Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4)

by T. Jackson King

  “Lead us to the cell, but take us along routes normally used by visiting slavers,” Matt said, picking up his stride even as he fought back the urge to go to Nullgrav flight. “What is the Offense readout for this base?”

  The minds of George, Eliana and Suzanne each drew closer in their shared mind communion. Mata Hari fed them the data over their tachlinks. “Matt, there are twenty-one combat suited Guardians in the employ of the base managers. There are sixteen Combat Mechs with Nullgrav floater ability. Plus ten tracked Mechs with artillery level laser cannons. Every place with air has the usual vidimage monitors that feed real-time imagery to both the Control Mind and to three lifeforms serving duty in their Control Station up top, in one of the skyrises. The Control Station has full ecofield control over the entire asteroid.”

  Suzanne’s pale Nordic face fixed on Matt in their mindlink. Her hazel eyes showed worry as she sat atop the green grass that bordered the pond in the Park habitat of his starship. It was a mental venue popular among his fellow cyborgs. Beside Suzanne sat George and Eliana, each person wearing their normal attire. And Mata Hari the AI wore her chainmail Lady of the Sword fighting outfit. All five of them were ready for battle.

  “Matthew,” said Suzanne softly. “We cannot be trapped inside this asteroid. We are outnumbered. No one is paying us attention at the moment. But as soon as we free the captives, the Control Station will have our images and will send Mechs after us. Plus they may order shuttle assaults on our fake slaver ships. How do we fight on multiple fronts?”

  In external real-time Matt turned to the right and began climbing a ramp that led upward. “Mata Hari, do you have any white noise Remotes in orbit around this base? Any control over reactor power outputs? Any—”

  “Yes Matthew,” said the slim, black-haired AI who had recruited him to be her organic Vigilante seven years ago, as she stood next to the mind-gathered crowd. “There are three Remotes able to block maser and standard radio emissions from this base. Four of my Snoopers are monitoring the two fusion plants that power all devices on this asteroid. And I have several explosive-laden Remotes hugging the rim of the topside dome. They can create dome breaches and a drop in air pressure. That drop will cause emergency airlocks to close. Thereby inhibiting movement by station managers and devices. Any further guidance?”

  Matt gave mental thanks for Mata Hari’s ability to ‘read’ his mind and his intentions before he spoke them. Each of them was able to think at near lightspeed, thanks to each suit’s fiber optic neurolink, and via their tachlink nodes. But the secret to appearing ‘normal’ at a slaver base like this was to not act at superfast speeds. Until utterly necessary. He smiled at all of them.

  “Friends, battlemates and good Mata Hari, let us tend to the freeing of cloneslave captives!”

  The five of them, including Mata Hari’s real-time holo image of a willowy woman in a black vacsuit, left the rampway, entered a greenery occupied habitat in Level Three, and moved through a crowd of standing, slithering and Nullgrav supported lifeforms who were scattered through the habitat chamber. Each of them saw, on their suit faceplate, a blinking purple route that led them to the end of the habitat. A rampway similar to the one they’d just left loomed in front of them. Two hippo-like Orko Aliens lumbered down the rampway on four legs, paused as his team moved to one side, then headed for a water pool in the park habitat. Matt followed the purple route that blinked to one side of Faceplate even as he PET thought-imaged a series of Threat Alert orders to Suit. “Understood?” he queried Suit’s Tactical CPU.

  “Understood Matthew,” said the CPU of Suit. “Do you wish to monitor the actions of the rest of Hexagon Prime fleet?”

  Did he? “Yes. Display. And activate the MHD power units at my waist. My shoulder lasers will soon need extra power. Convey the same orders to my allies’ suits.”

  “Complying.” Inside Suit, Matt felt the vibration of the magnetohydrodynamic power units on each hip as they activated. Using the fiber optic cable, Suit threw an image of itself into his mind, Faceplate raised partway in an imitation of a Human grin. “Feel better?”

  Damn! No question but this Tactical CPU was being infected by Mata Hari’s sense of humor. “Better. Illuminate nearby space and the fleet.”

  A virtual holo filled the right side of his Faceplate even as the central space stayed yellow light transparent. But over his neurolink he sensed the T’Chak AI BattleMind move starship Mata Hari, or Descartes, away from the asteroid base, turning it onto a vector that would provide a targeting option which included most of the 22 genome slaver starships that hung about the asteroid. On the horizon of his mind Matt felt the AIs of the other seven Dreadnoughts, along with pilots Toktaleen, Sarah, Rafael, and Ben the Australian, move into ocean-time linkage with their ship and with Matt and his battlemates. Soon the four of them would also enter ocean-time. They came to a stop at the top of the rampway.

  “Matt,” called Mata Hari over their shared mindlink. “We are at Level Four. Moving ahead takes us to a food refectory suitable for oxy-nitro lifeforms. Taking the curving hallway to our left will bring us to the cell of the captives. And the two security defenders. The hallway to the right leads to sleeping quarters for base workers. Orders?”

  Thinking quickly Matt ordered Suit to emit a tiny Spy Eye that headed down the curving hallway, its egg shape hugging the high ceiling of the rocky hallway. Three more Snoopers loaded with retch gas left Suit and headed down the forward hallway. Three other Snoopers coptered down the right hallway, their onboard datachips loaded with a signal that would lock down the electronic locks of each sleep room. Activating Suit’s pressor and tractor beamer units that adorned his helmet, he turned toward the cell hallway. Walking slowly, he headed down the curving hallway.

  “George, hold station at the intersection,” he called back to his battlemate. “Keep the space clear for our return. Suzanne and Eliana, what do you sense of the thoughts and emotions of the guard lifeform? Is it alert? Worried? Resting?”

  “Resting,” Suzanne said a second before Eliana said the same thing.

  Eliana snorted. “But the vision of the Spelidon rat guard says the Combat Mech is floating three meters further down the hallway, on the opposite side of the slidedoor that leads to the captives’ cell.”

  That matched the image Matt was now getting via the Spy Eye floater that had rounded the curve ahead of them. Time to get serious.

  “Everyone, prepare to enter ocean-time. Cross-link your shoulder and backpack weapons with mine so we do not fire on each other. Go airborne now and be prepared to use your suit tractor beam to transport a captive.” In his mind Matt ordered the retch gas Snoopers to activate just inside the refectory, the door lock Snoopers to jam slidedoors, and Mata Hari to blow the explosive Remotes while activating the three white noise Remotes. “Enter now!”

  In sync and on-line with a super-strong combat suit that feels like your own body is wonderful. It’s ecstatic. Nullgrav plates in his boots shot Matt up toward the hallway ceiling. A waist Repulsor block flipped him over to horizontal flight. Both shoulder pulse-cannons whirred On Target as the floating Combat Mech and the combat-suited Spelidon came into view. Ocean-time flooded his senses. He thought fast. Faster than humanly possible. Picoseconds blurred past. Nanoseconds zipped along. Milliseconds ticked by, slowly.

  Forty milliseconds passed in the outside world, Suit informed him.

  With a PET thought-image both his shoulder pulse-cannons fired at the steel grey oval of the Combat Mech, the two green laser beams set for metal-punch. Metal glowed yellow-white at their contact, then hissed away as his beams entered and fried the inner workings of the Mech. It shot off one red laser beam that hit the ceiling as its Nullgrav lost power, dropping the Mech onto the gravplate floor. The Spelidon Guardian began to turn its head toward the three of them even as the rat’s combat suit CPU turned a belly laser toward them. Electronic senses moved so much faster than normal organic thought. Which was why he’d taken out the Combat Mech first. Now Matt,
Eliana and Suzanne fired on the Spelidon.

  Six hundred milliseconds lumbered by.

  The rocket bagpipes on the biceps of each suit fired a volley of Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells, already programmed for the infrared signature of the Spelidon, each shell able to twist and turn in flight as miniature vernier jets steered them after every dying twitch and jerk. They were relentless. They were deadly. They would arrive within a second.

  The Tactical CPU of Suit flashed ultrasonic beams against the black fur of the Spelidon, causing internal organs to liquefy as the resonance frequency for its flesh was reached and maintained by Suit’s feedback system.

  Faster than the Nanoshells and ultrasound were the shoulder pulse-cannon lasers. At two per suit, that made for eight beams of coherent green light that hit the silvery combat harness of the black-whiskered Spelidon. The beams burned circular holes through the rat’s furry body and splashed against the metal wall behind it. The Spelidon’s combat belly laser shot a red beam at Matt and Suit. It impacted on his gut but splintered into thousands of fractured red beams as the sapphire crystal coating of Suit broke up the incoming beam.

  One and a quarter seconds moved ever so slowly.

  Matt’s helmet emitted a pressor beam that tossed the Spelidon against the hallway’s metal wall, knocking it unconscious. In that brief time the rat’s hairy skin erupted with miniature borers, carried by the Nanoshells, borers that systematically penetrated its body like drill bits through wood. Biogel poisons specific to carbon-based lifeforms also poured out, overloading a dying heart system. Electronic white noise overwhelmed the Spelidon’s own combat exoskeleton programming—using miniature emitters carried by the Nanoshells—thus stopping any effort by its Tactical programming to carry out preprogrammed offensive actions despite the death of its organic host.

  Finally, with a flare of red light, the organic shell of the Spelidon rat imploded inward as the nanoware energy-seekers made contact with the Alien suit’s power sources and overloaded them, burning up hardware systems and their organic host at the same time. Two flashes of green laser light drew Matt’s attention forward.

  “The Combat Mech is finished,” said Eliana as she floated toward the slidedoor that blocked access to the captives’ cell. She held her Magnum laser gun, which now sketched a molten line across the central dome of the fallen Mech. “But Suzanne and I sense the issuing of orders for other Combat Mechs to head for us, despite the distraction you provided with the air loss in the top dome. Can Mata Hari block internal communications from the Control Station to its Guardian lifeforms and Mechs?”

  Matt arrived just as Suzanne used her Magnum to cut through the slidedoor controls. She kicked the metal door, bending it inward and out of alignment. Their Swede battlemate used her own suit to put two Spy Eyes into the room even as her gauntlets gripped the slidedoor, pulled with the Herculean strength of her combat suit, and ripped open access to the cell. All at slow organic speed even though each of them thought and fought at ocean-time speed. Matt cursed his lack of foresight.

  “Yes! Mata Hari, please do as Suzanne says.”

  “Complying, Matthew,” said the black-suited form of his AI as she joined the three of them at the entrance to the cell. “Shall we enter and see how alive these captives are?”

  Two seconds since ocean-time entry, reported Suit’s cyberclock.

  In slow human speed they entered and saw three lifeforms who occupied a small, cold, dark and damp cell. Matt, still in mind communion with George, Eliana, Suzanne and Mata Hari, saw a seated male Human look up as they entered, his blue eyes blinking from the sudden light even as his emaciated body shivered from the cell’s coldness. Near him lay a black-furred Meligun bear, its elf-like ears twisting to their noise even as its two pink eyes squeezed tight against the light emitted by their helmets. Just behind the two bipeds stood a four-legged Orko hippo, its four yellow eyes wide with some kind of emotion. Thinking fast Matt had Suit’s external Talker address them even as each suit cast a tractor beam to a captive, lifting them and pulling them along behind Matt and the two women as they exited the cell and headed back toward George as he stood guard at the down ramp.

  “Captives, we are friends! We hate cloneslavery and are rescuing you from labor slavery or death from the cloneslavers!” said Suit in neutral Belizel. “Water, food and shelter will be yours once we gain our shuttle and then our ships.”

  “Ships? You have ships?” grunted the middle-aged Human male in Gaelic-sounding English. His bass voice sounded weak.

  Two seconds, 312 milliseconds, said his cyberclock.

  George waved at them as they all arrived to the loud sounds of many lifeforms being deeply sick at the nearby refectory. Banging sounds came from the locked sleeping quarters. Matt answered the man even as the four of them flew down the rampway on Nullgrav, their exit from the inner parts of the base happening at flight speed.

  “Our ships,” said Suit in Matt’s voice. “My name is Matt Dragoneaux, a Vigilante. These are my battlemates. George, Eliana, Suzanne and the AI Mata Hari in the black vacsuit. Now be quiet while we fight our way out of this base!”

  Mata Hari’s vacsuit shimmered as a red laser beam passed through the holo image. “Combat Mech ahead!” she cried, her mind passing to them an image of a grey ovoid coming up the rampway from Level Three.

  Matt’s Suit belched out titanium penetrator darts even as the rocket bagpipes of three other suits shot Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells at the hovering Mech. Swift as thought were the eight green laser beams emitted by the shoulder pulse-cannons of Matt and his combat mates. The Mech exploded in a yellow flare of metal parts that bounced off the front of their combat suits even as their tractor beams pulled the captives along behind them. The Orko hippo bellowed with fear while the Meligun bear raised its four arms to shelter its blocky head. The darts and Nanoshells smashed into the Mech’s fragments.

  Two seconds, 500 milliseconds and 14 picoseconds, reported his cyberclock.

  “Mata Hari, activate Ariadne and have it blast its way through the landing dock archway,” Matt said.

  “Activating and arming her lasers!”

  If they could make it to the Level Two Arrival Hall the shuttle would be awaiting them. Its armor would give extra protection from any combat-suited Guardians and Combat Mechs that might find them. Meanwhile, he sensed the Control Station of the asteroid coping with power shutdowns, escaping air and false alarms triggered by Mata Hari’s limpet complinks as they latched onto the Control Mind of the base. Matt hoped lightspeed confusion would disorient the base’s security forces as the four of them flew down the debris littered rampway, turning toward the Supply tunnel that connected with the Arrival Hall.

  Slavers scattered away from them as Nanoshells and Offense Remotes preceded them, ready to attack any organic or Mech that sought to block them. Suzanne pulsed him a precog warning.

  “Two Guardians in combat suits await us just inside the tunnel to the Arrival Hall,” she said in his mind.

  “Understood!”

  Matt PET thought-imaged to Suit. It launched an anti-personnel rocket toward the tunnel ahead, followed by napalm rockets from the backpacks of George, Eliana and Suzanne as the Tactical CPUs in each suit coordinated a combined attack.

  Yellow flame burst from the tunnel as the crack of the AP rocket shot pellets and razor-disks into the Guardian lifeforms that a loitering Spy Eye said were a Mican griffin-tiger and a black-furred Spelidon rat. The Guardians began dying from napalm incineration even as their lungs were cooked from inhaled flame. But their combat suit harnesses were not yet dead. They shot back attackBeads at Matt and his allies even as the four of them flew toward the tunnel.

  Pressor fields from their four combat suits intercepted the attackBeads and pushed them back onto the crisped bodies of the Guardians. White noise Nanoshells followed the pressor fields and overwhelmed the CPUs worn by the Guardians. Penetrator darts thumped into the burnt bodyshapes. In milliseconds Matt and his allies entered the smoky tunnel as th
e flames died out. Mata Hari spread her holo form around the three captives, sheltering them with breathable air thanks to the miniature tractor emitters that made her holo shape a controlled cloud of black that hid Alien blood and body parts from the view of the captives. Ahead loomed the silvery metal of Ariadne, floating inside the Arrival Hall.

  “Three seconds since our attack,” cried Mata Hari in the shared minds of Matt, George, Eliana and Suzanne. “The shuttle’s lasers will take out any Combat Mechs that appear in the landing dock. But we must hurry before the base Control Mind regains access to the dock’s own tractor and pressor fields!”

  The Arrival Hall was nearly empty except for a dozen lifeforms fleeing down the other two hallways. None of the lifeforms sought the vacuum of the hallway leading to the landing dock. It was a hallway blackened from the shuttle’s fusion pulse drive. The shuttle hovered before them on Repulsor power. Their suits aimed them at the midbody airlock. It opened at Mata Hari’s signal.

  “Inside!” Matt said as Suit’s All Surround vision perception highlighted a laser artillery Mech entering the blackened hallway from the dock side. It carried the long tube of a thousand megawatt laser. Even as he watched the slow movement of the Mech, his mind gave orders. “Mata Hari, fire at that Mech with the shuttle’s starboard laser! George, Eliana and Suzanne, dump your captives into accel couches and brace yourselves for some wild maneuvering.”

  Coherent yellow light reached out from the shuttle to impact on the grey box of the artillery Mech. The device quickly turned white hot, then began melting in place. By the time the shuttle passed over the molten Mech its laser tube had bent to floor level. In the spacious landing dock the shuttle rotated ninety degrees, aimed for the open exit portal and shot into black space. Matt began to hope they would all live to tell this story and get drunk over some Morrigan beer.