Well, now they faced someone who could fight back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matt rested from ocean-time in his glass chair in the Interlock Pit, thinking about the upcoming battle. For certain a few of the genome slaver ships would call for help to the nearby Anarchate naval station that lay near Megil. It was an Earth-like planet that orbited a seventh magnitude G5V main sequence star which was a near clone of Sol. The star was called Alkalurops by the local alien governor. The Flesh Markets where cloneslaves were sold occupied the center of Halath, a coastal town that lay at the intersection of a giant river and one of the planet’s oceans. Much the way Macapa sat at the exit of the Amazon River on Earth. But this Anarchate city was far older, tracing its history back 22,000 years. Selling slaves for labor, sex and entertainment was an ancient business there. As was the Anarchate’s naval station that played host to the four Nova-class battleglobes normally stationed there. The station was based on the near side of Megil’s single moon of Salla, its inner face tidally locked to face only Megil. Much like Earth’s Moon.
He blink-thought a command to the Pit and the front holo showed a close up of the naval station habitat dome on the local moon. Like many Anarchate bases, they preferred to have tightly controlled locations set in vacuum. All the better to control both station workers and anyone trying to approach. Matt smiled to himself, thinking how easy it would be to destroy the habitat with a single antimatter beam pulse, much as he had destroyed Omega Casino.
“The four battleglobes based there cannot harm us, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind, using slow human speech. She appeared as a tall, slim, amber-skinned woman wearing the lace filigree white Victorian dress of her Spy persona. She smiled at him. “But you know that. So why are you looking at something that does not relate to the upcoming battle?”
Why was he? But he knew the answer even if he wished to avoid it. At least the only visitor in his mind now was Mata Hari. Although, on his mind’s horizon, there swirled the purple cloud of BattleMind and the brown cloud of Gatekeeper. Mata Hari’s partner now focused on maintaining the ecofields of the starship, and the distant Park habitat so loved by he and Eliana. A pond, fish, trees and buzz beetles filled the Park, conveying a feel of ‘home’ even though his native Thuringia rarely resembled Earth.
“Matthew?” prodded Mata Hari, her narrow chin and high cheekbones showing sympathy.
“My family, or their remains, passed through the Flesh Markets of Megil. That is why I look at something unrelated to this battle.”
“Oh.” Mata Hari looked sideways, as if seeing a visitor coming. “The countdown to our joint appearance and simultaneous attack approaches. In ten seconds.”
“Understood.”
Grinding his teeth at the memory of those he’d lost, he reached for lightspeed neurolinking by way of the fiber optic cable socketed into the back of his neck. In ocean-time, he welcomed the minds of the three AI who would play a vital role in the upcoming battle. A battle that should not last longer than five minutes.
“Hello my friends. Are you eager to employ our weaponry?”
The black-winged image of BattleMind loomed large in his mind, the purple back scales and yellow belly scales of the T’Chak AI gleaming in his mindlight. The long crocodile snout opened slightly, showing sharp white teeth and a long pink tongue. Two red eyes fixed on him as the image’s long scaly tail thumped a floor with its spike-tail. Two muscled forearms spread wide under the flaring wings, as if to embrace every opponent that came their way.
“The antimatter reservoirs are full enough for four barrages, Matthew our small organic. The directed energy domes are extruded from the flexhull, while four of my fusion power plants have energized the Graviton Beam emitter, the Sun Glow neutrinos that yearn for escape and the axial Plasma Cannon. All my weapons, and my teeth, are ready,” BattleMind said, its mindflow rushing over Matt’s awareness like a tsunami wave or a hurricane wind.
One second, 532 milliseconds, 63 nanoseconds, murmured his internal cyberclock.
Mentally he stood firm against the gale of BattleMind, knowing that Mata Hari would buffer him from the worst of the T’Chak AI’s alien thinking. As she had done many times before.
“Yes, Matthew,” she said, now wearing her Lady of the Sword outfit of chain mail and leather skirt, her two-handed broadsword sparkling with laser-like energy. “I am ready to aim for seen and to be seen targets, as the tachlink data of the Remotes may guide me.”
Gatekeeper’s brown cloud moved briefly to the front of his mind, the AI’s grey eyes fixing on Matt. “All lifeforms in the Park are now restrained under local inertial fields, while I also monitor the tachlinks that connect each of our ships. I will guide the four AIs of Flowering, Ocean, Gondu and BattleMate, while you and your human partners handle the other four ships. Together we will succeed.”
Matt’s mind felt the seven-fold increase in dataflow as part of his mind took in data from the other seven ships of the Hexagon Prime, thanks to the external tachRemotes that linked all eight ships. That dataflow landed atop the thousands of inputs he already perceived from starship Mata Hari. Seven years ago being in neurolink with so many sensors, EMF fields, mech units, weapons, the deut-li fusion pulse space drive, the Biolab, the shuttle Ariadne, tiny servebots, and the dispersed power broadcasters that had replaced the old human tech of wires and plugs, well, it had overwhelmed him. Now, he knew how to parcel out pieces of his deep mind and aware mind to take in these dataflows, while keeping his personality and will focused on the prime job of moving and fighting a Dreadnought starship. Inside and out, he was now a true cyborg.
Three seconds, 336 milliseconds, 93 nanoseconds.
“Remember, after we unveil our dragon shapes and fire our first barrage, we will erect our Alcubierre nose shields against incoming weaponry,” he said.
“We have discussed our tactics before, Matthew,” said Mata Hari as she lifted her laser-glowing sword and pointed it outward, as if she meant to slice the slaver ships into small pieces.
“True,” he said, sending a mental command over the joint tachlink to each ship of Hexagon Prime. Briefly, in the space of picoseconds, he mentally felt the response of Eliana, Suzanne and George, along with the mindflows of the ships run solely by the four T’Chak AIs.
Black space replaced the greyness of being wrapped in Alcubierre space-time sheets.
It looked empty. It was not.
Red colored icons that represented the 309 genome slaver starships filled the front holosphere before his eyes. But Matt did not have to wait for his organic eyes to speak to his mind. Lightspeed impulses already conveyed what the icons stated, along with the mass, species affiliation, vector and speed, the warble of comlinks between dozens of ships as crew and captain sought to negotiate issues that mattered to them or to their owners. None of that mattered to Matt. In less than a slow human time second, his eight Dreadnoughts attacked.
Forty-eight beams of black neutronic antimatter spat out from Matt’s ring of ships, appearing like the spokes of a giant wheel since each hexagon ship lay three hundred kilometers from its neighbor.
Directed energy domes that spotted the spine and sides of each ship spat out hundreds of laser beams from emitters of neutral particle, free electron, particle, excimer, carbon dioxide, hydrogen-fluorine and proton projectors, reaching at lightspeed for the metal hulls of aliens who ravaged colony planets for the genome code of a species. All to grow an infant that would be mind-impressed with an “Obey or Feel Pain” imprint that would turn its tiny life into tortured cries for something, for escape. Well, he and his allies now provided an escape from future slavery for every bit of kidnapped flesh that rode in the freezers of each slaver starship.
His ship spat out a two hundred meter wide cloud of purple plasma, a roiling ball of charged star gas that would eat through any matter it encountered. Though slow when compared to lightspeed weapons like the lasers and AM cannons, the plasma balls could vaporize entire ships from a single impact.
> In the belly of starship Mata Hari there glowed the Restricted Rooms that contained the Bethe Inducer, the Sun Glow beamer and the neutron antimatter generators that fed the three cannons on his right wing and the three cannons on his left wing. He felt the impatience of BattleMind to use his super weapons, but you do not waste a Graviton Beam to create an invisible black hole from a slaver ship. To Matt, you saved those weapons for something big. Like a moon.
In mental unison with the Battle Configuration of his dreadnought, Matthew spread wider his wings and felt like a giant dragon who breathed fire on its enemies, shot thousand megawatt laser beams from its eyes, and tore at the small ships with the claws of its directed energy domes.
Nine seconds, 229 milliseconds, 83 nanoseconds, 400 picoseconds and 923 femtoseconds, murmured his cyberclock.
“Matthew,” called the busy mind of Eliana, “Suzanne and I are raising our front Alcubierre shields. We sense the future arrival of proton and excimer beam counterfire within two seconds.”
A mind image of Eliana, Suzanne, George and the AI mindshapes of Flowering, Ocean, BattleMate, Gondu, BattleMind, Mata Hari and Gatekeeper partly filled his mind as if they were a ring around him. Each of them shot yellow, green, red, purple, and black beams of laser and antimatter fire, followed by eight purple plasma globes from the nose of each ship, then followed by Defense torps that emitted electronic white noise. Further field, the nanoshells, Seek-Identify sensors, limpet complinks and tachRemotes filled the frozen coldness of deep space, each one sending back to him or an ally data on new targets, the final destruction of 48 slaver ships by their first volley of antimatter cannon fire, confused comlink chatter as ship captains asked who was attacking them, and the first efforts by outlying ships to turn away from the rendezvous beacon and escape into the greyness of Translation space-time.
“BattleMind, Mata Hari, shoot the third and fourth barrages of antimatter beams at those outlying ships that are trying to flee,” he muttered, even as the two nodes on his dragon snout raised overlapping Alcubierre space-time shields. They soaked in counterfire laser beams shot by some of the larger ships.
Eliana’s scientist mind touched his. “Matt, we’ve picked up tachlink calls from four ships, aimed toward Megil. They’ve called for Anarchate help!”
One hundred forty-seven slaver ships disappeared in blue-white bursts of total matter-to-energy conversion as the second, third and fourth barrages of antimatter fire struck unerringly, thanks to the target guidance provided by the small tachRemotes.
In his mind’s eye there remained sixty-three slaver ships that were either untouched by lasers, or which were damaged but maneuverable.
Fifteen seconds, 179 milliseconds, 59 nanoseconds, 812 twelve picoseconds and 714 femtoseconds.
“We Translate now to the space between the Megil/Alkalurops system and the slaver ships, with half of us facing Megil and the other four facing rearward to take out the remaining slaver ships,” Matt mindcast even as the globe of full Alcubierre space-time Translation encased his ship.
He lost mindlink with the other ships of Hexagon Prime fleet, then regained connection as the eight of them materialized seventy-five thousand kilometers from the rendezvous beacon. The four solo-AI T’Chak ships aimed their lasers and antimatter cannons rearward even as he, Eliana, Suzanne and George faced toward the distant star glow of Alkalurops.
“Everyone, go to full Alcubierre shield enclosure and be ready to fire at the vector of the first gravity wave pulses that appear,” he said in lightspeed ocean-time. “We—”
“Matt!” cried Eliana in his mind. “They’re coming and there are more than four battleglobes! Lots more are—”
High Captain Yorkel blinked as his fleet command ship Defiant materialized a half light-second from the beacon of the genome slaver rendezvous. His Bridge holosphere filled with the red, orange, blue-white and purple glows of exploding starships, total matter-to-energy blasts and criss-crossing beams of laser fire that aimed mostly at the area of the beacon, with a few beams shot toward a spot forty thousand kilometers ahead of them. A spot they would soon reach at their Translation exit velocity of one-fourth lightspeed. As in seconds.
He saw no ship at the in-between spot. But recalling the ability of the Human’s Dreadnought ship to cover itself in flat Alcubierre space-time shields that were a form of Stealth in addition to being a magical defense against his cannons and lasers, he gave the order for fleet maneuvers that he and his twenty-group had practiced over the last two weeks.
“Belizel forty-two, Prime seven, Ego four,” he said to his ship’s CPU AI. It was a true artificial intelligence, unlike the CPUs on most of the fleet.
“Complying, High Captain,” muttered the CPU in Brokeet click-speech. “There is debris ahead of us that represents most of the 509 slaver starships set to gather here for their annual rendezvous. We face an invisible opponent of great destructive ability. Further orders?”
“Deploy the Observer Globe per the instructions of Sector 14 Intelligence,” he clicked in Belizel even as the visible destruction raised the pheromone levels to nauseating densities. “Move galactic north as our other ships disperse in stratified random order.”
“Attack orders, High Captain?” called Malel, an Orko quadruped whose blocky head contained a wealth of tactical and strategic options he had memorized while an academy mate of Yorkel.
“Fire at the vectors of any new gravity wave pulses since they could be allies of this Human,” he clicked quickly. “Fire our north and south pole antimatter cannons at the convergence point of those incoming laser beams. There must be something there if the slaver ships are firing at that spot!”
Suzanne gasped as the dispersed tachRemotes told her the arriving starships comprised twenty Nova-class battleglobes, not the four they had been expecting. Though her mind flew at lightspeed within ocean-time, she saw ahead that this fleet would move into a randomized pattern, a pattern that would be hard to tackle if one relied solely on present-time information. Taking a mental picture of what her precognitive images showed, she telepathically sent it to Eliana, while PET thought-imaging it to George and Matthew over the slower lightspeed link of the tachRemote.
If the four of them adjusted their outgoing antimatter and proton laser beams to shoot at where the fleet ships would be within three seconds, they could destroy many of them. While the four separate beam attacks would tell the Anarchate commander he now faced four Dreadnought warships, hopefully the other ships of Hexagon Prime fleet could help dispatch all twenty battleglobes before they reported back to the Megil naval base.
After all, as Matt had shared with them on the way back from the Magellanic clouds, his Chinese hero Sun Tzu said unity was the key to winning—He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious.
Well, united they all were in wishing an end to the Anarchate!
Yorkel spit acid against the clear plastic of his Captain’s Booth as four of his battleglobes vaporized from black antimatter beams that fired from the not empty space lying ahead of them. How could his opponents have known where his ships would be when the light emissions of their new positions had not yet reached the enemy? And where had this Human gotten three more starships with which to attack his fleet? Four versus twenty was not the battle scenario they had practiced.
“Incoming proton beams!” cried Malel as his two forearms tapped counterfire commands into his WorkPad panel.
“Moving laterally,” said ship’s AI.
The proton beams still hit them in the southern hemisphere of Defiant. But the ablative armor there was a hundred meters thick. The beams reached only twenty meters deep. Still, it stung him that his ship had been hit by this renegade Human!
“Analysis now!” he spoke to the AI. “What do we face?”
“ Weapons emissions from the locus ahead indicate the fleet faces eight separate opponents, with four firing at us and four firing at the remnants of the slaver fleet,” the AI said in fast click-speech. “No weapon fired by our fleet ha
s yet impacted on a vulnerable area, High Captain. It appears the enemy’s ships possess wraparound Alcubierre space-time shields that Translate our weapons fire to Elsewhere-Elsewhen. Your orders?”
His enemy Chai would love the vidimages of this attack! In less than three seconds his fleet had lost . . . five battleglobes to total antimatter destruction, with seven battleglobes lightly damaged by proton and excimer laser fire. All fifteen surviving battleglobes were, however, pouring antimatter and laser fire at the deadly locus ahead. That contained eight T’Chak Dreadnought starships! But this targeting that hit where his ships would be said the Human possessed some device able to predict his movements. Or he had an organic psychic able to read the future. Either way his fleet faced total destruction.
“Ten battleglobes are to fire rotating barrages of antimatter at the locus of these opponents. Aim at the spots where the oncoming lasers and beams originate!” he said, feeling disgust at fighting an invisible enemy. “The other five including Defiant will move sharply north galactic so we can target all eight opponent ships from an angle that may yield results! Comply!”
Their one-fourth lightspeed velocity changed sharply as Repulsor blocks and angled fusion drives pushed his five battleglobes off the incoming vector that the Human had expected to face thanks to the tachyon calls to the Megil naval base. Changing vectors was essential for their survival. And perhaps for gaining some kind of advantage over their invisible enemy.
Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) Page 9
