Was that a touch of amusement he felt from Suit’s Tactical CPU? “Complying.”
Losing mind communion as he was lifted out of the Pit and into Suit lasted only four hundred milliseconds. But much can happen in less than a second.
Chai tried to ignore the flashing Purple Alert lights and sonic hoots that warned of eco-field loss. Four of his staff were running or flopping toward the entry hatch to don vacsuits. His Loglan ally Kontine stayed with him, working his own holo pedestal in their efforts to contact Brrzeet, Yorkel or both of them. The disaster that had unfolded in the last four seconds could barely be believed. Blue-white matter-to-energy explosions, the gravity pulses that hammered the habitat globes, and the deaths of thousands of Anarchate beings as battleglobes vanished from the defense shells arranged by Yorkel made his fur stand on end.
“Commander, a T’Chak warship has appeared just a few nipads from this globe,” called out Kontine over the noise and movements of his fleeing staff.
Chai saw it appear on one of his pedestal holos, then disappear into a gray oval that seemed to be one of the Alcubierre space-time energy shields that Yorkel had described. But why was it so close to them when hundreds of other enemy ships lay thousands of nipads away?
The globe’s wallscreen brightened with a flat image. It was the human Dragoneaux. Dressed now in a white combat suit that had laser pulse cannons mounted on each shoulder. The Human seemed to be flying among nearby habitat globes. The nearly hairless face of the human was visible through the clear faceplate. “Chai, I’m coming for you. Don’t try to flee. My ship and I control this local space. Anyway, there are so many nanoShells and drifting energy cubes you could be injured if you left Globe 841. But do put on your vacsuit. As should your amphibian ally.” The Human’s laser cannon shot out a green beam that hit something off image. “And the reason you cannot contact High Commander Brrzeet is because the Orko has left his Command Node and entered the Courier that was attached to his globe. He plans to escape. And to do something deadly to this entire installation. Be ready for pickup!” The image blinked off, to be replaced with jagged curves indicative of signal overload.
Brrzeet not in command anymore? Fleeing? Chai had wondered about the Courier but had assumed it was to facilitate meetings between Brrzeet and Yorkel. No so, it seemed. Kontine turned all four eyestalks his way. “Commander?”
He stiffened his whiskers to the mode of Determination Aroused. “Do as the hairless biped says! Find a vacsuit. As I am doing!”
The two of them scurried to different parts of the globe, opening storage bubbles until each found a vacsuit that would fit their shapes. In his mind, Chai felt anger at Brrzeet. Threats and fear words he was used to. Leaving one’s command at the moment of ultimate crisis was not . . . the action of a member of an Ancient species. If he lived, Chai knew he would report the Orko’s dereliction to some lifeform on the Council of Sixteen.
Skyree gave thanks for his wings. Only by flying down transit tubes had he been able to reach Globe 001. Now he fought for access to one of the Supply Tubes that was outfitted for passengers versus cargo. With a downward slash of his beak on the body part of a large Orko, he gained entry through the mid-body hatch. Entering, he took to the air again as the ship’s gravplates kept ground-bound species tied to the floor. Flying half-dressed in his vacsuit was not his normal mode of travel. But it promised him survival and the chance to live another day.
He took roost on top of an eco-field generator at the back of the passenger hold, ignoring the fifty-group of beings who’d also reached Globe 001 and this ship. Now, if only the pilot-captain of the craft would close the access hatches before the horde of refugees outside filled the Supply Tube to eco-overload, he might find a cosmo-astronomy perch in another star system. Hopefully one without the blue-white explosions of battleglobes becoming metallic vapor.
Brrzeet settled onto the pilot bench of his Courier ship, slapping on the NavComputer with one hand. While not an AI, the device did accept voice commands.
“Detach from Globe 223! Move out! Avoid other traffic and seek open space for Translation.”
“Translation from within the heliopause of this star system violates—”
“Override Sigma fourteen thirty-two! Now move!”
“Complying.”
He reached out and tapped on the control pedestal that linked him with the Offense sled which floated nearby. Its simple Control Mind also accepted verbal direction.
“Offense sled 42! Activate the Bethe Inducer! But do not fire until you receive my verbal and touchkey commands!”
“Activating,” muttered the sled in simple Belizel.
He saw from the front holo that the sled was not following. “Follow this Courier, you neuron-dead device! Follow until given orders otherwise.”
“Complying.”
Brrzeet now knew there was an entity more mentally deficient than the personal cook he had brought into private service last month. The sled. Or, the sled’s Control Mind lacked the neuron capacity of his cook. Feeling relief that he was now nipads away from his Command Node, he awaited eagerly the moment when he was clear of the globe cluster that made up Sector 14 Intelligence base. Once clear, he would order the Offense sled to fire its Bethe Inducer at the star and cause a nova explosion. With the Inducer it mattered not that the local star was an F-class main sequence star which did not meet the mass requirements for a core collapse by natural means. Once the Inducer fired, he and the Courier would enter Translation, headed for Central Nexus to report on the sad loss of his base due to the insane attack by this renegade Human. And no one would be left alive to say otherwise.
“Matthew!” cried Mata Hari in his mind just before he reached Globe 841 and Chai. “Brrzeet is leaving in his Courier and has activated the Bethe Inducer onboard the Offense sled he controls! My limpet complink reports he plans to make the local star go nova once he clears the base habitats.”
Why did everything complicated happen when he was in Suit? While he thought at ocean-time superspeed, dear Suit could only move at slow real-time velocities. Though his shoulder cannons did offer lightspeed lasers.
“Matt?” called Eliana from the Interlock Pit of Altuna. “I heard that! The fleet is now safe, all battleglobes are dead except for Yorkel’s, and George is evacuating slaver captives from the slaver ships. We can’t let the star go nova while so many people—”
“Understood,” he said mentally, feeling the presence of his Hexagon Prime allies. “I’m taking care of it. Now.”
“Six seconds, 34 milliseconds, 80 nanoseconds, six picoseconds and three femtoseconds.”
PET thought-images flashed over the tachlink to Mata Hari. She nodded, shifted stance in her chain-mail, and pointed her sword at the image of the fleeing Courier ship.
“Limpet, tell the sled’s Control Mind to hold its fire until beyond the base habitat globes, then change its target coordinates to match those of Brrzeet’s Courier.” Matt’s boots mag-connected to the transit tube that gave access to Chai’s globe. “Have the sled fire the Bethe Inducer at the Courier once both ships are a thousand kilometers out. Have it change from nova fire to neutron star particle conversion. Don’t want the heavy neutron particles to latch onto us!”
Eliana looked briefly worried, then smiled. “Mata Hari has a sense of humor, Matthew. That small a mass, condensed to a mass small enough to create neutron star particles, would not gravity-tug anything that lay beyond a kilometer!”
He smiled, waiting as one shoulder laser cut through the transit tube metal skin. The laser happened at lightspeed. Every other action of Suit seemed slower than sunrise on the dark side of Earth’s Moon. As he waited in ocean-time, he rewarded himself with vidimages of the captives rescued by George and Ariadne. The shuttle had already matched airlocks with four of the twelve slaver ships, allowing George to enter, locate the place holding the captives, then move the hibernating captives into Ariadne since none of them wore vacsuits and all of them had need of handling by the shuttle�
��s servebots.
“Matt, this is the kind of work I love!” George said.
“Agreed. It is the small part of what comes with ending cloneslavery. Even if only on the local level, a few people at a time.” Matt gave a new PET thought-image order. “I’m having Mata Hari attach limpet complinks so she can move the slaver ships out of the base and into open space where a fleet ship can vaporize them. Including any flesh samples already taken for planned cloning!”
George’s mental disgust matched his. Captives taken by genome harvester slavers were simply walking reservoirs of living cells. Keeping the captives alive until they reached a planet with cloning manufactories allowed the slavers to avoid investing in expensive refrigeration units. Minor amounts of food and water cost nothing beyond what they already carried for the crew. Well, this time these twelve slaver ships would never again harvest any lifeform for cloning!
“Seven seconds, four milliseconds, nine nanoseconds, 53 picoseconds and 70 femtoseconds,” said his cyberclock.
Suit’s Tactical CPU spoke. “Cutting through completed. Boot magfields activated. Shall I transport your corpus into the globe?”
Matt smiled at the small element of humor that his seven-year partner, Suit, had learned, like Mata Hari, from its long association with his mind. While Suit’s weapons and functions like the Nullgrav plates in his boots operated at slow speed, it thought every bit as fast as Mata Hari.
“Yes, Suit, transport me into the globe. Be on Threat Alert with your weapons, but there should not be any opposition.”
“Complying. Shall I broadcast your thought-words by radio to the two lifeforms inside? Since they and my shell operate far slower than we think, you could remain in ocean-time link with the fleet.”
He liked how Suit had grown beyond offering weapons options, status updates and Threat Assessments. “Yes, do so.”
Mata Hari’s awareness grew larger in his mind. “Matthew, High Commander Brrzeet’s Courier ship has left the base locality. Do you wish to link into my limpet and observe the demise of this lifeform?”
It would be selfish of him to observe the Orko by vidimage and translated speech, but he and Mata Hari had taken risks in their Dark Energy arrival in this system. It was only fitting that he observe the completion of one matter. And recording the Orko’s effort to make the local star go nova would make for instructive education for Yorkel and Chai. And for alien species elsewhere in the Milky Way.
“Yes, Mata Hari. Link me in.”
Chai stayed very still as the Human Vigilante walked into his globe with the metal feet of its combat suit gripping dead gravplates with magfields. They’d lost all eco-fields, gravity and air a moment earlier. He and Kontine were in vacsuits with external Ears attuned for radio comlinks. The white armor of the Human’s suit showed the head and shoulders of some kind of animal predator, a lifeform that had not been mentioned in his studies of the Human species. Perhaps he would have a chance to study the biped’s home world later. If he survived this encounter.
“Your commands?”
The helmet faceplate cleared to allow him to see the alien’s two brown eyes. No Spelidon had brown eyes. Only black eyes with oval irises. But he was used to the eyestalks of Kontine. He could cope with this minor strangeness. The Human’s combat suit did not move, although the shoulder laser cannons swung apart, with one focusing on him and one on Kontine.
“Follow. Do not resist the tractor beam that my suit will emit. Safety lies in my ship nearby. Do not transmit anything and do no hostile action.”
The even tone of the Human’s radio voice must mean something, but Chai had no idea what. “Complying,” he said in imitation of simple computer minds. “Take us as you wish.”
The sudden jerk of the tractor beam was still a shock even though the Human had warned them. Still, it was better than being incinerated by a laser pulse cannon. With Kontine’s oval vacsuit floating next to him, they followed the Human as its combat suit widened the hatch entry enough to allow the three of them to exit the remains of Globe 841.
Brrzeet felt relief as the Courier cleared the base globe cluster and arrived in open space. The hundreds of T’Chak warships ignored him and seemed intent on eliminating the remnants of Remotes and sensors that Yorkel had seeded in the system. Well, his Offense sled could help with that! He reached out and touched the pad that linked him with the Control Mind of the sled.
“Offense sled 42, feel my bodyheat imprint and hear my words. Acquire your target and activate the Bethe Inducer. I wish to see the target’s corona brighten before this ship departs for Central Nexus.”
“Activating,” said the sled’s simple Control Mind.
Emission status lights flared across the holo pedestal that served him for both flight control and contact with the separate Offense sled. A change in the sled’s image distracted him from his real-time watching of the orange-yellow F-series star that anchored the asteroid belt and the base.
“Target is the star!” he cried to Control Mind as the sled turned to point its Bethe Inducer projector at the Courier and himself. “Override—”
The shimmer of a Bethe Inducer engaging its transmutation function showed in the holo. Before he could finish his slow verbal override command, the shimmer filled the holo.
An overwhelming light passed into him and all about him. Then sensation ceased.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Matt left the sound and vidimage of Brrzeet’s demise to hear something more welcome. George was aboard Ariadne and had completed the slaver captive evacuation during the time he and Suit had spent capturing Chai and the rat’s Loglan assistant. His battlemate’s face loomed in his mind as the minds of Mata Hari, Eliana, Suzanne, Sarah, Rafael and other Hexagon Prime members faded to the sidelines.
“Matt, great news! We rescued 131 captives from the twelve slaver ships. There were seven humans among the group, including that neurowhipped guy who stood up to Chai.” George’s mind passed him multiple mind images of scores of aliens lying within the Community Hall space of Mata Hari, their bodies protected by accel-couches extruded by the flexmetal floor. Inertial fields held them within the couches.
“Wonderful! How soon before the captives recover consciousness?”
“Mata Hari says five more hours,” George said from the hall, still wearing his combat suit for the ease of maintaining lightspeed mental link with Matt and other members of Hexagon Prime.
“We should have left this system by then and be on our way to Morrigan. I’m sure Governor O’Davoren will be willing to accept our freed captives. And to hear battle reports from their forty Morrigan volunteer pilots!”
“Sounds good, Matt,” George said. “Uh, how long will Ocean Fleet stay near Dagda star? Long enough for another central park party?”
“For sure,” he said, then recalled a plan he’d discussed with Eliana before they’d left Morrigan with the fleet. “But sooner than later the fleet will need to split up and mount attacks on Anarchate targets in Norma, Scutum-Crux, Sagittarius, Orion and Perseus arms.”
George’s black eyebrows wrinkled. “So we move to the Big Time?”
Matt wondered what George meant by ‘Big Time’ but a databyte nanocube in his visual cortex supplied a reference to something called a ‘circus.’ “Well, yes, though I doubt there will be any performing animal acts.”
George grinned. “Was wondering if the kid raised on Thuringia would know what a circus was. Anyway, maybe we will gain some more alien pilot volunteers from among the captives we now have. Gotta have more than Toktaleen and that Dolmat herbivore lady who joined up in Morrigan.”
He agreed. The fight against cloneslavery was for the freedom of infants in all species, and the prohibition of cloning any thinking lifeform and impressing them into a lifetime of slavery. “George, feel free to return to your ship Inevitable. I’m boarding Mata Hari now with Chai and his assistant. Gatekeeper will take them off my hands as I return to my Interlock Pit.”
His ally nodded, then moved his m
ind to the distant mental horizon that was peopled by every mind, organic and AI, of Hexagon Prime. Maybe he and Eliana could meet in person, in normal real-time, before they all began the weeks-long trip back to Morrigan space.
Suzanne brought the 502 members of Ocean Fleet into close proximity to the habitat globe cluster of the Intelligence base. She had asked Rafael and Sarah to oversee the continuing evacuation of base personnel into Supply Tubes and the dozen non-military Courier ships. It seemed at least three thousand lifeforms had survived the incredibly short, incredibly violent battle between her fleet and the 160 battleglobes of Yorkel’s fleet. It had been hurtful to lose the AI minds of five ships to the kamikaze asteroid and Supply Tube antimatter attacks.
“Suzanne,” called her lovely George in her mind’s-eye mental vision. “I’m done with captive rescue and I’m back onboard Inevitable. Need any help with anything? Like the evacuation of Yorkel’s battleglobe?”
She sent him an impulse of heart love. And a promise of another private picnic onboard either her ship Lorelei or on his ship. “Not needed. Flowering of the hexagon has overseen that. She arranged for her own shuttle to transport the four hundred and seven crew of Yorkel’s ship to Globe 001, where people are boarding transports for evacuation. Yorkel himself she deposited with Mata Hari while Matt was capturing Chai. Did you notice the demolition of Brrzeet’s Courier by his own Offense sled?”
“Yes.” George’s middle-aged face grew pensive. “Damned crazy what that Orko alien planned to do. Evaporate the whole system and presumably tell the Council of Sixteen to blame Matt.” His expression brightened as he felt her heart love. “What’s next?”
“A Battle Council mindlink meeting of everyone in Hexagon Prime, in a few minutes, after Matt is back in his Pit and linked in. We have losses to grieve for. And allies to thank.”
Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) Page 29
