Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (5 page)

“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 ofte
n 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 thousands 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.

“With frozen calmness, Suzanne.” She recalled Matt’s varied moods, and the harshness of his memory from when he’d worked as a cloneslave decanter on planet Megil, at the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops. He’d used his strength of mind to survive that job. Until he could move up in the
Anarchate’s job rankings to be a Personal Guard for rich Aliens, then a Vigilante for hire by newly colonized planets. “He will hunt for news of his mother until either she is found or discovered dead. And whatever Alien owned her will feel Matt’s personal vengeance. In the way he killed that slaver ship captain in Morrigan system. Same for his sister. Matt has a gentle inner heart. But his mind is . . . like the biggest wolf ever known. He never gives up. You know that.”

“I do,” murmured Suzanne as
she, like Eliana, tachlinked to her ship
Lorelei
. “I felt it during the fleet battles at CC8733 in the Vela system and later at the Intel Base near the Crab Nebula. For which I give thanks. But this fleet fighting is so different from being an IT manager at Omega Casino.”

Eliana squinted mentally, joining with her AI Altuna as the two of them split mind attention to targeting vectors for three of the 22 slaver ships that lay within a quarter light-second of the slaver asteroid.
She highlighted the big globeship. “Same for me. Very different from being a simple molecular geneticist on my homeworld of Halcyon. But this crusade is worth doing. Worth living for. Even . . . even worth dying for if that becomes the price for freedom and hope in our galaxy.”

Suzanne, like Eliana, was mind-sharing with her AI Lorelei as they brought antimatter reservoirs to full load for the soon-to-happen battle. Her mind-sister sent her a mental hug. “We will survive. As you can feel from your own preco
g sense of the distant future. You, myself, George, Matt and others will survive. But with changes.”

Eliana knew about the changes. It now felt normal to behave with the viciousness of a she-wolf. To destroy starships and their crews. To turn opponents into stellar plasma or mini-black holes. In a way, her brother Ioannis was lucky she had not returned home. He would not survive
as Autarch were she in her home system. “The battle nears in mind-touch, my sister. Join mental hands with me and let us help Matthew feel better about the revenge he will shortly take.”

“Yes,” Suzanne said,
stretching her hand across the cold black space that separated their warships. “Let it begin.”

Toktaleen of the Brokeet,
homeworld Cloudy, of the Nest Adventurous, stood in the Interlock Pit of the starship
Gondu
, feeling eager to begin battle as a member of Hexagon Prime fleet. Ever since the rescue of himself, his mate Sickanoon and their infant during the battle of Alkalurops C system, he’d felt eager. It had been a battle led by the Human male Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux. While Toktaleen’s mate and child were safe on Morrigan world, he followed his duty to serve as a pilot for the Human’s crusade against cloneslavery. An effort he fully approved, now that he had personal experience of the uncivilized practice that the Anarchate trading conglomerates thought was normal Trade. Well, he’d done well during the Vela and Crab Nebula fleet battles, and in small fleet actions since. And his presence as the only non-Human in the Hexagon Prime fleet of Vigilante Dragoneaux was something he valued highly. It would make for a Saga Song that would be clicked across the entire world of Cloudy. Once he returned.

“A r
eturn to your homeworld will be long in coming,” hissed the female T’Chak AI he knew as Gondu. Her winged reptile shape filled his mental foreground.

“Acceptable,” he said bluntly. “Now, shall we plan our maneuvers once we enter Alcubierre space-time, erect our shields against offensive fire, and I begin thinking at close to your normal thought speed?”

The T’Chak reptile, which the Humans had named a dragon, barked with amusement. “Your three-lobbed brain is faster at tactics and strategy than the two-lobed Human brain. But no organic species, except for our perfect T’Chak masters, could ever match our full speed of thought.”

In Toktaleen’s mind there grew the weapons chambers in his ship belly that held the
Sun Glow neutrino weapon, the Graviton Beamer, the Bethe Inducer and the axial Plasma Funnel. While their use would not be needed in this battle, Toktaleen enjoyed the way his mind felt when he mentally sensed the slight out-of-time feel of the neutrinos and gravitons. Their quantum dance enthralled him.

“
Ocean-time
commencing,” said Gondu as their leader Matthew the Human activated his own link with every one of the eight ships in Hexagon Prime fleet.

Toktaleen thought a brief “Good!” then fell into the endless
sense of
eternal time
that was how he perceived the ability to think at femtosecond, picosecond, nanosecond and millisecond intervals, thanks to the optical neurolinking of the cable that linked his mind with Altuna’s. And with the Human and AI minds of the fleet. His body and mind became one with eight ships, eight AIs and seven other lifeforms who called themselves Human.

Matt sank into
ocean-time
, his attention fixed partly on the slaver starship
Dodemeron
that floated a quarter light-second away from his ship and the other ships of Hexagon Prime. Mostly he felt the changes to his ship as Mata Hari grew two black dragon wings, each wing armed with three antimatter cannons. The ship’s deut-li fusion pulse drive with antimatter afterburner became a long tail that glowed yellow-white with fusion flames. At the ship’s front there grew a crocodile-like snout with two red eyes. The scaly snout could open a white-toothed gap that allowed the belching of a two hundred meter wide globe of purple plasma from the axial Plasma Funnel. The star-hot dragon breath could vaporize any solid construction, such as another starship. Even the giant Anarchate battleglobes could lose large chunks of their body if hit by a globe of plasma. But the weapons Matt loved most were the antimatter cannons that adorned each wing. The cannons could rotate to point rearward, up or down, depending on the vector of his target. Matt liked that. He liked feeling like an interstellar bird of prey who resembled an ancient Chinese dragon about to swallow the Sun.

In his mind came the images of golden-haired Suzanne
the precog, white-skinned Eliana, black-bearded George, sun-tanned Benjamin the Aussie, Sarah the manager, black-mustached Rafael whose wife and children were safe on the Irish colony world of Morrigan, and Toktaleen of the Brokeet, the single Alien member of his Hexagon fleet. And Toktaleen was an outstanding pilot whose three-lobed mind brought a degree of rapaciousness that Matt highly approved of.

“Appreciation to you, leader Matt the Vigilante,” said yellow-skinned Toktaleen. The Brokeet’s giant ant form stood in its own Interlock Pit, the fiber optic cable that allowed optical neurolinking with one’s starship and with its AI mind gleamed silvery in the light of Toktaleen’s Bridge.

Matt nodded mentally to his ally, taking his time since their thought images and discussion were happening at millisecond or faster speeds, thanks to the
ocean-time
immersion of each living pilot in the fleet’s eight ships. He focused on the seven other pilots of the fleet.

“George, please Translate out to just beyond those three slaver ships that are fleeing this star system. Eliana,
Suzanne and Sarah, use your antimatter cannons on the nearest slaver ships,” Matt said as the mind images of Mata Hari and BattleMind shared his mental horizon. “Rafael, Ben and Toktaleen, take on the five slaver ships preparing to attack us, and destroy any Offense sleds, shuttles and Remotes that might be launched against us.”

Eliana
broke his combat focus with her green-eyed ‘little girl look’ that had first touched his heart when he’d destroyed the strip mining robot that threatened her home planet. Her albino white face, obsidian black hair and spare, sculptured profile fixed on him with a mental focus he could never escape. “Matthew, we will all do as you say. But what will
you
do, beyond the disabling of the slaver ship
Dodemeron
? And will we rendezvous with our ships after this battle so we can each . . . be in command of our own ship?”

Matt understood the need of his cyborg allies to be back in direct neurolink with their ships and their AIs. But this battle in the Ring Nebula
would not be as dangerous as facing an Anarchate fleet. Still, he must share his plans with his allies. With people who openly shared their minds with him. They had put their trust in him. He could do no less.

“I will take out the asteroid base, the ships hiding behind it, then . . . then I will move this ship to face the slaver ship
Dodemeron
. Face on. I would have direct communication with its captain. Before I destroy him.” He paused. “And yes, we will rendezvous with your ships once every slaver artifact in this system is destroyed. The plan we agreed to in Battle Council is still in effect. Satisfied?”

“Thank you, Matthew,” Eliana said as she turned her mental focus to her ship
Altuna
and to maintaining telepathic contact with her precog mind-sister Suzanne.

“Satisfactory guidance,” clicked Toktaleen in Belizel as
he rotated his T’Chak Dreadnought in a twisting spiral so its AM cannons could more easily attack three slaver ships.