Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante (24 page)

“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 be
fore 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 i
mage 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 arriva
l 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.

“
Shall we depart this system now? Or do you wish to waste time destroying every space vessel of the oncoming fleet?”

“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.”

The giant dragon stood with partly furled wings, dark red eyes focused on him, a slightly open crocodile snout, and black claws that adorned the forward edge of each wing
. It stood on two giant feet. Its stance seemed to challenge him to argue the early departure issue.

“Acceptable,” he said, stealing a phrase from the alien. “
And speaking of sneakiness, I suggest we leave behind a dataglobe that says we will release the Meligun merchant back at Zeta Serpentis. Perhaps the Anarchate and its lapdog merchants will be stupid enough to believe it.”

The ruby red eyes of BattleMind fixed on him, its mind sense overwhelming him like a tsunami wave. “Useful even if they do not believe us. Do so.”

“Done,” he said after telling the Remotes storeroom to release a dataglobe with the image and ID of the Meligun merchant, marked with a Melikark Conglomerate ownership tag.

Matt agreed with the alien’s
early departure point, since he would much prefer the gas giant’s orbit to be shifted than that of the Earth-like world which had hosted the station. He’d spent little time studying that world, but there were two billion aliens of the giraffe-like species Hootnai. Except those people were not herbivores. They were highly effective predators who even now chased meat animals across the pasture lands of the planet. With a sigh, Matt focused on checking out all ship systems as the mind and holo image of BattleMind disappeared. They would enter Translation within an hour. BattleMind would return just before the end of Translation. Then would come pain as Matt went into
ocean-time
in order to command lightspeed weapons upon their emergence next to the Titan-like moon Megadeen.

He did not like being a bringer of mass death. But he hated the institutional ownership society of the Anarchate even more. He just hoped that his scheme of using some T’Chak Dreadnought ships for a guerrilla war in home galaxy would become possible. He really did not feel like retiring to a soybean and potato
farm on a Sixth Wave colony in Perseus Arm.

Eliana
put the yellow rose plant into the hole she’d dug for it next to the tiny stream that fed the small lake where they had all sat earlier. Wielding a spade, she put pebbles and dark humus soil into the hole, packed it down, then dripped some water onto the newly planted shrub using a watering can similar to what she had used at her parents’ home on Halcyon, when she had tried to replicate the habitat richness of the Mother Trees. Living half the year with her bio parents in colony Olympus and half the year in a Derindl community within Mother Tree Xylene had been confusing for her, until she found the delight of molecular genetics and how one could use retroviral delivery systems to heal, remove infections and parasites, or even to modify the human genome to allow for a crossbreed baby like herself. And sharing her Biolab workstation with the Omega children had been a delight. But now, sitting in the lifeweb assemblage created by Gatekeeper at the rear of the starship, she found herself missing her two brothers, her cousins and even the imperious Autarch Dreedle of Mother Tree Melisen. But her love for Matt came first, now, especially after mind-seeing his memories of work as a cloneslave decanter. What an abomination!

The slidedoor hissed open and in walked Suzanne,
dressed in an embroidered pantsuit, looking around as if searching. She waved her spade in the air since a hibiscus bush half-hid her. “Over here!”

“There you are!” sai
d Suzanne in her rich mezzo soprano voice, her natural smile lighting up her entire being.

Eliana took off her gloves, dropped them and the spade into her pail, then stood up. She wrapped her arms around Suzanne, who did the same to her, sharing warmth and friendliness. “You were looking for me?”

Suzanne stepped back a little to see her face to face, but gripped either shoulder. “Yes. But no problems. We’ve entered Translation, as you perhaps felt. BattleMind has disappeared from the Bridge. Mata Hari and Gatekeeper are swimming together in the pool a few doors down, acting like lovesick teenagers, and your Matt is still in the Pit, communing with this ship and, I presume, with the mind of Mata Hari. Aren’t you glad that female AI has found another AI to . . . interact with?”