myself, I will see how long it takes to slice and dice Dodemeron!”
CHAPTER TWO
Matt walked down the Spine hallway of Mata Hari, seething in his mind with fury dark. And rejoicing.
It was an odd combination. He wished to vaporize every slaver, every slave ship captain and every Flesh Market where clone people were sold, that now existed in the Milky Way galaxy. But he also wished, hoped for, a reunion with his loving mother. And a chance to hug his sister Charlotte. But the NavCore image records of the other 41 Thuringia captives showed half of them were dead not long after flesh snips were taken for future cloning in the Flesh Markets. He stayed in ocean-time even as seconds fled past.
“Thos
e Thuringia captives may yet live,” said Mata Hari in his mind as Matt let Suit do the walking to the Bridge. His cyborg allies followed behind him, the step of each person distinctive to his mind and ears.
“Maybe. Likely not.” He recalled from a year ago the slaver ship cargo room that held captives from Morrigan. His memory told him he’d been right to slice and dice the Human slaver captain. Maybe he could do the same with ship Dodemeron? “Mata Hari, is the captain present on Dodemeron? If so, what is his or her or its species?”
Mata Hari wore her Lady of the Sword persona in his mind, her inner sense conveying a readiness to do battle on his behalf. “My limpet complink attached to Dodemeron says the ship’s captain is present. He is a Spelidon ‘rat’ as you term the species. The ship’s crew are inside the base asteroid on R and R.”
Matt gritted his teeth. He was still a half kilometer from the Bridge. While he could have flown there in Suit, he needed this time to think, to adjust mentally to the news his mother and sister had survived the slaver attack on Thuringia, and to consider any changes to their Battle Council plans for this base and the nearby slaver starships.
“Good. Let me see your white noise Remotes in orbit about the asteroid base.”
“Here, Matthew.”
A three dee multi-spectral holo took form in his mind, conveyed there by Mata Hari and based on his ship’s sensors and the Remotes themselves.
The high dome that enclosed the skyrise towers for the super rich among the slavers was being repaired by autobots that had nearly sealed the breaches made by Mata Hari’s explosive-laden bots.
That would not do. “Mata Hari, crash your three white noise Remotes into the glassy dome. Maybe have all three hit at one spot so there is a whirlwind of escaping air?”
“Will do, Matthew.”
In his mind’s eye the holo of the base asteroid, which orbited a brown Mars-like planet, showed a sudden flare of yellow light as the Repulsor driven Remotes hit one spot near the top of the high dome.
“Well done!” Matt grinned as a shuttle-sized hole opened in the top of the dome. Fracture lines snaked downward, toward the dome base where the small explosive packs had hit earlier. “Maybe sudden air loss will occupy Control Station while we are neurolinking with our Dreadnoughts!”
“Perhaps,” said Mata Hari, her long black hair framing a narrow face that showed an intense look. “But look there! At the base of the asteroid. At the dock!”
The landing dock showed the exit of a small armed Corvette that even now headed their way. Beyond the asteroid base, the 22 ships in orbit about the base were already moving to Active Defense mode. Some ships were turning to depart the system on deut-li fusion-pulse thrusters, while a few were moving to put the asteroid between themselves and Matt’s ship. A half dozen ships were powering up their proton and laser domes, preparatory to attacking starship Mata Hari. Since none of them had antimatter cannons, his ships could not be seriously harmed. Still, it was time to go on the offense.
“Mata Hari, have our flexhull resume the T’Chak dragon shape. Have all ships of Hexagon Prime fleet go to dragon mode.” In his mind Matt sensed the charged particles of the stellar wind from the distant white dwarf which was all that was left after the nova that had created the Ring Nebula. He sensed the impact of neutrinos, gravitons, quarks and tiny sand grains against the ship’s hull and its coating of adaptive optics that could deflect most incoming laser fire. Especially if his ship knew the frequency of the incoming laser fire, as they had known when battling Anarchate battleglobes. “Use your two eye-lasers to vaporize the thrusters and power plant of the Dodemeron. Now!”
A quarter light second away, at a distance of 46,312 kilometers, the rear segment of Dodemeron glowed bright yellow, then white, then silvery white as metal became vaporized particles. Several of his ship’s Offense Remotes sped toward the slaver ship, ready to prevent any shuttle departure. Or crew return. His ship Mata Hari also tossed out Holo Decoys to make it appear to be located kilometers away from its true position, even as nanoRemotes and Plasma torps sped away to intercept any incoming projectiles. Soon the Remotes would not be needed when his ship went into stealth under its flat Alcubierre shields that covered the top, bottom, both sides, front and rear of Mata Hari. The Alcubierre shields translated any offensive matter or energy to Elsewhere and Elsewhen. It was a nearly perfect defense so long as no enemy ship Translated directly into his ship’s space-time coordinates, or did not overload the shields with multiple 30 megaton Thermonuke sleds.
“Good!”
Matt stopped before the pressure door to the Bridge, mentally ordered it to open, and stepped inside. George, Suzanne and Eliana followed after him, then moved to the back wall to exit from their suits. In a second they would be in their accel-couches and cyber-linked to their own ships.
“Matthew,” called Eliana from within their shared mind communion, “I claim that big slaver globeship!”
George raised a fist. “And I’ve got that bronze spearhead!”
Matt smiled. He had his target. And soon he would become one with his ship, a cyborg in neurolink with a Dreadnought starship capable of vaporizing whole planets, or causing a star to go nova.
Benjamin Ayers of Alice Springs sat in the Interlock Pit of starship Flowering, a new member of Matt Dragoneaux’s Hexagon Prime fleet, eager to begin the destruction of the nearby slaver starships. Even as he stayed in slow human real-time, his mind floated back to his tenth birthday in central Australia, a time when his parents took him to the giant red sandstone rock they called Uluru and the Anglos called Ayers Rock. Guided by a shaman of the Anangu people, his mother’s tribe, the three adults led him through the First Rituals that honored the Dreamtime. Anglos said the Dreamtime was mythology. His mother’s people knew better. They knew it to be a parallel reality that gave rise to the entire Earth and the Universe itself. Feeling like a small koala, Ben had painted his tribal name on an alcove of the giant red rock, then returned home to Alice Springs. Months later the family boarded a Corporate State colonizing ship that took them and other Aussies out into space to the colony world Windswept, in the Perseus Arm. That had been twenty years ago.
“Your heritage is worth honoring, young Ben,” said the AI Flowering in his mind.
He shivered at the mindtouch. It felt like the endless time when he’d gone into reverie during a coroborrie dance. Flowering’s body form of ‘dragon’ was heraldic even. But his electrical engineer training had taught him that self-aware computers, called AIs, were ever so real. And this AI was born of an alien people called the T’Chak. “As is your heritage of the T’Chak, winged one,” he said in mindvoice.
The yellow mindglow of Flowering assumed holo form to his right, becoming the pink eyed, two winged, giant reptile form that many Earth people called a dragon. Not he. Flowering resembled a winged form of Dirawong, the Dreamtime being who delivered knowledge and rain upon request by the Bundjalung people. In his mind Flowering gave a barking laugh.
“Thank you, Benjamin of the Anangu people. I feel flattered that you compare me to such a . . . creative spirit being of your people.” The giant reptile holo gestured at the front holosphere with its image of the black rock asteroid that even now showed the exit of Matt’s shuttle Ariadne. “But shortly we will all enter our own shared Dreamtime, what your Matthew calls ocean-time. Are you ready to become one with me, with this ship and with our Human and Alien allies?”
Ben smiled to himself. He’d been doing that more often since his rescue during the battle at the Sector 14 Intel base, near the Crab Nebula. A big reason for his smile was the friendliness of Sarah Vasiliades, the pilot of Dreadnought Imperial. On Morrigan, when on break from T’Chak ship piloting lessons, Sarah had gone hiking with him into the wild mountain lands of the Irish-settled colony world. He hoped they could make love soon and become lifemates. Like his parents, who’d died during the slaver raid on Windswept that had captured him.
“I am ready,” he said, opening his mind to feel the thousa
nds of rooms, devices and weapons that made up the T’Chak warship which he co-controlled with Flowering. “How soon do we activate the Alcubierre shields and go into stealth mode?”
“Soon,” whispered Flowering in his mind as the free standing holo vanished, only to reappear in his mind, flapping her giant black wings and fixing two glowing pink eyes on the black rock asteroid base. “Soon we shall all have prey to taste!”
Eliana stepped out of her combat suit on the Bridge of Mata Hari and sat naked in a nearby accel-couch. Her mind-sister Suzanne did the same, as did olive-skinned George. Matt, silent since the arrival in the ship’s cargohold, walked forward on bare feet to the Interlock Pit. Her lifemate stepped down into the Pit, sat in its glass chair with a brief sigh, then stiffened as a fiber optic cable snaked out of the Pit wall and into the socket implanted at the top of his spine. She felt the same socket insert from her accel-couch as her mind became one with Matt’s starship, and then with her own Dreadnought starship Altuna. She, Suzanne and George would soon be mind-piloting their own starships in an attack on the nearby slaver ships and asteroid. There was no need for them to waste time in slow human mode by shuttle transit to their starships. They could transfer to their Dreadnoughts later, after this ancient star system was cleansed of the slaver presence.
“Eliana,” came the voice of her mind-sister Suzanne. “How will Matt handle the news of his mother and sister’s survival? And their sale as labor slaves?”
She gave thanks for the telepathic link she and Suzanne shared, thanks to being women and thanks to time spent on the homeworld of the T’Chak species. It was a link that was instantaneous. While similar to the FTL comlink of tachyon-based nodes and ship comlinks, it was something unique to her and Suzanne. It made both of them feel even more special than they’d become since joining Matt’s anti-cloneslavery crusade.
Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Page 3