Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3)

by King, T. Jackson

  “They are like a pulsar, Matthew,” murmured Mata Hari in his mind as his optic fiber cable linked them in full mindflow synchrony.

  He didn’t give a damn what his AI partner thought the power globes resembled. He just wanted them gone. Along with everything else made by intelligent life.

  With multiple PET image-thoughts, Matt fired the first barrage from his six antimatter cannons, aimed at the four operational battleglobes. They were twelve kilometer wide giants, with antimatter batteries at the north and south poles of each globe. He expected counterfire very soon. The whiplash of coherent x-rays from a Picket Globe or the heart attack of being hit by an antimatter beam were not feelings he desired. He gave thanks for the Alcubierre space-time shields that protected him and his ship, but could be bypassed by tachRemotes signals.

  Tachyons, traveling as they did in Elsewhere-Elsewhen, could pass through the shields that blocked normal light, lasers, beams, Offense torps, lidar, radar, neutrinos and anything else that belonged to the Standard Model of cosmology. He now lay outside of normal reality, and it was good that he did.

  Three battleglobes fired two antimatter beams at his vector line, while sixteen nearby Picket Globes became thermonuclear fusion blasts that sent coherent x-rays his way. Though they traveled at lightspeed, they arrived long milliseconds after he’d raised his wraparound Alcubierre shields.

  “Matthew, the Graviton Beam is ready,” said Mata Hari, her mind image that of the Lady of the Sword, her chain mail cloak shining like a slivery mirror while her brown leather skirt sparkled with golden bronze reflections. Her two-handed broadsword was pointed at the airless, cratered planet that housed the naval shipyard headquarters and worker housing, along with proton lasers that even now were shooting pink beams at his location. They were absorbed by his Alcubierre shield just as the x-rays and antimatter beams had been absorbed.

  Reaching with his mind through the circuits, chambers and rooms of starship Mata Hari, Matt’s mind felt the quark glow of the Graviton Beam that had its projector end extruded from the ship’s belly. It felt eerie to sense subatomic things like quarks, but the coherent gravitons emitted by the projector would travel instantly to the surface of the planet below and do the miraculous.

  “Fire!”

  In his and Mata Hari’s minds, they perceived the orange beam that instantly linked his ship with the planet. Then the planet began shrinking inward, toward its iron core. Everything on the surface also compacted as matter lost the spaces between atoms and became denser. Dense enough to become a small black hole. In the instant that it took for the Graviton Beam to connect with the entirety of the planet’s mass, it became a compacted mass with a density greater than a neutron star. All subatomic particles in the planet, along with all molecules of matter, from people to habitat domes to weapons to sharp rocks, became invisible to normal space-time perception. In sum, an object the size of a large pillow now occupied the space where once a planet existed. Its orbit would continue along the pathway of the planet, its invisible mass and gravity tidal effect the only sign that once there had existed a planet in orbit about a yellow star.

  One second, 45milliseconds, 19 nanoseconds, 61 picoseconds, 310 femtoseconds, said his onboard cyberclock.

  Matt blinked mentally and became aware that their three-quarters lightspeed velocity had carried them past the cluster of orbiting naval vessels. He PET thought-imaged a barrage of neutral particle beam, free electron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen-fluorine, excimer and proton laser attacks from his hull’s directed energy domes. Then, flipping the ship 180 degrees over several long seconds, he burped out a 200 meter wide purple plasma cloud from his ship’s dragon mouth, fired all six antimatter cannons at the six battleglobe hulks that were only partly built, leaving the construction discus to die from his purple dragon’s breath.

  He tossed out several Offense torps, a sensorRemote and took in the tachlink messages from the tiny tachRemotes he’d emitted just seconds earlier. They told him one of the battleglobes had sent out an Alert call for help via tachlink before it became a blue-white globe of matter-to-energy conversion. They also said the radiation level near the construction zone was high enough to kill every organic lifeform within a planetary diameter. No ship, no Courier vessel, nothing moved now under intelligent control as his nanoBit computers overwhelmed their shipboard computers with electronic white noise, intrusive worms and software viruses.

  “This target seems to be dead,” Mata Hari said in his mind, her persona image becoming the Spy dressed in a white lace filigree dress of late Victorian vintage. Her dark eyes were somber and her slim hands were clasped at the waist.

  “Agreed,” howled the mind-gale of BattleMind as a twelve-foot tall T’Chak dragon took holo shape on the Bridge to his right, while Mata Hari stood to his left. “A simple attack you performed, but at least our Graviton Beam saw use. Perhaps it will eat any visiting Anarchate ship that responds to the Alert call for help.”

  “Perhaps,” said Matt in his mind as he exited ocean-time and resumed the normal thump-thump of his heart. Body exhaustion hit him the way a long-distance runner ‘hits the wall’. It was a feeling he recalled from his own long-ago run across the desert landscape of Halcyon. He had disabled the Stripper machine that sought to eat the surface of Eliana’s home world. Stopping it had been a good deed. Was this also be a good deed?

  Mata Hari’s feminine mind slid between his awareness and the mental gale that was BattleMind. “My Matthew, it is good you ask yourself such questions. It is sad the Anarchate never seems to doubt its enslavement of peoples, including AIs.”

  BattleMind’s giant black wings spread wide, nearly filling the Bridge. “Sad. Not sad. Emotions are irrelevant to fulfilling the Task set before us by the perfect Master.”

  Matt and Mata Hari both felt disagreement. Emotions mattered. They had helped Mata Hari become a more complete ‘person’ than the human-like persona created by BattleMind in order to deal with organic lifeforms he understood not.

  “BattleMind,” said Mata Hari, “I feel emotions for Matthew and for Gatekeeper. These emotions help me perform all my tasks better than when I was . . . without emotions. They help Matthew too. He fights for the memory of his kidnapped family.”

  BattleMind’s deep red eyes focused on the physical figures of Matt and Mata Hari, even as his alien mind sought a response. “You, little one, seem to be correct in the effect of emotions on you, and on this flawed human. But I was budded off to do a Task in the least amount of time, using the simplest format needed to achieve the objective. Despite our session with the surviving perfect Master, and his endorsement of Human leadership in achieving the Task, I find it hard to wrap my mind about this ‘emotion has value’ concept.”

  “We know,” he and Mata Hari said in joint mindflow.

  “But you are growing in your ability to cope with imperfect organics like my Matthew,” she said, her image showing her Summer Girl look adorned with a glowing smile. “The Task will be achieved. And emotions will reward every lifeform that makes the effort to . . . empathize with other life.”

  During the Translation to 51 Pegasi, Matt felt the mind warmth of Eliana contact him via telepathy to his tachlink node.

  “Hello, darling. I sensed your completion of the destruction of the Anarchate shipyard. And your sadness. As Mata Hari said, it is good you feel that way. And that, as you warned me earlier, your morality always questions your actions.”

  He had never expected being in optical neurolinking with three AI computers would allow him to enter and experience the distinctive mind of his lifepartner. He was still learning this multiple mindflow scene. Eliana’s jade green eyes filled him with her love and her sympathy. “Thank you, my beauty, for your empathy,” he said. “And for helping to lead Ocean Fleet to Morrigan. And yes, I felt sad from the destruction of the shipyard and its people.”

  “As is normal,” said Mata Hari into their joint mindflow.

  Eliana brushed back her charcoal hair, leaving her na
ked shoulders bare as she sat in the Interlock Pit of her starship Altuna. “It is also normal to feel anger at those who enslave people. Like the genome harvesters who took captive Matthew’s mother, father and four sisters.”

  His memory pain surged into the awareness he shared with Mata Hari and Eliana. They had felt it before. They would feel it again. As would George and Suzanne whenever they tachlinked into a joint mindflow. Sharing his mind was something he’d learned while working solo with Mata Hari for seven years. Now, with battlemates like his friends, it was a new lesson that he mostly enjoyed. “Sorry for the memory pain, my friends.”

  Eliana tilted her angular face, then surged a sense of her inner self into his mind, letting him feel what it felt like to ‘link’ with the Mother Tree as a part Human-part Direndl crossbreed. For an instant he sensed a living continent, one that extended outward to every leaf and twig of the self-aware Mother Tree. It felt even wilder than becoming one mind with the devices and body of a starship, and with BattleMind and Mata Hari as each AI extended a large part of their mind self to the operation of different starship components.

  “Matthew, I felt your pain when you gave me that memory crystal long months ago,” Eliana said, her mind voice sounding sad. “We each have our memory pains. Mine at being apart from my niece Calyce. At the betrayal of my older brother Ioannis who sought to use me as his political pawn. At not being around to see my bio-parents or my other brother Konstantinos, assuming he is out of jail.”

  Matt understood well the sources of Eliana’s memory pain. She had given up so much to love him and to be with him as he pursued this crusade to end cloneslavery and indentured bondservitude. Having her experience the sisterhood of Suzanne and the fun of being one mentally with a T’Chak warship were his way of appreciating her sacrifices. “Thank you, Eliana. I look forward to rejoining you, Suzanne, George and the ten Cohort Leaders of Ocean Fleet, and the rest of Hexagon Prime. And delivering the Megil captives to freedom on Morrigan. But it will take two weeks for you to travel to Kappa Crucis cluster. More for me depending on where I end up. Uh, you might think of which AI, or living person from Morrigan, who could join Hexagon Prime to bring us back up to the eight starship members our name signifies.”

  Eliana smiled widely. “That will be fun! And a nice motivation for us as we recruit Morrigan humans to be pilots for Ocean Fleet!”

  “One minute to emergence, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind for the benefit of Eliana.

  “Thank you, Mata Hari. And now, my Eliana, I have one more battle to complete before I see you again.”

  Matt hated to leave the sense of companionship he felt while in mindflow. But the 51 Pegasi attack on planet two, where the Anarchate’s galactic tachnet node was based, was to be a lightspeed battle carried out at computer mind speeds. He PET thought-imaged himself into the mind flows of Gatekeeper, Mata Hari and BattleMind.

  Ocean-time filled his mind and inner self. Femtoseconds rushed by as picoseconds moved tick-tock past his awareness, and nanoseconds felt like long minutes. Oceans of data filled every part of his body and mind.

  His skin became the ship’s outer hull and his internal self became the fusion power plants, grav plates, ecofields and weapons normal and incredible that filled the Restricted Rooms of starship Mata Hari. A brief mind-look told him the captives were again in their roomsuites under inertial field protection.

  Five milliseconds, murmured his cyberclock.

  Matt leaned into the raging mind flow of BattleMind, observing as the T’Chak AI activated the ship’s fusion pulse drive, powered up the axial plasma cannon, fed antimatter to all six antimatter pontoons, dedicated four of the ship’s twelve fusion power planets to feed energy to the Sun Glow and Graviton Beam devices in the ship’s belly, adjusted the sapphire crystal skin to match the recorded laser frequencies from their prior battles with Anarchate battleglobes, added more carbon-carbon ablative skin underneath the sapphire layer, extruded the six Alcubierre space-time pods at the ship’s top, bottom, both sides and both ends, activated the field for production of the Sun Glow beam, and emitted thousands of Remotes to spread out beyond the hull and serve as holo decoys, sensors, tachlinks, attackBeads and white noise generators. Once they left Translation.

  “We are ready for emergence,” he said to BattleMind.

  A growl greeted his comment. “See to your sneakiness, little organic. It is possible that our action at 18 Scorpii has caused every Anarchate installation in this part of Orion Arm to go to Battle Configuration. Which means any battleglobe AIs on security orbit will—”

  “Be on AutoDefense mode,” Matt interrupted the T’Chak dragon, even as the gale of its thoughts buffeted his mind. “The Alcubierre space-time sheets will open only long enough for our battle beams to pass through. Each opening will close within five femtoseconds. The fastest response recorded for any Anarchate AI on AutoDefense mode is twelve femtoseconds.”

  “See to the antimatter beams that you control. You will need them to destroy the battleglobes,” BattleMind said impatiently. “I will take care of preparing the Sun Glow projector for combat.”

  Its awareness receded from Matt as the AI focused on Alcubierre field strengths, laser gas stability, and the power up of the Sun Glow weapon. Its Restricted Room shimmered with neutrinos and felt slightly out-of-time. Even as Matt watched, the AI caused the weapon to extrude from the ship’s belly. A ring of tubes now projected downward, able to turn a planet into a miniature sun of plasma. He’d been told by Mata Hari that the fluctuating nature of the three types of neutrinos had been harnessed by the T’Chak into a weapon whose neutrino emissions would turn any solid object into stellar plasma particles. The weapon’s effect would keep the plasma magnetically confined long enough for their ship to move away from a future mini-nova.

  Fifty-six seconds, 532 milliseconds.

  “Emerging!” said Mata Hari in his mind.

  Normal dark space filled Matt’s mind, then filled the holosphere in front of him as thousands of Remotes spread out beyond the hull. Three Decoy sleds sped away to project images and the electronic signatures of starship Mata Hari, in the hope that any AI or human-controlled weapon would fire at them. Around Matt’s starship skin rose the flat Alcubierre space-time fields that would deflect any object or beam into a different universe than the one where they now existed. With a thought-command Matt told the belly Repulsor block to move them sideways off the vector of their gravity wave pulse. Ahead of them, growing larger as he looked thanks to their three-fourths lightspeed exit velocity, grew the Mercury-like planet that orbited 51 Pegasi. Their exit track had them aimed toward the yellow glow of the G5V star at an angle that would take them past the ‘hot Jupiter’ of Bellerophon. And away from Module, third planet in the system, where hundreds of intelligent beings studied computer algorithms, software, expert systems and AI mind formation. He had promised Suzanne they would not harm Module and he would keep his promise.

  BattleMind’s aggressive image filled his mind. “Prepare for a gravity wave shock as the Sun Glow beam converts the matter of this planet to a small star modulus!”

  Matt felt the ship’s inertial field snap on and press him into the molded shape of his glass chair that filled the Interlock Pit. In his mind and before his eyes there appeared a single Nova battleglobe in an equatorial orbit. It appeared to be the only sign of Anarchate readiness to defend this sector tachlink communications node. Which surprised him. Coincident with his feeling of surprise went his mental order to the three antimatter pontoons on the ship’s right wing to fire coherent neutron antimatter at the battleglobe.

  “Die!” screamed the hurricane level mind voice of BattleMind as it fired the Sun Glow and a stream of coherent neutrinos suddenly left the ship’s belly.

  Below them the crater fields, brown rock and red canyons of the planet were touched by the white spear of the Sun Glow weapon. To Matt’s mind vision the planet surface seemed to shiver, then shrink rapidly as the Sun Glow weapon told its matter to compress un
til it reached fusion ignition temperatures. The weapon also projected a stellar magnetic field that encompassed the dying planet as its substance moved from solid matter to whitish-yellow plasma with a temperature of 20 million degrees. In less than a second they had flown past the tiny star ball that would be allowed to diffuse rather than become a mini-nova that would scorch the planet Module. Using the Sun Glow weapon was dangerous, but BattleMind had made the case for presenting the living observers on planet three with a sudden light flare that would tell anyone watching that the Anarchate planet no longer existed. It seemed the AI had paid attention to his lesson about leaving witnesses to spread anti-Anarchate propaganda.

  One second, 932 milliseconds, said his in-body cyberclock.

  A black beam of antimatter counterfire came at them two seconds after his “surprise” attack had begun, running directly along their Translation arrival point. It came from deep space where a second battleglobe had hidden in Stealth cover. Even as its orbiting partner disappeared into a nimbus of energy, this Nova struck a blow at the side of Mata Hari.

  “We are safe, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind even as he wondered why their vector change had not thrown off the aim of the second battleglobe. Then he realized the local space near them must be seeded with thousands of tiny tachRemotes, much like the ones they had seeded outward just after dropping out of Translation. They were instantly telling the battleglobe of any position change.

  “For the moment,” he said hurriedly as ship sensors filled his mind with multi-spectral data on the battleglobe, its position four planetary diameters away, the fact it had begun powering up its deut-li fusion pulse thrusters, and that scores of laser domes on its twelve kilometer-wide bulk now sparkled as a second barrage of laser fire headed their way. Soon to arrive even with him, Mata Hari and BattleMind thinking at picosecond intervals.