“So do I,” said Suzanne in his mind, her blond curls and winsome smile filling his heart with love.
George sent her a mental embrace that might normally have squeezed her too tight. He often forgot his own strength in the passion of his love for her. For a woman smart in ways he was not, brave in ways he shared, and devoted to life and freedom in the ways Matt had shown them all life deserved, whether human or alien. “We will prevail. And I like Matt’s maneuver to put us behind this planet. Gotta be frustrating to the battleglobe commander to see us appear here, then there, but be unable to fire directly on us.”
“He is frustrated indeed,” said Eliana from the mental circle of their eight minds. “Alien he may be, but his emotions are very similar to ours. Thoughts I cannot read, but decisions and actions come to me clearly. He . . . he is staying in place, trying to force us to come to him.”
Matt’s hard-bitten mind gave a slow mental nod. “As we will. Once we have dispatched every comsat and Remote sent out by the battleglobes. Oh. When we encounter any of the 23 orbiting commercial starships, let me handle them.”
“What do you plan, Matthew?” called the AI Flowering.
“To determine if they are a slaver ship with living cargo onboard,” Matt said. “If so, I will use the Stasis Beam to put everyone on board into stasis hibernation. You and Gondu can then dispatch Access Remotes to enter the ship, rescue the living cargo, then depart. I will take the rescued captives onboard Mata Hari once the battle is over, and take them with us to Morrigan system, in Kappa Crucis cluster.”
George liked the idea of rescuing people before vaporizing a starship. “What about the ships that have no captives? That are just normal commerce traders?”
“We will leave them to regain awareness in six hours,” Matt said. “Though they will find a notably changed reality once they awaken.”
Knowing Matt’s plans for the Flesh Markets and for the moon base, George smiled to himself. This was indeed the way of honor, the way his Tuatha De Danaan ancestors would have undertaken a battle.
Matt’s mind felt planetary in size as his ocean-time awareness expanded to include the mind perceptions of the starship perceptions of Eliana, George, Suzanne, Gondu, Flowering, Ocean and BattleMate as the eight of them spread outward like eight spokes from the hub of their arrival point.
Comsats vaporized as they were perceived. A Teecheen frigate that fled from them was put into stasis by a shot from his Stasis Beam projector. Several Offense sleds of the Anarchate fired proton laser beams at them only to disappear when hit by return laser fire from the spinal domes of one of his comrades. The planetary vidcasts buzzed with speculation about the strange ships that had materialized so close to the planet. With a thought to Mata Hari he made sure to override the planetary vidnet with an image of himself declaring he was leading a fight against cloneslavery and bondservitude. He appended a warning to the inhabitants of Halath, where the Flesh Markets were located, that they move far away from the markets.
Twelve seconds, 322 milliseconds, murmured his onboard cyberclock.
As the eight of them curved around the maximum width of Megil and came into direct view of the moon Salla, the sensors of every T’Chak ship detected the three battleglobes that hung in station above the moon’s naval base. Picket Globes dotted the vacuum between the planet and the moon. Those that were within twenty thousand kilometers of his ships fired on them. To no effect. The distant battleglobes held fire since their antimatter cannons could not have any effect beyond a hundred thousand kilometers. And the moon lay at 150,000 kilometers from Megil. Matt focused instead on the ships orbiting above the city Halath, site of the Flesh Markets.
“Matthew, nine of the orbiting starships are simple commerce Traders,” said Mata Hari in his mind, her form wearing the silvery chain mail of her Lady of the Sword persona. “Fourteen other ships appear to be genome slaver ships late for the annual rendezvous. My sensorBots and limpet comlinks are moving to attach to each ship so we may interrogate the ship’s Core computer on whether any life signatures are captives.”
Matt thought the freighter shape of the likely slaver ships was proof enough they would hold living cargo, or at least remnants of lives destined to provide the genomic codes for cloneslave infants. Still, he and his Hexagon Prime fleet controlled the space about Megil since the battleglobes remained at the moon Salla. So he waited for Mata Hari’s tiny sensorBots to do their job. With a thought command he moved starship Mata Hari to an orbital spot directly above the seven blocks of the Flesh Markets in the city of Halath. Already private transport vehicles were streaming away from the city center toward the rural countryside. Good. His broadcast was being heeded.
“Matthew, when do you wish to extinguish the Flesh Markets?” asked Mata Hari in his mind.
“After we have stasis frozen the fourteen genome slaver starships,” he said. “Are your limpet complinks in contact with each ship?”
His mind filled with the purple sleet of random cosmic rays, the red haze of ultraviolent as reflected from the moon Salla back toward the night side of Megil, and the infrared glows of the twenty-three ships that lay in equatorial orbit like beads on a string. At the center of that string lay his ship while his fleet comrades had spread out into a circle centered on Mata Hari, their noses facing toward the moon and the Anarchate Nova-class battleglobes that had stayed in place. His battlemates and their AIs did not forget the battleglobes could easily Translate to within a few thousand kilometers of him and his fleet, if they so chose. If you didn’t care about major earthquakes on a nearby planet, any starship could Translate deep into a star system. Well, he cared for the local Teecheen, but defeating these battleglobes was the first priority.
“They are in contact, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind. To one side the enormous bulk of BattleMind stood up, flapped his broad black wings and fixed two red eyes on him.
“Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, are you now prepared to fight?”
Projecting the mind image of an African lion roaring out his challenge across the savannah, Matt sent his answer. “Yes! Once the living captives are removed by Flowering and Gondu, we will destroy every slaver starship.”
BattleMind swung his spike-tail to hit the mental floor he stood on. “Minor trash! What of the three battleglobes that attacked us and then ran cowardly to this moon?”
Matt felt bemused by the alien T’Chak’s sense of what made up a ‘coward’ in that ancient culture. It was someone who did not live up to their genetic heritage. Ah well. “BattleMind, this time I am not sneaky. This time we will use our great power to destroy the Flesh Markets and to vaporize the battleglobes. Good enough!”
“Adequate,” snarled the T’Chak AI that had brought starship Mata Hari into the Milky Way galaxy in search of tactical and battle knowledge of the Anarchate.
In his mind Matt focused on the seven stone blocks of the Flesh Markets which lay three hundred kilometers directly beneath his starship. “Mata Hari, place a single antimatter blast into the middle of the Flesh Markets. That will be sufficient to vaporize everything within a half kilometer. Perhaps the Teecheen will use the crater for a lake. Or whatever they use for recreation.”
A black beam of coherent neutron antimatter shot down through the dense atmosphere of Megil and impacted on the ancient stones and byways of the Flesh Markets. A flash of blue-white was followed by a gray-streaked cloud of debris and vaporized matter from the radiant heat of the total matter-to-energy conversion of seven city blocks in the heart of Halath. Some local Teecheen would bear their version of a sun burn. But the cloneslave vats and nutrient chambers where cloned alien and human infants were raised for sale to the highest bidder were now gone. And if his fleet could do this here, then surely they would do the same elsewhere in the galaxy. At similar Flesh Markets in the five galactic arms.
Looking outward mentally, Matt smiled at BattleMind’s giant dragon shape. “BattleMind, would you decimate the fourteen slaver ships that no longer have captive
s on board? I believe their sleeping crew deserve to join their ancestors. Somewhere.”
Three barrages of antimatter hit the slaver ships. The blue-white glare of the blast radiation was not filtered by BattleMind.
Matt shrugged mentally. It made sense. The T’Chak AI which had long run this starship any way it wished had only lately come to appreciate the physical limits of its human guests. Anyway, he would soon infest this ship with several dozen human and alien captives, in various modes of physical and mental coherence. With a thought-image to Gatekeeper to take charge of welcoming these new guests once they defeated the battleglobes, Matt nodded mentally to Mata Hari.
“On to the moon.”
“Fire!” cried Yorkel in click-speech.
The battleglobe Defiant shuddered with the simultaneous emissions from dozens of laser mounts, proton beamers and the ten cannons for antimatter. Nearby his battleglobe neighbors did the same. On the Bridge, shrieks of click-speech erupted from his Brokeet crew members even as the pheromones of anger nearly overwhelmed him. His eyes fixed on the front holosphere, he waited eagerly for the news from his tachRemotes that lay near to the emergence points of the eight opponent starships.
With a touch to his WorkPad, Yorkel sent seventeen thermonuke Remotes lumbering along the gravity wave vector emitted by the arrival of the Human and his attack cohort. If they were lucky, very lucky, the initial barrage of antimatter and laser beams would distract the Human long enough for some of his thermonuke Remotes to arrive within strike range.
Suzanne’s mind filled with the image of one of their starships disappearing in an antimatter explosion of such power that it stunned her. Now? In the future? When?
“Matthew! Watch out for—”
Matt’s ship senses felt the impact of hundreds of laser and antimatter beams against the Alcubierre shields he and his battlemates had raised immediately upon exit from Translation, just thirty thousand kilometers from the surface of Salla moon. He had expected immediate attack since their gravity wave pulse would be on a straight-line to the moon. But he had not expected the blossoming of seventeen 30 megaton hydrogen bomb explosions among his ships, impacting on the Alcubierre shields, seeking a means of rendering them vulnerable.
Suzanne’s scream reached him just as his mind-sense of the AI aboard Ocean felt alarm, a sense of pain, surprise—
His eyes went wet with tears even as his ocean-time mindsense told him the Dreadnought’s side Alcubierre shield had been overwhelmed by the simultaneous explosion of three 30 megaton nukes, leaving his battlemate vulnerable to normal weapon fire.
Ocean could have survived proton and laser beams, either by using mercury vapor and rotating or by extending a belly Alcubierre shield up to cover the exposed side. But in the ten femtoseconds during which Ocean’s side was exposed, an antimatter beam hit that same spot. Its matter to energy conversion combined with onboard reservoirs of antimatter to totally vaporize a member of his Hexagon Prime fleet.
Vengeance will be mine! BattleMind screamed mentally.
High Captain Yorkel felt exaltation as the holo showed the total destruction of an enemy starship by way of three thermonuke Remote blasts. At last!
“High Captain,” called Malel from his WorkPad. “They are firing at us! Sister ship Noble has lost half its southern hemisphere to an antimatter beam. What is your command?”
“Translate! Translate to a space behind these maniacs and close to Megil! Quickly if you wish to live!”
BattleMind’s roar of outrage at the death of a fellow T’Chak AI would have sent Matt to his knees if he were not already sitting. As it was, even with Mata Hari buffering the mindflow, he came close to passing out.
“Vengeance is mine too!” he screamed at the ancient T’Chak AI. “Fire on all three of the battleglobes! Vaporize them before they send more thermonukes against our shields!”
Starship Mata Hari, joined by ships Altuna, Lorelei, Gondu, BattleMate, Inevitable and Flowering, all fired antimatter barrages against the three battleglobes. A streak of forty-two antimatter beams reached across space at the speed of light, seeking Anarchate victims.
Two were found. One vanished into Translation.
Matt snarled angrily. “Look for their gravity wave pulse! Anywhere! Behind us. Atop. Below. To one side. Find it!”
High Captain Yorkel blinked as they exited Translation. With a click to the AI, he gave the order he hated giving. “Ship AI, broadcast to those ships the offer of valuable intelligence! Say I know where to find Commander Chai!”
Chief Lark slashed his black tail against the metal of the Bridge floor, while his lifelong ally Malel looked at him with four eyes that showed the pink pupils of astonishment.
Yorkel slapped the Alert touchpad.
“We will survive, my battlemates! We have taken one of their ships, but we must survive to warn the rest of Combat Command! This is my aim. Stay with me!”
Matt’s mind split into ten components as the AIs of seven ships fed him data while Eliana, George and Suzanne all shouted in mindvoice, offering advice, suggestions, warnings and deep anger at the sneak attack by the Anarchate battleglobe commander. Then Mata Hari overrode his mental focus on the gravity wave vector of the surviving battleglobe, sending its voice broadcast into his mind and the minds of everyone else.
“Matthew Dragoneaux, High Captain Yorkel offers you valuable intelligence in return for the survival of his ship. He offers the location of your first enemy, Commander Chai of the Spelidon species.”
Matt’s mind warred against itself. He weighed the value of real time Anarchate intelligence versus his need for vengeance against the killer of the mind of Ocean. She had felt as real to him as Mata Hari, as Suzanne, as real as—
“An imperfect organic?” snarled the giant mindshape of BattleMind. “She was a birth-mate of mine! Eternal Love budded her off just as she budded off me and the minds of every T’Chak ship who has joined your war against the Anarchate. We do not allow any enemy organic to live!”
Thinking of the points made earlier by Suzanne and Eliana about how the Anarchate had finally awoken to the danger posed by his single ship and his crusade against cloneslavery, Matt showed his feral Vigilante look to BattleMind. “Agreed! She was every bit as real as me or Eliana or George or Suzanne. My ally.”
BattleMind’s angry red eyes showed surprise and his mindimage flared black wings as if trying to soften a rough landing. “You, you mean what you say, little organic.”
“Of course I do. See my memory of work as a cloneslave decanter in the Flesh Markets we just destroyed? I hated that job. I hated what they did. And I hated that they took and then killed my mother, my father and my four sisters!” Matt caught his mental breath. “And I hate that they have cost us the wonderful mind of your bud-off companion! But accepting this alien’s offer of intelligence in return for the survival of its ship is . . . is necessary to avoid the deaths of other living sentients, whether AI or organic. Will you allow me to handle this, my ally?”
BattleMind chomped its toothy jaws tight, then opened them slightly to mind-talk. “It will be as you wish. But observe the surface of the moon behind us. That is the least of what my anger demands in the future!”
Matt’s mind filled with Mata Hari’s sensor vidimage of the surface of the moon Salla.
A giant black crater stretched seventy kilometers wide where once lay the Anarchate naval base.
“It seems our 42 antimatter beams did not go to waste,” Matt said to the watching minds of his friends, organic and AI. “Though it makes me ill, I will speak with this alien Yorkel.”
High Captain Yorkel listened impassively to the response of this Human Dragoneaux as it told him what his fate and that of his crew would be.
“Yorkel, your offer is accepted. But for my anger at Commander Chai, your ship would have joined the other globeships on the Spectral Side.” The soft-skinned biped paused, looking around the empty space of its own Bridge. “My allies wish to extinguish you and your ship for your de
struction of the artificial intelligence that occupied our ship Ocean. I have convinced them to spare your lives. But not your ship. The four hundred and seventy-three lifeforms now aboard your ship Defiant will transfer to the six commerce freighters we are bringing over from Megil. After you board them, I care not where you go or what happens to you. But if you seek to attack me again, you will not survive. Do you accept?”
He knew in his double hearts he had no choice. Inhaling through his spiracles, he gave the only answer he could. “Yes, I accept,” he said in Brokeet click-speech. “Your opponent Commander Chai is currently working for Sector 14 Intelligence near the Crab Nebula of Perseus Arm. At star CC93721. Be warned that there are numerous battleglobes and Offense Remotes mounting guard of that space-borne installation. A visual of the base is attached to my response, along with copies of the few reports from him that are in our CPU. Satisfied?”
“Satisfied,” said the Human. “Your ship Defiant will be vaporized in four hours, or after every lifeform has departed, whichever happens first.”
“I have an intelligent CPU onboard, can it—”
“No!” said the Human in high-toned speech that denoted a degree of emotion, based on what little Combat Command’s Compendium of Species had to say about the Human species. “You killed my AI battlemate. Yours will also cease to exist.”
“Understood,” he said, signaling Chief Lark to cut transmission.
At least the Human, who knew enough Brokeet to mention the Spectral Side, had not vaporized them all. For there would be a future battle between him and this Human. Hopefully with a larger fleet at his side. And hopefully without the interference of Commander Chai. Which memory brought an inner glow of humor. Of course he would tachlink dispatch the vidrecord of this battle and his intelligence offer to Chai, with the explanation that now Chai and his superiors knew where the Human would next attack. Sometime in the future. Perhaps the provision of new intelligence on the Human would shield him from Combat Command’s displeasure at his surrender of his battleglobe to an enemy of the Anarchate. He hoped so. For this battle had now become personal.
Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) Page 11
