Six seconds, three hundred nanoseconds, Mata Hari spoke in his mind.
“Thank you, my dear partner, for mostly shielding me from that inferno of thought,” Matt said.
It went on like that for four full minutes as Matt perceived two computers thinking in lightspeed mode, rarely offering a comment, most of the time being spent in thinking ahead to the final minute when any attack would materialize from Anarchate sources while they worked to maneuver on random vectors to avoid staying in one place too long. Matt smiled to himself. The old Vigilante lesson of “track ‘em, strike ‘em and be elsewhere when the Anarchate battleglobe shows up” was exactly what they were doing as the final minute approached. Except this time, a Vigilante was hanging around to slug it out with several battleglobes.
“—and those purple globes are so big,” came Eliana’s soft voice as his mind allowed four minutes of normal speech to impact his mind. “We’re also moving sideways, and the grey Alcubierre fields are on now. Sure hope no one drops some super-megaton Remotes onto us. Or tries a side shot from an x-ray Remote in hopes of zipping through the overlap edges of the space-time shields. Could that really happen, Matthew? Do you—”
Three minutes fifty eight seconds said Mata Hari, her attention focused on direct routing of broadcast power to all weapons. She had stolen power from internal gravplates not needed to hold down people in rooms not occupied by organics. And the breathable air supply to each sector of the starship now had a backup ecofield tank in case the adaptive optics of the outer flexhull was penetrated by a beam or nanoRemote.
Matt thought Eliana’s worry about side-penetrating beams was overstated, but there did exist centimeter-wide gaps where the five space-time fields overlapped. While the overlapping prevented any straight-on penetration of a beam, someone or something shooting at a nearly flat angle might be able to insert a beam through the tiny gap between the two fields. He PET mind-imaged the worry and the solution to Mata Hari for relay to BattleMind. He’d be in direct contact with that raging mind in short seconds as the four light minutes mark was reached.
In his mind, four light minutes passed since their Translation exit, the gravity wave pulse of their arrival and now the light image of their ship and its weapons firing would be visible to normal light telescopes based on the rock ball. The scopes would likely be monitored by slow human people, but the photon input of each scope would surely be routed directly to the Admin AI and the five operational Novas. Tachlink signals from ground to starship would exceed the slight delay caused by EMF signaling. So in a few seconds past four light minutes, the Combat CPUs of each Nova starship would know about Matt, starship Mata Hari and the incoming AM beams—even as those beams struck the hulls of the five Novas. What would the Combat CPUs do in the small time space between seeing his ship and being hit by antimatter beams?
CHAPTER EIGHT
The forward holosphere blossomed with white flame as the first wave of six black antimatter beams struck various parts of the five Novas in geosync orbit above the rock ball. The blasts expanded as perfect spheres since there was no gravity to cause part of the total mater-to-energy plasma globe to deform. Only space and solid matter of kilometers worth of metal hull, armor, habitat cubes, control junctures, deut-li storage tanks and a few fusion power plants stood in the way of the AM globe. Those items soon vanished into gamma rays, red gases and yellow bursts as artificial lightning sprang from one fragment to another. That first volley of beams completed its strike. Soon to be followed by AM beam barrages two and three.
Matt mind-imaged the lightspeed destruction even before it was rerouted to the holosphere for eventual viewing by his normal speed guests. In his mind, death happened.
Three of the Nova battleglobes destroyed themselves as four AM beams hit the exact center of their mass, propelling the coherent AM plasma deep into each ship’s interior. As the roiling whiteness of total matter-to-energy annihilation ate deeper into the three ships, the onboard fusion reactors lost containment either directly or indirectly through vaporization of their magcoil control links. Whatever the final cause, the uncontained fusion plasma of at least ten fusion reactors per battleglobe now added their violence to the incoming total annihilation. Three thousand beings died as each thousand-member Nova crew died with their ship.
One surviving Nova lost a third of its north pole substance since its projected location was slightly different than what BattleMind and Mata Hari had computed. That Nova spun to the side, Repulsor blocks moving it sideways away from the vector of Matt’s first AM beams.
The fifth Nova had moved outside the target point of the first wave AM beam aimed at it. That good luck allowed its Combat CPU a few nanoseconds to think. Its image shimmered with the stretched-space look of a startup by its Alcubierre Drive as the onboard CPU tried to throw its home out to another part of space before more AM beams could arrive, no matter the effect a completed Translation might have on the nearby shipyard rock ball.
It failed as, twenty nanoseconds later, the second wave of six AM beams struck a little further out than the computed stationary location of each globeship. The fifth Nova’s sideways push by Repulsor fields took it directly into two of BattleMind’s follow-on antimatter beams. It too converted itself into a polychrome cloud of plasma and minor metal pieces.
But Nova four, moving under control despite the loss of one-third of its body mass, suddenly fired neutron antimatter beams along the vector of approach of Mata Hari’s AM beams.
Sooner than he could blink two black beams passed to the starboard side of Mata Hari, their location well beyond the Alcubierre flat space-time fields thanks to the Repulsor field that had moved them sideways and off their original vector line.
“Impudent ship full of stupid organics!” snarled BattleMind deep in Matt’s mind, the force of its thought-speech-image shaking him to the core. But he stayed alert enough to see the Sun Glow room emit a broad yellow spear of coherent fusion that fifty seconds later would strike the fourth Nova and turn it into a few whisps of star plasma.
Matt’s mind now filled with the effects of the laser beam barrage and the two antimatter barrages that were aimed at the eighteen hulls under construction as they orbited just above the rock ball’s Admin dome. Violence filled his visual cortex and then blazed across the forward holosphere as each hull was struck solidly, with only the six hit by proton, carbon dioxide, excimer and hydrogen-fluorine lasers retaining any semblance of shape. The AM beams vaporized twelve hulls into balls of incandescent whiteness, while the lasers evaporated large holes in the remaining six hulls. A single ten-centimeter wide AM beam speared through the debris cloud to impact the Admin dome on the rock ball’s surface, leaving behind a crater 500 meters deep and three kilometers wide. To one side the landing field lasers were vaporized by follow-on proton beam strikes, while a backup fusion power plant disappeared in the glow of coherent HF laser fire.
His mind brightened with the oncoming strike of three free electron laser beams fired by the surviving Nova as the distance between Mata Hari and the Nova shrank to thirty light seconds. The brown beams disappeared into the forward Alcubierre field sheet before Matt could feel afraid, worried or think of taking some action.
The six supply ships broke apart under BattleMind’s laser attack as Mata Hari’s outer skin of beam warts targeted ships as directed by the T’Chak AI, leaving Mata Hari to turn two AM pontoons towards the two courier ships that were moving outsystem under full deut-li thrust. The lightspeed black beams impacted the two ships, evaporating them into charged electrons, neutral particles and random protons.
Fatigue washed over Matt, leaving his mind feeling dull from the constant impact of thoughts from Mata Hari and BattleMind. From across the Bridge came Eliana’s voice, saying something in reaction to what she had seen on the holosphere and the side wall panel that showed the first image of the shipyard shortly after they arrived five light minutes out from the shipyard.
“Matt, uh, maybe I’m not seeing it correctly but .
. . but the destruction on screen accounts for two courier ships. Weren’t there three in those first images?” she said.
It took fifty picoseconds for his numb brain to process the import of Eliana’s words, then he screamed mentally.
“Lift ship! Lift ship! The third courier has gone stealth and is trying for a beam shot into the field overlap spaces!”
BattleMind’s hurricane of mind thoughts impacted him directly, with no buffering by Mata Hari as she fed power to the belly Repulsor blocks and set the ship to spinning much the way Matt had done long ago when a sneak attack had hit them at Hagonar Station.
“Where!” roared BattleMind.
“The sun!” croaked Matt, barely able to withstand the mental impact. “Its neutrino emissions are lost among the emissions from the local star.”
Two left-side AM pontoons twisted to point sideways toward the local yellow-white star.
Two things happened simultaneously.
A red neutral particle beam laser struck Mata Hari’s left side Alcubierre sheet, disappearing into its grey otherness.
Two black AM beams shot toward the local sun, their vectors a guess by an alien AI with a short temper. Though no doubt the incoming laser’s vector was the primary guideline for their return fire.
A second neutral particle beam laser slithered between the left side and belly Alcubierre sheets, entering the centimeter wide gap that was exposed for only a few milliseconds before the ship’s rotation removed the gap exposure.
A few milliseconds were enough. The laser was not deflected by Mata Hari’s local magnetic field shield and hit the sapphire crystal adaptive optics defense. The beam’s thousand megawatt power was enough to vaporize a meter square area of crystals, hit the carbon-carbon ablative layers underneath, penetrate the alien version of Kevlar lying beneath the ablatives and then drill into the flexhull that lay underneath the shielding that had briefly failed.
Matt felt a burning in his left kidney as the starship that his mind wore like a suit of clothing screamed its inner pain from a lucky laser shot. His mind whirling with worry that one of the refugee humans might have been killed by the laser strike, Matt used his interior videyes to check on the few rooms that lay at the point of the laser’s penetration.
The beam had struck only five meters into his starship, but its strike point was one of the bedrooms occupied by an Omega family.
The children!
The bedroom videye showed Rebecca’s four children enveloped in the clamshell sides of their beds, their bodies restrained by local inertial fields. The bathroom that lay to one side of the large bedroom was . . . a yellow glow as the laser beam sputtered out from impacting the room’s mirror. The beam splintered into a million flares as the mirror broke its coherence. On the other side of the bathroom lay Rebecca and her husband Rafael, just now rising as the glare of laser impact spread through the clear optical matter walls. Matt’s stomach clenched as the faces of Rebecca and Rafael showed a look of horror, then sudden relief as the mirror’s black scorch mark faded as the optical matter recovered and the living shapes of their children were clear to view. He felt sudden relief, then dark satisfaction as, in a side of his mind, the outside space image flared with the destruction of the third courier ship.
“A useful tactic, this hiding in front of a star,” BattleMind roared into Matt’s inner ear, the slithering shape of the T’Chak dragon showing a predatory hunger as the last bit of Anarchate resistance melted away under the impact of the second AM beam. “Though the field overlap gap is something I had not expected to be a danger.”
Matt blinked, bit his tongue, swallowed stomach acid, then gave a mental nod to Mata Hari for her careful AM beam shots while reminding the starship’s alien AI that a human had saved the ship from greater damage.
“Eliana my lifemate was the one who detected the absent courier ship,” Matt PET mind-image talked into the hurricane buffeting of BattleMind’s normal thought mode. “She also mentioned it before Translation ended as something for Mata Hari to be alert for. Which Mata Hari responded to by rotating this ship, thus allowing only a brief exposure of the seam gap to any offensive strike.”
The T’Chak dragon’s red eyes filled Matt’s mind, as if the crocodile head of the dragon now lay just inches from his nose. “So she did. So did my interface persona that claims the name of Mata Hari. It seems that other species besides you humans know how to be sneaky.”
“Correct,” Matt said quickly into the hailstone impact of BattleMind’s thoughts. “Which is why we need a few more combat encounters with the Anarchate, after we deliver the refugee humans to the colony world at Kappa Crucis. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” muttered BattleMind as part of its alien consciousness saw to the automated repair of the ship’s flexhull fabric, replacing the areas burned out by the neutral particle beam’s impact. “Tend to your organic refugees while I move this ship outward to open space. I believe we will Translate as soon as we clear this asteroid belt. It is clear that some Anarchate minds can be . . . inventive with combat tactics. I prefer to be in Translation to an unknown target world before more battleglobes arrive in this system.”
Matt mentally sighed. Then, with a shudder he left ocean-time and blinked his eyes in slow, slow, natural blinks. He looked to his left.
“Eliana, thank you! Your warning kept us from serious harm. But one laser beam hit Rebecca’s rooms. No one was hurt, but everyone is scared.” Her green eyes widened as she heard the news. “Will you help me out of this Pit and walk with me to Rebecca’s roomsuite? I want to see their children . . . alive and healthy.”
She smiled, then sat forward as the clamshells of the accel-couch retracted. “Sure Matt. I’d love to go with you.”
Together two humans, one a Pure Breed cyborg-human symbiont and the other a Derindl-Human crossbreed, walked out of the Bridge and into the Spine hallway, their steps echoing down its two kilometer length. This time they walked as one. One in spirit and one in togetherness they were. And one in mutual love.
Sarah Vasiliades left her roomsuite at the verbal request of Matt, which came over her room intercom. Checking her blue jumpsuit in a wall mirror just before the slidedoor opened, she stepped into the Spine hallway. Eliana and Matt, both leaning into each other, looked dead tired. And their clothes were rumpled. But the eyes of both showed a concern that made her anxious to hear them.
“Yes? Is there a problem?”
Matt winced. Eliana grimaced. “Mistress, the battle is ended but an Anarchate courier ship sneaked a laser beam past our shields. It impacted in the roomsuite of Rebecca and Rafael.”
“They’re hurt!”
“No! No one is hurt,” Eliana said. “But the blast hit the bathroom used by the children and was seen by them and their parents. We are on our way to reassure them. Will you join us?”
“Of course. But one moment.” Sarah tapped open her roomsuite’s slidedoor and called inside. “Gatekeeper, will you join us? We have a human emergency.” She faced back to Matt and Eliana, wondering what they would think of her invitation to the Omega AI to stay in her quarters during the battle. In truth it was helping her prepare options for adapting to the Tuatha De Danann culture emphasis of Morrigan. Ah well.
Matt ignored the floating silver globe of the Omega AI and nodded down at her. “Thank you, Leader Sarah. We will shortly enter Translation for the star system of Morrigan. But right now we can use your help with the Dominguez family.”
“Of course,” she said, turning left to head down the Spine hallway for the quarters of the Dominguez family, which lay almost at the end of the Spine. While the laser beam had frightened two of her compatriots, she was glad it had not gone further aft and damaged one of the fusion reactors. While this ship was a shape-changing wonder, she could not help but worry over unstable power plants. The plant on Omega had had its share of problems even with the resources of the Owners.
The green outlined slidedoor of Rebecca, Rafael and their four children was closed. Sarah touche
d the Announce patch and spoke calmly.
“Rebecca? It’s Sarah. With Matt, Eliana and Gatekeeper. May we come inside to see how you and the kids are doing?”
The slidedoor swished open and Sarah sucked in her breath at the image of fear and anger on her friend’s face. “Hi Sarah.” The red-headed woman glanced at her crowd, fixing on Matt. “And you, Mr. Vigilante. You said this was not our fight. But our children nearly died from your fight! Why! And how soon can we escape your captivity?”
The tall, reddish-skinned man whose confidence never seemed to waver, stepped back a pace, clearly bothered by Rebecca’s anger. Then Matt’s fists clenched and his neutral look replaced the normal human-worry look he’d had when outside her slidedoor. Before Eliana could speak, he did.
“Mistress Rebecca, I am very sorry for the danger to your children. I was watching in my mind as the beam wiggled through a gap in our defense shields. When the ship’s internal locator showed it had struck your cabin, my first thought was ‘the children’!” Matt, the man who never showed doubt, shook his head slowly. “The danger to your family was . . . unexpected, although Eliana spoke of the chance of a sneak beam impact just before the battles began. And Mata Hari—” at the mention of the AI her shape took form in a lifesize holo, standing to Matt’s right while Eliana stood silent at his left—“rotated the ship in order to reduce the chance of such a lucky shot. Thanks to her efforts the beam was cut off before it could penetrate further. You have these women to thank for preventing greater danger to you and your fellow refugees.”
“So you’re not perfect,” Rebecca said, her anger shifting to the matter of fact look Sarah knew from her friend’s days as an IT manager faced with balky software. “Join the club. When do we get off this ship?”
Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Page 12
