Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante

by T. Jackson King

  “Eliana, my love, you are beautiful looking today,” he said, then looked past George to nod at blond-haired Suzanne. “As do you, mistress Suzanne. Your embroidery gifts have given my dear Eliana an enjoyment of style and dresses that her laboratory work never seemed to awaken.”

  “Matthew!” said Eliana in a pleased tone.

  “So true,” rumbled George’s baritone voice as a wide grin filled his bearded face. The Irishman’s grey eyes were filled with amusement. After the alien shapes of Omega and Galifray, it was pleasant to see his combat mate. “My Suzanne has a mind for intricate flower patterns that delight me, Eliana and, she has told me, your partner Mata Hari.”

  Matt smiled at the sudden holo appearance of Mata Hari and Gatekeeper, whose side-by-side holos now stood in the open space between Eliana and the Pit. “Welcome, friends. Is the park’s inertial field activated in case of sudden movements after emergence?”

  Mata Hari’s glowing smile seemed to light up that part of the Bridge. “Yes, Matthew! And the yellow rose bush that Eliana planted earlier is growing very nicely. Perhaps it will flower soon!”

  Gatekeeper, dressed in his country gardener outfit with stains on the knees of his brown jumpsuit, nodded his bullet head. “Yes,” the Omega AI said in a warm bass voice. “She and Eliana have added much liveliness to my park habitat.”

  The Omega AI reached over to hold hands with Mata Hari Something the two had been doing since before Galifray. Could her control of mini-tractors to give her holo form a degree of substance be something Gatekeeper had copied so they could ‘feel’ the solidity of holding hands? Whatever the answer, they were a fully emotional couple able to relate to him and Eliana, George and Suzanne, in the normal manner. It was a delight Matt gave thanks for, amidst the death and destruction of fighting a war.

  “Friends, we will emerge in three minutes,” he said. “And while things will look very black and empty, the gas stream is just adjacent to where we will emerge. But if you look north galactic, you will see the golden-yellow glow of home galaxy’s Core region. The side wallscreen will show that view.”

  Matt turned back to face the front holosphere, filled now with the greyness of Alcubierre space-time. Shortly it would show the deep blackness of space, a space sprinkled with the colorful jewels of distant stars and even more distant galaxies, since they would not be facing the disk of home galaxy. Instead, they would be facing the stream, which was visible only to his infrared vision, and the nearby star cluster that the Anarchate had marked as a Do Not Enter zone. While they were not inside the zone, they would appear immediately next to it. Hopefully their few days of scooping in hydrogen isotopes would pass without notice from whomever lived in the cluster. Feeling a twinge at the back of his neck, Matt reached back and attached the fiber optic cable. His mind became flooded by an ocean of inputs from the starship and its devices, supplemented by the low power laser beams that criss-crossed his naked body as he sat like an olive in a martini glass. It was an drink image he’d discovered years ago, while visiting a human ‘bar’ that served expensive drinks modeled on antique patterns. He’d tossed the ‘olive’ to the floor for the cleanbot to ingest, then tried to enjoy the liquor in the glass. He’d swallowed it but had chosen beers afterward.

  “We emerge now,” Mata Hari said aloud to her audience.

  Matt entered ocean-time as a precaution. And his body became one with the starship and local space.

  His eyes “saw” infrared, ultraviolet, gamma ray and radioactives, painting for him a non-human picture of Riemannian space. Feeling the pull of grav plates throughout the two kilometer length of the ship, and the light puffs of air circulation through the habitable areas, Matt ignored the particle glows of the Restricted Rooms and focused solely on the degree to which starship Mata Hari worked and lived in all its components. But in the back of his mind hovered the red cloud of Mata Hari, the brown cloud of Gatekeeper, and the roiling, tempestuous purple cloud of BattleMind. The T’Chak held back from full mind-link, as if concerned for him. He appreciated that.

  The purple of gamma rays sleeted through the holosphere and the nearby Magellanic Stream, much like a rain squall might hit an open meadow. Yellow neutrino particles flickered here and there, appearing sparse since they were not near any star. Only his ship’s fusion reactors and the stars of the nearby cluster pulsed neutrinos their way. Infrared was nearly dead, except for the stream, whose hot ionized gases rushed toward home galaxy, pulled that way by gravity tidal forces. He’d learned that they would be traveling the short end of the stream, a stretch called the Leading Arm. Further down the stream they would encounter the Large Magellanic Cloud and cross a gaseous bridge to the Small Magellanic Cloud. They would then pass by the Population II red giant stars on the cloud’s outer edge and head inward to the Population I stars where life existed, as it did around most Population I stars of the galaxy, stars like Sol.

  “No sign of artificial constructs,” said Mata Hari in his mind.

  Matt agreed with her assessment. So far all he saw was the red infrared of the stream, the purple of gamma rays, some weak ultraviolet emissions, distant x-ray star emissions, and the mixed grouping of Population I and II stars in the cluster ahead of them. Like most developed star clusters it lacked the dust and dark gas clouds common to younger stellar regions. Sighing, he left ocean-time so he could relate to his human companions.

  “Eliana, George and Suzanne, all seems normal here. The hydrogen gases of the Magellanic Stream are just a few AU away, close enough for our scooper Remotes to reach quickly, since they are riding our exit velocity of one fourth lightspeed.” He felt BattleMind recede a bit as it took care of the launching of the Remotes. “We’ve got two, maybe three days to spend floating here, underneath the Core of the Milky Way. Isn’t the view magnificent?”

  Everyone ooed and ahhhed and made small talk. Matt paid no attention since his standard duty after every emergence from Translation was to back up the automated status checks of vital ship systems. It was while checking the microwave sensor arrays they used for automatic avoidance of large solid objects that he noticed a shimmer of microwaves coming from an empty part of the sky. A part of the sky that lay between them and the star cluster. What was going on?

  “Mata Hari, check out this microwave shimmer at locus ninety-three Zed, twenty-one Alpha,” he said aloud and by PET thought-image. “Is that a Dark Matter tidal effect?”

  “I don’t think so, Matthew,” murmured his partner. “Let me focus our neutrino scanner over there. Ah! Something artificial hides behind that microwave shimmer. Fusion reactions are present there. The shimmer is a kind of stealth shielding. But why? And who?”

  “I’ve never heard of such a stealth effect,” said Gatekeeper from the back of Matt’s mind.

  With regret, Matt mentally tapped at the purple cloud of BattleMind. “Partner, do the T’Chak have any record of such a microwave shimmer?”

  The alien AI’s mind-flow hit him again like a hurricane or a tsunami, but this time the alien made an effort to buffer its thoughts. As did Mata Hari. Matt felt strained but not exhausted. “No. It is clearly an intelligent action by someone unknown to me, and not recorded in the Intelligence dome’s memory crystal. Shields going up!”

  Matt felt the whispers of his friends as they heard the human real-time conversation. Somehow, their emergence from Translation had drawn the attention of someone. At least, the gravity wave pulse that instantly flowed out as they emerged had been detected. With a sigh, he went back into ocean-time.

  Floods of data filled his mind and inner self. Femtoseconds rushed by as picoseconds moved tick-tock past his awareness, and nanoseconds felt like long minutes. He noticed the microwave shimmer had come closer, now lying less than one light minute from them. Suddenly, the shimmer was gone and a solid object appeared where before the black of space had been wrapped around it. He saw a silvery octahedron, its sides all triangles as if two pyramids had been joined at the base, with no evidence of a fusion pulse spaced
rive nor the nodules that emitted the Alcubierre Drive ellipsoid that always encapsulated Mata Hari as they traveled from star to star. It did not spin, twirl or do anything except approach them at speed. Sensors said it approached at one quarter lightspeed.

  Ten milliseconds, said his inner timesense as his AI friends expressed surprise, shock and concern. Matt felt the Alcubierre flat space-time shields form up around all sides of Mata Hari. Even the stern was covered thanks to a new nodule built by BattleMind during their weeks of transit from Megadeen to the stream. They were as protected from external matter and energies as could be done, according to the T’Chak builders.

  A pink beam suddenly speared out from the silvery octahedron and impacted on the ship at the same time he saw it. A lightspeed weapon!

  “Mata Hari, is it—”

  Matt felt his heart slow its pumping even as he felt the thoughts of the three AIs blur as his own mind failed to keep pace. Why? In ocean-time he had always been able to think at computer speeds, even if it was babytalk mode for sharp AIs like his companions. What the?

  “Matttthewwww,” came Mata Hari’s mind voice. “Beeeeam issssss staaaaasissss. Orrrrgannnnicccsss froooooozeeeennnnn. Whaaaaat doooooo?”

  The alien’s pink beam had somehow frozen Eliana, Suzanne and George into an alien version of the stasis one felt while in suspended animation in an escape lifepod. He could communicate only because he was in ocean-time neurolinkage with the AIs. Was this a hostile act? Or something else? And how had this beam penetrated past the Alcubierre space-time shields? He did have one answer that would give them time to consider their options.

  “Translate five light minutes away from this space,” he mindspoke as rapidly as he could, adding PET thought-imagery to his words. “If the alien approaches to within one light minute again, jump away but stay in perception range of it. Whomever is out there will learn quickly to not get close or to use this beam that seems to be range-limited.”

  The grey of the Alcubierre space-time drive replaced the front holosphere image and Matt felt his stomach stir briefly with a tinge of nausea. Then black space sprinkled with the colored diamonds of distant stars appeared again in the holo. Still in ocean-time, he felt the normal mind flow of his AI partners.

  “Damn! Are my friends awake? Are their bodies OK? Are they—”

  “Just fine,” Mata Hari said hurriedly. “No damage. They are awakening now as if from being asleep. This stasis beam left no ill effects. BattleMind, how did this alien beam penetrate our shields?”

  The massive thought-flow of BattleMind hit Matt’s awareness like an avalanche, with no buffering by anyone. In his mind the three clouds of AI awareness spoke to each other, with him a minor spectator.

  “Not known!” growled BattleMind. “The alien ship moves towards us now at one quarter lightspeed. I will destroy it!”

  “No!” said Mata Hari and Gatekeeper together. “Perhaps that is what the Anarchate did when exploring here, and why this ship acted this way. Let us talk with them.”

  “Yes!” yelled Matt into the dense tapestry of AI thinking. “Give talk a chance. We can always Translate away from them again.”

  The dragon shape of BattleMind turned glaring red eyes on all three of them. “Retreat! The T’Chak Imperium never retreats!”

  “Not retreat,” Mata Hari said, taking the visual form of a smaller female dragon. “Tactical maneuvering, dear one. This species could impede the performance of your Task. As we have studied the Anarchate military power, let us study this entity to see their intent. Perhaps they could assist us, if they are hostile to the Anarchate?”

  The typhoon storm of BattleMind’s thoughts moved more thoughtfully. It opened its crocodile mouth, flickered out a pink tongue, then lowered its wings from BattleFlight mode. “Your mind shape is more pleasing than that weak human mode. Agreed. Your point offers a Task useful option. We wait here, or nearby, for communication to occur.”

  Wiping his brow mentally, Matt watched the EMF sensor feeds as the silvery octahedron starship approached, then held stationary at one light minute distance. It seemed the aliens learned fast. There were no beam emissions. Instead, the ship generated a modulated signal on the 21 centimeter band of hydrogen, an alien version of the “Let’s Talk” concept pursued a century ago by human SETI astronomers.

  “Is it voice or imagery or something else?” he asked his AI friends.

  Mata Hari resumed her Spy persona look of the frilly white Victorian dress with black hair piled atop her head. She looked busy, frazzled and puzzled as her persona stared at the holosphere imagery. “It is mathematical. From the very simple to the very complex. Symbolic imagery follows, indicative we think of words or concepts. Gatekeeper, can you apply your translation algorithms to this input?”

  Matt thought the invitation to the AI that had worked as a Welcome gatekeeper to dozens of aliens species made sense. The visiting aliens did not all speak Belizel. But all of them, being super-rich, would assume the Port arrival AI would automatically understand them.

  “Yes, my dear,” boomed the warm voice of Gatekeeper. “There are similarities to the speech of the Topean, Zam and Hashclick species. It appears to be more iconographic language rather than syllabic like most human talk modes.” It paused, passing a string of hyper-speed dataflows to Mata Hari. “The human languages of multi-tonal Mandarin and Bushman echo-clicks are also useful. I am sending back the human English speech modes with embedded object and action images. Later I will pass on the Belizel of the Anarchate. But since we all speak this English, that is first.”

  “Very good, my country gentleman,” Mata Hari said as her persona switched image modes to one of her dressed in an embroidered summer dress, her black hair flying loosely as she smiled happily.

  Matt once more admired the feminine smartness of his partner in Vigilante work. She understood how vital visual images were to organics and, it seemed, to thinking AIs. “Any idea how long it will take to translate?”

  “Not long,” muttered the country gentleman image of Gatekeeper. “In fact . . . the translation is complete. Do you wish to listen to it in AI mode or in human hearing mode?”

  “Human hearing mode,” Matt said as he shifted out of ocean-time and into the slow thinking and speech mode of living organic lifeforms. “I want my friends to hear this. And I can always re-enter ocean-time if there is a need.”

  “There was a need, Matthew, when that stasis beam first hit. None of us had any idea of how to escape the beam.”

  “I did,” muttered BattleMind. “While your pet organics might have been brain-frozen, the beam did not affect us at all. I would have destroyed this artifact with an antimatter pulse. No solid object can escape the impact of antimatter.”

  “Then it is good that Matthew was not frozen in stasis, just slowed down to normal cyborg mode,” Mata Hari said pleasantly to the T’Chak AI. “Matthew, are you ready for the translation to be broadcast?”

  “One moment,” he said, then explained to his puzzled companions, who looked alarmed to learn they’d been frozen in stasis, then relieved that they’d escaped the stasis beam and would now learn what these new aliens intended. He blinked mentally, shrugging off the aftereffects of twice being in ocean-time within the last ten minutes. “Hey folks, take a look at the front holosphere. Seems my AI buddies have translated something broadcast by that alien starship there.”

  They all looked at the holo as the image of black space, the silvery octahedron ship and distant stars was replaced by English letters marching across the holo, from top to bottom.

  “Greetings new lifeforms. We are the Bogean Harmony, from the nearby star cluster. We regret the issue of our stasis beam. Prior contacts with lifeforms from the galaxy above us were violent at first. So we applied the stasis beam to the two later visits in hope of preventing violence. But the globular ships of those lifeforms destroyed themselves. Unlike your craft. Why is that?”

  Matt blinked, then recalled a minor datum from the Intelligence dome memory
crystal. A datum that surely his AI partners already knew.

  “Matthew,” spoke Mata Hari aloud as she, Gatekeeper and BattleMind all appeared in lifesize holos on the Bridge. “Shall I answer for us? With the memory crystal Rule data?”

  “Yes, please do so. You three think faster and are able to decipher this speech faster than any of us. Thank you.”

  BattleMind’s alert stance seemed to shift to one of surprise at his Thank You to it and the other two AIs. Well, it was right and proper to acknowledge someone’s superior ability. Or so he had been raised, years ago.

  “Bogean Harmony,” Mata Hari said, with her words appearing in the holosphere. “We are starship Mata Hari. Our living component consists of four thinking organics and three artificial intelligences, plus unthinking animals that occupy our nature habitat.” The summer dress persona of Mata Hari paused. “We claim separate names to identify our personal selves. Mine is Mata Hari. Our other AIs are Gatekeeper and BattleMind. Our organic guests and partners are Matthew Dragoneaux, Eliana Themistocles, George O’Hussey and Suzanne Magnusdottor. How do you refer to yourself or selves?”

  A second passed, then they read the reply. “Mata Hari, we are both. We choose names for each member of our polity. But our species heritage allows each of us to share in a group mindLink. Perhaps you and your organics link in the same way? That might explain why your ship did not destroy itself.”