“Yes,” Gatekeeper said in his trademark warm voice. “At the casino I knew only arrivals and departures of organic sentients. Few took the time to interact with me. Those bondServants who worked at the casino, like Suzanne, treated me nicely but saw me only as the Arrival Greeter or Hotel Manager that the casino Owners had decreed was my purpose. But Mata Hari has shown me there can be more to . . . life than automatic thinking. These feelings she has shared with me are . . . beyond my algorithms. They are beyond the normal pathways known by any AI. Even one as brilliant as BattleMind, who was budded-off from Eternal Love long, long ago.”
Matthew clapped his hands, drawing them all to focus on him. On his command presence even as he stood without clothes in the middle of the Bridge. “Good. We are agreed that Eliana, Suzanne and George will accept fiber optic socket implants during our next Translation to the Large Magellanic Cloud as we head home. But tell me, dear Mata Hari, how did you manage to link to Eliana’s mind, and later to mine, with no socket to plug into?”
Mata Hari walked forward with Gatekeeper, her mood serious but congenial. “Simple. The cable contains thousands of separate optic fiber strands. Each strand is surrounded by an optical cladding that is reflective of the inner laser beam because it has a lower refractive index than the pure silica glass of the fiber itself.” She ignored the grimace of George who cared not for the high tech details of optical fiber cables. He just used them. “Well, up here I had Eliana sit naked in your Interlock Pit, then I caused one of the strands to extend and penetrate her skin at the cervical vertebrae one location. The strand slid between the vertebrae and made direct linkage with her spinal cord. She entered lightspeed neurolinking with me. Down in the Lacunae dome, I walked your Suit over to your fallen body, bent it down, and extruded the helmet’s fiber optic cable until it could touch your bare neck, Matthew, and made the same link with your spinal cord. We three were then in direct mindlink.”
Eliana recalled the overwhelming feeling of being in two minds, Mata Hari’s and then Matthew’s, and the urgency she felt at trying to draw Matthew away from the unsane whirlwind of Eternal Love’s disordered mind. Fortunately Matt had done what was needed in providing Eternal Love with a sanity anchor. But it was a close call. She did not look forward to sharing minds with an alien version of Mata Hari, an AI like BattleMind. But now she knew she could do it. And that doing so would help her Matthew and all the peoples of the Milky Way.
Matthew nodded thanks to the holos of Mata Hari and Gatekeeper, then gestured at her and Suzanne. “You want full-scale combat suits? Like mine and George’s?”
“Yes!” she and Suzanne said simultaneously.
George stood up and walked over to their grouping. “It takes time to get used to the nanoware implants, the lenses atop your corneas and the strength augmentation that the suit’s exoskeleton gives you.”
Matthew nodded. “George was outstanding in his help to me during the battle aboard the genome slaver pirate ship. But it took him months to achieve the in-sync awareness of his suit that he showed earlier when we were downplanet and approaching the Lacunae Mindworks dome. Even though my suit’s Tactical CPU can crosslink with the CPU of the suits you and Suzanne will get, still, it’s like learning to walk. And speak. All over again.”
Eliana felt elation at Matt’s acceptance of her and Suzanne as full partners with him and George. Their risked their lives too in every battle with the Anarchate, in every approach to an unknown like the Lacunae dome. They should be fully integrated into the crusade to defeat and destroy the shipyards, bases and command and control sites of the Anarchate. And she felt, she intuited, that the ability of human women to anticipate, to mentally see the near future, would prove vital to their future efforts as a team. She wondered how strong hers and Suzanne’s intuitive precognition would become. Had their presence on the HomeWorld of the T’Chak Imperium also infected them with whatever element in its atmosphere caused female T’Chak to become strongly psychic?
“Matthew, we accept that,” she said. “We understand that. And we will have months during our travel back to the Milky Way in which to learn how to be effective cyborgs. Right, Suzanne?” she said, looking aside at the freckled face of her girlfriend.
“Right,” murmured Suzanne, reaching out to hold the hand of her George. “I like the idea of being a cyborg. Of having nanoDocs in my bloodstream to protect me against all diseases. And to help me heal fast! Who doesn’t want to live a long life and be a supergirl?”
Matthew smiled tolerantly, then turned and headed for his post in the Interlock Pit.
“Think what you wish about being a cyborg. But besides the exhaustion of being in ocean-time during neurolink, there is the morality you face when you become a cyborg,” he said.
“Morality?” asked Gatekeeper and George in unison.
Matthew stepped down into the pit and sat on his clear glass seat, relaxing into total communion with Mata Hari and BattleMind by way of the invisible lightbeams that touched his bare skin in a thousand places. Then the optical fiber cable pushed out from the metal wall of the device-lined pit and connected with his neck socket. “Morality. Like when to use a weapon that can destroy a planet or cause a star to go nova. Just because we, I, have the weapon able to do that, it does not mean I should destroy a star. Or vaporize a planet or inhabited asteroid. As I have tried to share with BattleMind.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said as Suzanne and George both nodded agreement.
“Your organic morality can be an impediment to efficient completion of my Task,” rumbled a deep voice that came from within a swirling purple holo.
The holo lay to Matt’s right. Within it stood the shape of a twelve foot tall, black winged dragon with a crocodile snout and two red eyes. Its yellow-scaled chest held two clawed forearms, while its back ridge was covered in purple scales that ran down to the spike-tail of a genuine monster. It was BattleMind. The AI truly in control of their starship. And it wore the body shape of its T’Chak creators. This AI was male in persona. And it was totally devoted to the Task assigned to it by its T’Chak Masters 207,000 years ago—the eventual destruction of the Anarchate power structure and its replacement by the T’Chak Imperium. Due to the pandemic that had killed almost every T’Chak, that Task had been modified to use Humans as the point of the alien spear that was aimed at the 400 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy. But the Task remained. And BattleMind had no understanding of the morality issue that her Matthew now warned her and Suzanne about. Soon, it would be up to her, Suzanne and George to mindlink with the alien AI of a Dreadnought starship and then teach it about human morality.
Eliana thought doing that would be far harder than learning how to use an armored combat suit with a Tactical CPU that thought itself in control of the organic body that filled the suit. At least her mind could override the suit’s desire to decimate anything threatening that was in reach, as she had learned long, long ago when she first met Matt at the alien bar on Hagonar Station. But how does an organic mind link with an alien mind that is a superfast thinking artificial entity who is as stubborn as any human? That would be a lesson they would all need to learn from Matthew.
Her lifepartner nodded to the giant dragon whose holo wings half-filled the Bridge. “Battle partner, leader of this ship, we’ve had this discussion before. My human hunches and sneakiness are a tactical advantage to the Task. Right?”
BattleMind moved within its purple holo, spike-tail lifting. “Correct. So far. Your organic abilities complemented the weapons of this ship in a manner that allowed me to arrive at HomeWorld with the Anarchate combat knowledge desired by my perfect Masters.”
Eliana stepped forward, drawing the AI’s attention. “Good BattleMind, you know through your link with Eliana that we organics pursue more objectives than just destruction. Matt became a Vigilante to bring some degree of justice and hope to needy peoples and planets. Suzanne, George and I have joined him in that quest. Only now we aim to change our home galaxy. That takes more than just w
inning battles.”
“More?” said BattleMind in a brisk tone, his red eyes looking deep into her.
She swallowed again, dry mouth needing water. Soon. “Yes, more. Your perfect masters died from a pandemic that spread wide before they could find a preventive vaccine. You know my molecular genetics work. You know how I aim to cure Matt of the slow virus infection.” She paused, drawing strength from the supportive looks of Suzanne, George and Matthew. “What good would it do for you and the other Dreadnoughts to conquer the Milky Way, only to have no organic partners? The Task was meant to include organic partners. Right?”
The long crocodile mouth of BattleMind opened slightly, its narrow pink tongue slithering along sharp white teeth. “Your point is valid. How does that relate to this morality impediment of this Vigilante?”
Eliana turned away to sit back in her accel-couch. She gestured in a way to include them all, Gateway and Mata Hari too. “The only way AIs and humans will fulfill the Task of your perfect Masters is to work together. Lending our strengths to your strengths. As we just discussed with Matthew. As you know from Suzanne’s Interlinkage algorithm. So accept that this human morality is part of who we are. Part of what makes us effective in pursuing the Task. With you.”
The purple-hazed dragon closed its toothy mouth. It flared its black wings. “Accepted. I go now to the Restricted Rooms, there to abide until needed.”
Eliana blinked as BattleMind disappeared. Then jumped as Suzanne and George clapped her on the shoulder. “Great going!” Suzanne said happily.
Matthew looked back, caught her attention, then gave her a slow smile with dimples. “Well done, lifepartner. And welcome to the crusade against cloneslavery.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Commander Chai stared at the green holo track of the attacks by the renegade Human who called himself Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux. The first green dot represented the destruction of his Nova-class battleglobe in the Sigma Puppis B star system when he’d arrived to deal with a claim of planetary interference made by the Direndl Autarch Dreedle. It had involved the destruction of a Halicene mining ship by him and his crew, the departure of himself to the planet Halcyon to sort out Direndl and Human squabbles, then the impossible had happened. An Anarchate battleglobe, his ship Excellent, had been destroyed in combat with the starship Mata Hari that was commanded by this Human upstart! Who, thankfully, had boasted to the AI of the Intelligence Dome on SAO 47250 that his Dreadnought-class starship had been built by the ancient T’Chak species. Only his research into antiquity to identify these formidable aliens had saved his position in Combat Command. His subsequent warnings about the coming attacks by this Human renegade had resulted in his assignment to the Sector 14 Intelligence base of the Anarchate with the single assignment of—find this Human and destroy him before he can begin a serious rebellion!
It was a task he took pleasure in. Execution was the usual punishment for any battleglobe commander who survived the destruction of his vessel. Which was one reason so few battleglobes had been destroyed in the two million annual cycles of the Anarchate’s history. Only his interviews with Autarch Dreedle and the Human Despot Ioannis, and the vidrecords of the fights that Dragoneaux had involved himself in during his Vigilante defense of Dreedle’s home world, had saved his whiskers. He brushed them back from alert stiffness and told his tail to stop whipping about. Fear he would not show to his nearby assistants, nor to the Monitor globes that filled every installation of Combat Command. The only way he could survive was to provide Intelligence High Commander Brrzeet of the Orko species with Tactical Intelligence on where this Human would likely strike next.
An impossible job so long as the Human kept to random Hit-and-Run strikes, to use a term he’d learned during his stay among the tail-less bipeds of Halcyon who called themselves Humans! At least the native Direndl tree-dwellers had tails, though they lacked any Whiskers of Distinction. His were carbon black, as long as his central finger-claw and his whiskers spoke in a way understood only by other Spelidon. Of which there were many on the thousands of bases maintained by Combat Command. But few served in Intelligence, to his benefit. His involuntary reactions to the horrendous appearance of Brrzeet’s four legs, four yellow eyes, scaled body and ponderous movement was a secret he could keep from competitors for the favors of the High Commander of this Intelligence base in Perseus Arm.
“Commander Chai, a tachlink signal has been received from the Observer Globe ejected by the three battleglobes you sent to the home star system of these T’Chak aliens,” reported his chief assistant, a Loglan alien able to deep-research antique datapods while also reporting the attacks of his Human opponent in the holo he now focused on.
“What does the signal relate?” he muttered in a tone guaranteed to warn the four other assistants in his globular research node to be silent. His node was one of nine hundred nodes that floated about the orange-yellow star of system CC93721. They were interlinked by access tubeways and surrounded by black vacuum. The ecofields of each node were controlled by High Commander Brrzeet. The threat of breathing vacuum served as a notable motivator for every lifeform in this Combat Command installation.
The Loglan’s four eyestalks glanced his way. “Destruction of all three battleglobes, my Commander.”
“How!” he growled at the hard-shelled Loglan, an amphibian who no doubt yearned for a salty bath after its long service in this dry aired node.
The Loglan’s oval shell sank lower to the cold metal deck on which all of them worked at WorkPads that responded to touch input. “Commander, the starship ruled by the Human Dragoneaux was already present in the T’Chak home star system in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It Translated out to the arrival site of the three battleglobes with two automated Offense vessels, leaving the alien’s home world unguarded.” Chai focused on the cross-linked imagery that the Observer Globe had recorded when it was ejected upon arrival, an early tactic he had ordered when it became apparent the T’Chak starship could defeat any single Nova-class battleglobe. “While two battleglobes sought to destroy the Human, the third battleglobe Translated into the system in an effort to prevent the Human from gaining any more Dreadnought starships from the ancient T’Chak.”
“And?” Chai growled deeply even as the Spelidon-size holo in front of him filled with the antimatter destruction of two battleglobes as the one commanded by his Academy nest-mate Beegan disappeared on its mission to use its Bethe Inducer to reduce the alien home world to a few particles of neutron star substance.
The eyestalks wilted a bit. “Commander Beegan’s ship arrived in a space between the alien planet and its largest moon. Just as the commander began the Bethe Inducer sequence the Human starship arrived between Commander Beegan’s ship and the planet. It emitted six antimatter beams upon arrival.”
The holo imager shifted to show the second battle in the T’Chak home star system, a battle that should have given his nest-mate a chance to destroy the T’Chak home world even if he died in the effort. But the Translation arrival of the Human’s T’Chak starship, its flexmetal skin now distorted to resemble the body shape of a T’Chak alien, said the outer system battle by two battleglobes had been lost. He looked intently at the tachlinked vid that his nest-mate’s battleglobe constantly transmitted to the Observer Globe whenever it encountered the Human renegade.
“Commander Beegan’s ship disappeared in a total matter-to-energy conversion,” his Loglan assistant said with tight clicks of its mouth palps. “As you can see from the globeship’s rear-monitoring videyes, a pink beam came from the moon prior to the arrival of the antimatter beams emitted by the Human. The beam must have transmitted a large globe of antimatter to the site of your nest-mate’s battleglobe.”
Chai saw that lightspeed image just before the entire holo image disappeared with the vaporization of his nest-mate’s battleglobe. The Observer Globe shifted back to the fragments of the other two battleglobes that had been destroyed by the antimatter beams of the Human’s ship before it Translated i
n-system, leaving two powerful Offense Remotes to hammer the remnants of the task force into small fragments absent of any surviving lifeforms. With a sigh, Chai tilted his support stool backward, his long tail lifting to curl over his left shoulder as both disappointment and deep thought filled him.
“How long did it take our battleglobes to reach the Small Magellanic Cloud home star system of these T’Chak aliens?”
The Loglan’s four eyestalks perked up. “Three point five months as reckoned in Belizel,” the amphibian said.
So. Combat Command had that long before this Dragoneaux Human returned to pursue his self-declared “war” against the Anarchate. An absurd statement given the two million cycle history of the Anarchate. Stupid, even, in view of Combat Command’s thousands of bases spread across the galaxy and its 11,321 battleglobes that ensured the ability of rich trading conglomerates to buy low and sell high to solo star systems. The Anarchate cared not how any local planet conducted its affairs on-planet. So long as it did not seek a Trade or military alliance with another star system. The rule of galactic evolution, he had been taught long cycles ago, was that anarchy was not only profitable, but good for every star-traveling species. Any colony world too weak to defend itself from a genome slaver ship deserved to have its genome sampled and sold at the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops. Those colonies that could mount a defense against the genome raiders, like the Sigma Puppis B system of the Direndl or the Sol system of these tail-less Humans, was a useful Trade partner for the conglomerates that paid taxes for protection of their Trade zones. His destruction of a Halicene mining ship and his removal of the Sigma Puppis B star system from exploitation by the Halicenes was a minor loss for them. And a salutary lesson to all the conglomerates that the Anarchate ruled everyone. While bribes were valued by local Combat Command chieftains, the Four Rules were inviolate. Except this Human Vigilante now sought their overthrow.
Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) Page 4
