Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (6 page)

“
Good hunting!” called George with a grin.

In space, eight ships became two kilometer long dragons that closely resembled the living shape of the T’Chak aliens. Spitting purple globes of plasma, each dragon ship moved like a raptor of space after one or more slaver targets.

Eleven seconds, 432 milliseconds and 976 picoseconds
, his cyberclock whispered.

Around his ship and every Hexagon Prime ship there arose the flat Alcubierre space-time shields that would protect each ship from any laser or thermonuke attack by the slaver ships. The shields also made each ship stealthy and nearly invisible since the shields absorbed all light emitted by any star or light
emitter. Matt turned his mind to the reduction of the three kilometer tall slaver asteroid.

To his right there appeared the twelve foot tall holo of BattleMind, the alien-minded AI whose mental voice was so powerful that Matt could barely withstand exposure to it. Which i
s why Mata Hari always slid her mind as a buffer over Matt’s mind whenever BattleMind spoke to Matt.

“I detect from your sneaky Human mind that you wish to employ my Sun Glow wea
pon,” BattleMind said in a mindvoice that felt like the impact of a tornado.

In
ocean-time
mindlink, Matt could not hide from the touch of BattleMind, the help of Mata Hari dressed as Lady of the Sword or the awareness of what the other fleet pilots were doing and saying with their own AIs. Sharing his Bridge with a giant, black winged AI dragon whose two forearms and belly showed yellow scales, while its purple spine ridge carried a zigzag line of sharp thorns, had become normal. What was not normal yet was the sharing of combat decisions.

“Correct,” Matt said dryly. “BattleMind, please activate your Sun Glow weapon and fire on that asteroid base. I would see it become a stellar plasma ball. Then let us move away, quickly, so I may interrogate the captain of the
Dodemeron
.”

“At last, a target worth my attention,” rumbled BattleMind.

In the front holoscreen floated the black rock, silver skyrises and tiny repair bots that were futilely trying to seal the shuttle-sized hole in the base’s clear dome. The armed Corvette dispatched by the Control Station operators was just 500 meters from the lower landing dock opening. The entire conversation with his cyborg allies and their AI friends had taken much less than a half second.

“Firing!”

A white spear of coherent neutrinos slashed down at the black rock of the slaver base. The rock shimmered in both the holo and in Matt’s superfast thinking mind. Then the rock became a roiling ball of yellow plasma, held to its globular form by a magfield transmitted by the Sun Glow beam. That plasma included the Corvette.

Beyond the giant stellar plasma ball lay three of the five slaver ships that had tried to hide behind the asteroid. Already they were moving away from the plasma ball. And into Matt’s line of fire. Flexing his
muscles as he sat in the Interlock Pit, he tensed his arms and outside, on his wings, three of his antimatter cannons fired black beams of coherent neutrons at the three slaver ships.

Three blue-white explosions of total matter-to-energy conversion filled a part of space that lay just
seventy kilometers away. The white vapor fronts of the destroyed slaver ships joined with the golden yellow plasma ball of the asteroid to make local space very unhealthy. In his mind he gave the necessary order.

“Mata Hari, Translate us to the area of the ship
Dodemeron
!”

Grey emptiness surrounded his ship for the
brief time it took to travel a quarter light second, then a band of white diamond stars sparkled in the front holo. Behind them glowed the yellow and green ionization belts of the Ring Nebula. To the side, rear and down ecliptic occurred other blue-white explosions as his Hexagon Prime battlemates destroyed their slaver targets using coherent neutron antimatter beams. In front of him floated the slaver starship. The
Dodemeron
showed a habitat globe at the front, a boxy body that ended in a ruptured tail section and two side pontoons that mounted proton beamers. Already the Spelidon ship captain was using attitude jets to turn toward Matt’s ship, clearly aiming to fire on him.

“Mata Hari, fire a few neutral particle beam lasers at those pontoon beamers,” Matt said. “Then
move us to within five kilometers of the slaver ship.”

“Firing Matthew,” said Mata Hari as her steel sword shot two beams at the pontoons.

To his right BattleMind spread wide his black wings, wing-claws curling as if trying to rip and tear something. Which gave him an idea.

“BattleMind, when we arrive close by the slaver ship, orient us so that this ship is parallel to the
Dodemeron
. Once done, I would like to slice the ship into flat segments, beginning at the rear and moving up the box body to the habitat globe. Which lasers would do the best job?”

In his
ocean-time
mind and by real time vision, Matt saw the giant T’Chak dragon open its long snout and display sharp white teeth. Its version of a smile. “Ahhh. Torture before destruction. Use the CO2 and hydrogen-fluorine laser domes on my spine. They have sufficient power for metal cutting.”

Twelve
seconds, 21 milliseconds and 13 picoseconds
, noted his cyberclock.

On the horizon of his mind Matt felt Eliana pay brief attention to his plan, give a  mental nod, then return to her own antimatter destruction of two slaver ships that had fired on her shields. Despite the exhaustion he already felt from spending long seconds in
ocean-time
, and the mental strain from directly mind-linking to BattleMind, he agreed.

“Good advice. BattleMind, please begin slicing away the body of
Dodemeron
, moving from the dead engine section up toward the habitat globe.”

“Commencing.”

Matt watched the ship’s vidimage feed on both the front holosphere and within his mind as lightspeed optical neurolinking fed him the multi-spectral images of the Alien slaver ship. While positron emission tomography and SQUID implants under his scalp gave him true thought-to-thought communication with his two AIs and with his cyborg allies, his left ear tachlink node gave him FTL links to every pilot, ship and AI in Hexagon Prime fleet. Which required him to exert tight focus on immediate issues. Like his plan for ending the existence of the slaver captain. Eventually.

Out in space the silvery metal slices of the slaver starship drifted away from
the ship body like bread sliced from a loaf of fresh hot bread. His mother Kristen always baked fresh bread for them, he thought, recalling an image from just before the genome slaver raid. The aroma of fresh bread was a sensation he had not recalled for a long time. But the haggard images of his Mom and Charlotte in the records of this slaver ship reminded him of many things. Too many things. All too soon the laser slicing of the slaver ship came to an end, leaving only the habitat globe intact.

“BattleMind and Mata Hari, have your limpet complink and biosensors located the spot where the Spelidon rat captain is located? In the habitat globe?”

“Yes Matthew,” said the new Spy persona of Mata Hari. “Captain Markel of Nest Perilous from the world Rocky Talus is presently standing in a Command Booth inside his ship’s Bridge. The Bridge is located in that silvery bubble which protrudes from the front end of the habitat globe. The bubble can become transparent upon command by the ship’s NavCore. Like the optical matter walls of our ship. My complink is in control of the
Dodemeron’s
NavCore.”

“Good,” Matt thought to his two AIs. “BattleMind, continue slicing through the habitat globe until only the Bridge component is left intact. Seal off any air supply tubes so Captain Markel can
breathe ship air. For the moment.”

BattleMind’s
dragon holo swung a black wing at the habitat globe of
Dodemeron
, slicing away silver metal pieces as if the dragon was cutting apart a globe of cheese. Like his Mom often did on their soyfarm on Thuringia. The sliced cheese, combined with fresh bread slices, were a treat Matt and his four sisters had loved.

Matt’s mouth felt dry even in swift
ocean-time
. “Suit, walk over to me and be ready to tractor lift me into your interior.”

Mata Hari’s
Spy image showed surprise. “Matt? You are re-entering Suit? Why?”

“For a direct, in person encounter with this Captain Markel.” He grinned mentally, sending his AI ally a sense of wolf-like hunger. “You forget that this ship captain stole 47 people from Thuringia,
fifteen years ago. My vidrecord of his ship’s destruction, and of my soon to be in person encounter with him will be of . . . great interest to Thuringia’s governor.”

“Understood,” Mata Hari said softly as she took holo form to his left, behind the shape of Suit.

Matt liked the Spy look of Mata Hari. With her black hair in a bun atop her head, her body dressed in a frilly white late Victorian sheath dress and a pearl broach at her neck, she looked very refined. “Please shut off the forward Alcubierre shield. So I face the Bridge bubble. But maintain our Alcubierre shields elsewhere, and fire on any Offense sled, plasma torps or other device aimed at us by the slaver ships. I will leave
ocean-time
in order to speak directly with this ship captain.”

Fourteen
seconds, 934 milliseconds and 17 picoseconds
, noted his cyberclock.

Mata Hari
’s holo nodded, then walked around Suit to stand beside the giant dragon shape of BattleMind. “We will protect you.”

“I know you will. And thank you,” he said, removing his mind from any linkage with BattleMind, and focusing on his nearby combat
suit. Dizziness slammed into him as the stress of 15 seconds in
ocean-time
drained energy from his body. “Suit, lift me up with a tractor, then insert me quickly inside your interior. Now.”

The white ceramic armor of Suit,
adorned with several wolf’s heads icons, bent forward as it rear entry zippered open for him. At that instant Matt felt invisible forces lift him up from the Interlock Pit, pause briefly for the Pit’s fiber optic cable to unlink from his neck, then swiftly his combat ally swung him over and down into the interior of Suit. A fiber optic cable quickly socketed into his neck and Matt resumed his human-slow awareness of the fading battle thousands of kilometers from his ship. The rest of Hexagon Prime fleet had vaporized every slaver starship, every slaver Remote and the thousands of tiny KKVs and assaultBeads that had been ejected by the Defense Mode systems of the slaver ships. Leaving only the small remnant of ship
Dodemeron
that floated a few kilometers from his ship’s crocodile snout. He pushed his feet into the heavy boots of Suit, snugged his arms and hands into exoskeleton units, and felt his shoulder laser pulse-cannons whir into Ready Mode. He rose on boot Nullgrav toward the Bridge ceiling.

“Mata Hari, pouch me out
past the flexhull and pressor guide me to the Bridge bubble of Captain Markel’s ship.”

“As you wish, Matthew.”

In two seconds he was in dark space, moving swiftly toward the silvery grey remnant of the habitat globe. His enemy’s last refuge resembled a crescent moon piece of metal surmounted by a bubble that contained the Bridge of ship
Dodemeron
. His mind felt the Tactical CPU of Suit make velocity computations, vector alignments and the emission of its own pressor beam to stop Matt just three meters from contact with the Bridge bubble.

“Mata Hari, have your complink make the
Bridge skin transparent.”

“Done, Matthew,” she said as the
optical matter of the bubble became transparent.

Before him stoo
d the black-whiskered, black-furred, two armed and two legged body of Captain Markel of Nest Perilous from the world Rocky Talus. The giant rat occupied a Command Booth in the middle of the small Bridge, its fingerclaws resting on ship controls that no longer did anything useful. Its scaly tail was laid over one shoulder. The long black whiskers flared apart in the sign of Anger Displayed. Too bad.

“Captain Markel, I am Matthew Dragoneaux, a Vigilante who seeks
the extermination of your kind,” Matt said, his radio speech translated into Belizel by Mata Hari.

“Your name
sigil is known to me,” the Spelidon biped said in harsh Belizel. “From the public broadcasts of your attack in Omega Centauri. And from the Thuringia planet broadcast that branded you an enemy of the Anarchate. Your activity in Orion Arm is why I took my ship here, to this base in Sagittarius Arm. How did you locate this place?”

Matt felt amusement at the Spelidon’s choice to ignore the loss of most of his ship, and his
own impending death. Well, the time for amusement was past. “The location of this base and of 23 other such locations elsewhere in the galaxy were recorded in the NavCore memories of the 312 slaver starships we destroyed during the annual rendezvous near Alkalurops.”

The black eyes of the giant rat blinked hurriedly, then stayed open as it stared at Matt’s face, now visible through Faceplate. “How much longer will I live?”