Charlotte blinked, then nodded slowly. “The big picture. Or, the Big Time as your battlemate George has said during our holo picnics in the Park!” She smiled at him.
Matt let go his pent-up breath. He so wanted his Mom and his sister to understand him, to understand what he did now and why. “Thank you, good sister. Uh, what do you think you will do with your life when we get to Morrigan?”
Charlotte gave him a grin that reminded him of the times they had played poker and she had beaten him five out of seven games. “Well, I could look for romance and a possible husband.” Their mother Kristen beamed happily. “But having watched the sneaky machinations of my Meligun master as he circumvented the formal Anarchate banking rules to move money and assets from one star to another, I think I like committing covert action. For a good cause.”
“Oh?” Matt wondered why she had paused. Then he understood. “Okay, I’m game. What kind of covert action?”
Charlotte waved one hand over the armrest of the accel-couch, activating its holo function. Between her and Matt there floated a three dee image of his Dreadnought Mata Hari. She grinned big. “I want one of those! Love those batwings, long tail and sharp teeth!”
BattleMind, who had been attending the conversations with a small part of his voluminous mind, gave a snort that echoed loudly in Matt’s mind and in his real-time ears. “Female Human, this ship portrays my shape because we were both built by our perfect masters. Therefore our shape is perfect. So of course a flawed organic such as yourself would be envious of my form.”
An amused glow filled Charlotte’s face as she pointed at the small floating starship. “I want one of those! Can you have one waiting for me when we arrive at Morrigan? Dear brother?”
Matt snorted and turned back to face the forward holosphere. “If you wish to become a pilot in my fleet, you must train for it. Also, you will allow cyborg modifications to your body that other humans do not approve of. Ask Eliana about what it’s like being a cyborg. And how folks on her world viewed human cyborgs.”
“I will! Thank you Matt!”
What had he done to warrant thanks? He blinked. Realized his sister was better at word entrapments than he had ever been, felt indigestion begin to arise from his stomach, mentally told his nanoDocs to shut down the acid flow, and intentionally, with great focus, chose to put emotions aside in favor of taking all eight ships into combat in a star system they had never visited.
“George, Sarah, Rafael, Toktaleen, Ben, Suzanne, Eliana, Mata Hari and Altuna, we enter Translation in two seconds,” he said aloud and also in his mind in anticipation of entering ocean-time mind communion. “Our emergence point will be four light seconds out from planet three, on a vector that parallels its equator, headed outward toward the heliopause of the two binary stars at the nebula core.” His fellow pilots gave him mental nods as they bent to working with their own ship AIs. “Mom and Charlotte, you will see what happens during our strike on the front holosphere. Eliana, however, will be in computer speed neurolink with me, Mata Hari and BattleMind as we work the systems of this Dreadnought to the maximum. Please do not disturb us until you hear me speak like I am speaking now.”
Matt ignored the acknowledgments of his family, welcomed Eliana into their fleet mind communion with a promise she could return to Altuna once this attack was done, then felt his senses expand as they all entered ocean-time. He felt the ship the way they would their clothes, and saw the many different energy emissions that filled normal space-time. Streaks of white, purple, yellow and red criss-crossed the space in which they floated, just two light years out from the Spelidon planet.
“Translating!” called Mata Hari.
Greyness filled Matt’s mental vision and began to cross to his eyes at lightspeed. He did not see the holosphere image break down but he did notice a kind of ripple to the vision space between him and the holo.
Fourteen milliseconds, 132 nanoseconds, 98 picoseconds and 33 femtoseconds, said his cyborg cyberclock as it kept track of real-time that had passed since he’d entered ocean-time.
The exit from Translation into normal space-time came as a shock to Matt.
Mata Hari’s multi-spectrum and multi-wavelength sensors showed large and small emission starbursts. White stellar neutrinos, orange graviton waves from the star and nearby planet, green microwaves, and purple ultraviolet streaks filled his mind’s-eye view of a star system that shot UV-heated particles into polar jets rather than along the ecliptic plane of the three planets that orbited the two central stars. Fortunately, all eight ships were ‘looking away’ from the bright binaries of CC8712 and toward the three rocky planets, with planet three nearing at a fast pace. Activating the charge-coupled photon chips of his ship scope, Matt’s vision zoomed in on the planet and its near orbital space.
A small Commerce Station orbited just 300 kilometers above a planet that was the size of Venus, though its oxy-nitro atmosphere was a mix of white and grey clouds sparkling with lightning strikes at high altitudes. Fourteen ships lay nose-in or close to the station. Two of the ships were armed Corvettes that likely belonged to the Spelidon planetary government. Lying closer to Matt’s fleet were two battleglobes that occupied the space between the airless planet two and the occupied planet three.
Fourteen milliseconds, 411 nanoseconds, 32 picoseconds and 24 femtoseconds, said his cyborg time tracker.
His space image greyed out briefly as the Alcubierre shields popped into existence around his ship and the other seven that were circling in the Hub-and-Wheel configuration pioneered by Suzanne and Eliana. It was the smartest way to avoid attacks by Thermonuke sleds and Assault Asteroids that tried to Translate into the hub ship’s normal space-time. The mental imagery returned, thanks to the scores of nanoRemotes, tachRemotes, sensorBeads, Seek-Identify balls and the ComRemote that would eventually assume an elliptical orbit about the planet known as New Life.
Blue-white thermonuclear explosions occurred ahead and to the right of the fleet as a dozen Picket Globes blew up and shot coherent x-rays toward their gravity pulse track.
“Rising off the arrival vector,” said Mata Hari as the other seven ships did likewise, with some moving sideways even as they stayed in the Hub-and-Wheel configuration.
Three spots far ahead of them suddenly glowed deep red as deut-li fusion pulse stardrives lit up and began to push something toward them at one-fourth lightspeed.
“Thermonuke sleds ahead!” cried Mata Hari in his mind even as the AIs of other ships said the same thing to their pilots.
A Mata Hari dressed in chainmail and leather skirt with an outstretched sword pointed the sword tip toward the oncoming thermonukes. Red laser beams from the two ‘eye’ emitters of Mata Hari sped outward fast as light. In a second they impacted on two of the three sleds. The targeted sleds blew apart. The third sled was killed by a pink proton beam fired by Ben the Aussie, who occupied the upper left spot in the rotating wheel of other T’Chak ships.
Seven hundred twelve milliseconds, 213 nanoseconds, 421 picoseconds and 96 femtoseconds, said his cyborg time tracker.
Near the distant planet, two of the ships lying near the Commerce Station suddenly disappeared into Translation.
“Antimatter Supply Tubes!” Suzanne yelled into their mind communion. “Aimed at Matt and at Sarah! Jink sideways a thousand kilometers. The rest of us can take them out with our lasers.”
Matt did as instructed by Suzanne, giving thanks for her ability to use psychic precognition to ‘see’ the future from minutes ahead to months down the time line. Sarah moved too, flipping her bat-winged dragon onto its side so her own deut-li stardrive could push her off trajectory faster than the oncoming Supply Tubes could predict.
Green and purple laser beams shot at the spots where the Supply Tubes emerged from Translation. Four of the nine beams made direct contact. Which was all that was needed to cause the magfield containment of the antimatter to vanish. The antimatter within the ships sufficed to vaporize their transport.
Nine hun
dred seventy-eight milliseconds, 932 nanoseconds, 765 picoseconds and 22 femtoseconds, said his cyberclock.
Matt saw all this through his mental periphery as the approached within a light second of the two battleglobes. Dozens of spots on each globe sparkled as weapons domes emitted lasers of various frequencies and source, all aimed at his eight ships. At the north and south poles of each battleglobe, the AM projectors shot black beams of coherent neutron antimatter at Matt’s ships. The eight black beams hit the Alcubierre shields of ships piloted by Matt, George and Rafael, only to be Translated to Elsewhere-Elsewhen.
“Firing!” screamed the hurricane mind of BattleMind as it unleashed six antimatter beams from its two dragon wings.
Matt winced from the pain of BattleMind’s powerful mind. Mata Hari quickly inserted her mind between Matt’s and the giant dragon to serve as a buffer. “Sorry Matt. Should have done that sooner!”
He focused briefly on the two battleglobes as 48 antimatter beams impacted on the two giant globes. Since it normally took only three AM beam impacts to crack the interior of a battleglobe and thereby unleash antimatter reservoirs and fusion power plant magfields, the impact of a barrage that put twenty-four AM beams into each battleglobe was an instant glow of blue-white matter-to-energy conversion as the steel, ablative armor, food, water and more than four hundred lifeforms became charged gases that ballooned out from the spot where formerly a solid object had existed.
“Any sign of black holes shot at us?” he asked Mata Hari.
“None,” she replied, moving their combined vision closer to the planet New Hope. “Surely tachlink calls for help have gone out from both the battleglobes and from the planet. But our approach at three-fourths lightspeed does not give them time to do much.”
Matt nodded thoughtfully. That was the major point of near lightspeed Hit-and-Run attacks on Anarchate bases and abominations like the Flesh Markets. Appear, Strike, Destroy, Disappear. Those were the steps practiced by every T’Chak Dreadnought during fleet training in space near to Morrigan. They were the actions being taken by 494 T’Chak warships that Immovable had guided into attacks on Anarchate bases in other sectors of home galaxy. They had destroyed more than two hundred battleglobes, the AI had reported to him during their transit from Thuringia to M2-9 nebula.
Three seconds, 600 milliseconds, 33 nanoseconds, 112 picoseconds and 42 femtoseconds.
“New Hope is now within one light second,” Mata Hari said.
Ahead, Matt saw a Supply Tube speed away from the Commerce Station on a vector that paralleled the approach of Hexagon Prime. He ignored it as closer to hand loomed the two armed Corvettes that had barely managed to activate fusion power for their spine and belly laser domes. Four beams shot out from their carbon-dioxide lasers, based on the light frequencies of the incoming lasers. The beams guttered out as they hit his Alcubierre shields. Return laser fire from their own proton, hydrogen-fluorine and xenon-fluoride lasers tore into the ship hulls with the ease of a hot knife in soft mud. The Corvettes disappeared into small balls of yellow-brown destruction. The blasts added to the gravity wobbles caused by the recent Translation of two Supply Tubes from space near the station.
“Matthew,” murmured Eliana from her sideline mental communion. “This is almost too easy.”
Her words were exactly the thought a part of his mind had been considering. But the Flesh Market of the city of Beautiful Whiskers was coming into range. Mentally focusing his ship’s telescopic vision on the city of low domes, long blocks of structures with narrow alleyways, a few skyrises and a domed sports stadium where the Spelidon rats conducted some kind of competitive sports event, Matt noticed something unpleasant.
“The Flesh Market cloneslave manufactories are spread across this city. There are nine markets scattered over six kilometers,” he said to Mata Hari and Eliana.
“Destroy the planet?” growled BattleMind in a hungry tone that only strained his mind, thanks to Mata Hari’s buffering.
“No,” Matt said to the image of a giant black dragon leaning forward eagerly. “But the city goes. BattleMind, please use your three starboard wing cannons to blanket the area occupied by the Flesh Markets.”
“Firing!” screamed the T’Chak dragon who much preferred to destroy stars or make planets into tiny black holes.
A yellow-orange nuclear plume rose up from the former site of a city occupied by a half million Spelidon. Grey black clouds encircled the plume even as yellow lightning bolts struck down from the ionized gases created by the strike of antimatter beams against the rock and soil of a world with no record of atomic warfare.
“Outstanding,” growled BattleMind.
Four seconds, 930 milliseconds, 873 nanoseconds, 976 picoseconds and 31 femtoseconds.
Matt looked ahead as the Commerce Station drew rapidly closer. All the remaining ships were normal commerce ships or small pleasure craft.
“Matt,” called Eliana. “Leave their station intact. They will need its help in doing search and rescue for survivors from our attack on city.”
“True,” he said, looking ahead to the retreating Supply Tube. Why was it running away, rather than—
“Stepwise Translation!” cried Suzanne into the minds of all eight pilots.
A PET thought-image sufficed to move Mata Hari into Translation in just twenty-three femtoseconds. In ten milliseconds the greyness of Translation disappeared. Matt looked around both mentally and with ship sensors.
Sarah, yes. Altuna the AI, yes. Toktaleen the Brokeet, yes. George, oh yes! Suzanne, for sure. Rafael and BattleMate, yes! But where was young Ben?
“Matt, he’s alive!” cried Suzanne into their minds. “But one side of his ship brushed against the antimatter cloud put out by that damned Supply Tube! He’s lost one wing and the Alcubierre nodes for his right side and spike-tail. His AI Flowering could not enter Translation due to the power disruption caused by the antimatter overload of the Alcubierre nodes!”
“We head back!”
With a PET thought-image he showed the rest of the fleet how he wanted them to envelope Ben’s ship to protect it from any Offense sleds dispersed by the two battleglobes.
Greyness blocked his vision, then the black of normal space-time reappeared. Just below and ahead of them was the wounded shape of Ben’s ship Flowering. Upon their arrival into a protective englobement, Matt sensed Ben’s AI dropping the shields so it could focus on stabilizing the twelve fusion plants inside the two-kilometer long warship. It did not look pretty. The right side dragon wing was gone. The stub glowed and sparkled with power emissions at the stump of the wing even as the hull’s flexskin moved slowly to cover the stub with nanoMechs so repairs could begin. The two dead Alcubierre nodes smoked a little but then stopped as the AI cut power to them. That left Ben with shield nodes that worked on his spine, nose, left side and belly. The belly and spine shields could extend to cover the area exposed by the dead nodes. Likely that would happen with minutes as the T’Chak AIs were masters of ship manipulation. You could do a lot when walls were optical matter and individual rooms could be shuffled around like marbles in a hand.
“I’m doing decent,” said Ben in their mind communion, sounding apologetic for not mind sharing earlier.
Sarah extended a mental hand to grip his khaki-covered shoulder. “Hey guy, you did great to use your Repulsor block for moving away from that damned cloud of invisible antimatter!”
Matt agreed with Sarah. If Ben and his ship had plowed directly ahead into the core of the AM cloud, the entire ship could have been consumed as every shield was burned out by AM energy overload. Damn! He had not realized a dense cloud of antimatter could have the same effect as several Thermonuke sleds hitting an Alcubierre shield surface. This was not a lesson he welcomed.
Five seconds, 112 milliseconds, 35 nanoseconds, 22 picoseconds and 17 femtoseconds, said his cyberclock.
Seeing that the rest of the fleet had Ben protected as they sped out system toward the heliopause, he decided they could remain in-syste
m for a few more seconds. Reaching out with his mind over the tachlink node implanted in his skull, he mind-called for Immovable.
“Yes, Vigilante Matthew?” replied the calm, stable mind of Immovable from a distance of 63,000 light years. “You have more—oh! This technique of emitting an AM cloud along your vector track is a new tactic not foreseen by me or by our Morrigan human pilots.” Matt felt the leader of the dispersed Ocean Fleet reach out mentally to his nine cohort leader AIs and the minds of each human and alien pilot. A swift flow of images and facts from Matt’s mind was distributed to the fleet. “Thank you for that warning, Matthew. Any other news you wish to share?”
Matt brought to mind the images of Kristen and Charlotte. “Well, my good news is that we were able to rescue both my birth mother and my sister from their labor slave captivity. Also, we had a useful battle at Antares B, which I shared with you earlier. Watch out for those new weapons of the Dolmat Sector Captain!”
The steel grey cloud that represented the mind of Immovable grew two human eyes that showed a touch of emotion. “Congratulations on the recovery of your blood relations, Matthew! That must feel as if—”
“As if our absent Ocean had a daughter AI who now returned to join your fleet.”
The AI’s eyes blinked slowly. “ Yes. Very much yes. Thank you, Matthew, for seeing me and my fellows in such a caring perspective. It will not be forgotten.”
“Well, time for me to depart. We must Translate out of this system and head for another Flesh Market target in the NGC 6397 globular cluster. On the way to Morrigan. Good hunting!”
Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Page 21