“Thank you, Matthew,” she said as her sword slashed ruby red laser beams through a few Offense sleds tossed out by the nightside battleglobes. Just before they became incandescent blue-white vapor.
BattleMind sent Matt a sense of the dragon’s yearning to use the Graviton Beamer on the planet below. “If I shrank yonder planet to a black hole, we could fire on these approaching battleglobes without the interference of planetary matter.”
Matt felt briefly tempted. But the surprise Rafael would shortly unleash required the presence of a planet with living beings on it. “No, not this time, my ally. But in the future, when we attack any system without a living planet, we shall use either your Sun Glow or Graviton Beamer against the Anarchate base. Then we will Translate out long before the Anarchate tries to counter-attack!”
BattleMind’s rumble of tolerance for Matt’s decision did not sound happy, but it did feel accepting. He smiled at the slow, slow conversion of the T’Chak AI from an organic hating cybermind to someone who saw the value of organic impulsiveness and creativity. The AI had even flash-read Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War during their return from the Small Magellanic Cloud, long months ago. For it to show interest in something written by an organic was a major step forward in their joint enterprise.
One second, 903 milliseconds, 324 nanoseconds, 212 picoseconds and 922 femtoseconds.
Eliana nodded at him from the opposite side of the red supergiant star. “Matthew, we are ready to head for Antares B. When?”
“In a few more seconds. Gotta take out or damage these battleglobes before we head out. Is every ship ready to emit Remotes, sleds, sensorBeads and tachRemotes upon our arrival there?”
“Yesss,” she said, her drawl suggesting a slight impatience with him stating the obvious. “Our good Toktaleen has put his three brain lobes into overdrive, thinking up the best tactical positioning we could adopt in anticipation of a fleet arriving that outnumbers us five to one.”
“Oh?” Part of his mind took in the tactical deployment mind image from Toktaleen, as did each of them thanks to their joint mindlink. “Looks fine to me. Let’s do it on arrival!”
“Firing!” called Mata Hari into their group mind, showing them a three dee holo of the two battleglobes as they rounded the curve of planet Working.
“Right wing cannons aim for the northerly battleglobe!” Matt said mentally.
Mata Hari’s mindsense gave him a verbal snort. “Did you once say something about not teaching ‘your mother to suck eggs’ my Matthew?”
Matt grinned. She was right. His mental words had lagged behind her doing exactly that action by a hundred milliseconds.
Out in space, two battleglobes exploded in double blue-white stars of total matter-to-energy conversion as three AM beams hit each battleglobe, their impact deep enough to unbalance fusion power plants and the magfield storage bins of onboard antimatter. It all made for a beautiful globe of shell after shell after shell of MTE radiation byproducts.
“Everyone, Translate now for Antares B! And Rafael, have fun dropping our surprise near Working.”
Running Leader felt the second group of antimatter explosions from the daylight battleglobes with less shock this time. His neurolink with his giant ship quivered with the impatience of his directed energy weapons crews to ‘do something’ to the enemy. He must make a decision shortly. Translate inward or elsewhere?
“Sector Captain!” hooted Malel. “Look starward! At Antares A! A ship dropped out of Translation briefly and sent this white object hurtling toward planet Working!”
White object? “NavCore, identify white object.”
The Brokeet arthropod at that station, a stiff-legged older being whose name sigil was Yanakutt, flared his two antennae toward Running Leader. “Sector Captain, the tachRemotes near the planet do not have telescopic ability. But my spectroscope readings of the light wavelengths say the object is mostly water. It is a . . . a comet!”
A comet? And on a collision course with the planet. Well, this surprise from the Human renegade was new, but his two battleglobes had just arrived within five planetary diameters. They could handle this emergency.
“Malel, order our two in-system battleglobes to destroy this object before it can hit the planet.”
“Orders being sent!”
“And Chief Lark, how is the ingathering of our Remotes and sleds coming? Quickly?”
The Spelidon waved its right hand through a holo pedestal, then turned to him. His Whiskers of Distinction showed the emotion of Determination Assured. “We have half the heavy Remotes we offloaded, my Sector Captain. Five minutes more and they will all be recovered. Including the Assault Asteroids and AM-loaded Supply Tubes.”
Running Leader hoped they did not have to Translate elsewhere before the full recovery of his dispersed heavy munitions. The devices had been an inspired creation of his predecessor, Yorkel the Brokeet. They had motivated him to press the science researchers at Orion Nebula naval base to provide him with his three new surprise weapons. He hoped the Human’s combat fleet would show up somewhere. He did not wish to waste any surprise on the actions of a single starship. Like the one that had hidden in Alcubierre invisibility just above Working. Running Leader was sure that ship contained the renegade Human Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux. Based on the radio screams of outrage from the Council spy Medun and the Halicene owner of the Human’s progenitor, it was clear this Human had arrived and rescued his progenitor before his fleet could arrive.
“Chief Lark, keep me apprised of progress on the munitions recovery. And please compliment your directed energy weapons crews for their time on station. Tell them we will soon enter combat.”
“Yes, Sector Captain!”
Matt shuddered as his ship left Translation and arrived just 20 AU out from the blue giant star Antares B. A hellishly bright companion to Antares A that orbited just 574 AU from the red supergiant, it possessed no planets. Perhaps due to a stellar wind that was stronger than many star winds. Well, its stellar wind would help disperse the tachRemotes and sensorBeads that his fleet were even now putting out as they moved into an eight-sided bubble focused on their arrival point. The gravity waves emitted by their Translation emergence would guide the Anarchate fleet to that spot. Matt hoped each ship of the fleet would have time to move outward to a distance of 50,000 kilometers from their arrival point. With tachRemotes filling a 100,000 kilometer wide globe, their eight ships would be able to shoot antimatter beams to any point within the globe, while also engaging nearby battleglobes. They were setting the table for this new combat. It was now up to the Anarchate fleet captain to bring his battleglobes to the meal.
“My meal,” growled BattleMind in their ocean-time mind communion. “I claim half the incoming battleglobes!”
Matt showed the black-winged dragon his smile. “Battle ally, I suspect your fellow AIs on the other ships have an equal interest in tasting a battleglobe meal!”
Toktaleen the Brokeet took form in Matt’s mind. His hard-skinned ally tilted its two antennae toward him. “Vigilante leader, our englobement effort will be complete within a half second. Our arrival here with little inertial vector speed has allowed us to spread out in all directions. We are speeding out at just one-fourth lightspeed, with reversal of thrust once we are halfway to the outer globe boundary. Orders?”
Matt viewed the three dee mind image of how his eight ships were dispersing outward from their arrival point. “Good deployment, my friend. However, I suggest that each ship fire off three KKVs toward our arrival point, and three KKVs outward toward our englobement boundary. That way we can use the EMP pulses of their explosions to destroy any tachRemotes emitted by the Anarchate fleet, no matter where the fleet ships emerge!”
Suzanne’s golden curls and brown freckles filled their mindlink. While her Nordic face looked serious, her green eyes showed a hint of amusement. “Feel superior, my battle friends. But this Anarchate commander is coming toward us, and he has a ‘surprise’ that will hurt one of us. You, Ma
tt, I think. Be ready to go into Stepwise Translation!”
Matt nodded mentally to all seven of his pilot allies, then sent them and their AI partners a sense of his determination. “Thank you, Suzanne. But with my mother on board this ship, I will not do anything stupid. I think. Anyway, if something deadly begins happening here, let us all agree to rendezvous back on the far side of Antares A. We can take stock there and then head for Megil.”
“Agreed!” said multiple voices.
Running Leader’s neurolink with the gravity wave pulse sensors of Defiant II made him the first to sense his fleet’s new target.
“Eight gravity wave pulses at Antares B star!” he croaked to his Bridge crew. “Chief Lark! Are all our heavy munitions recovered?”
The Spelidon biped’s black fur stiffened with excitement. “Yes!”
Running Leader waved his right hand over the AllCall sensor pad. “Chief Engineer Herd Defense, take us into Translation! Malel, signal the same to the fleet!”
“Complying Sector Captain,” hooted his Orko ally. “Time in Translation to that point will be just five seconds!”
Running Leader sent his neurolink perceptions out to every combat station of his giant globeship, as eager as his 412 crew members to become part of the stampede that beat this upstart biped into the dust clouds of the galaxy. Soon!
Matt’s ocean-time senses felt like his body was being beaten by the thirty-eight gravity wave pulses emitted by the arrival of the Anarchate fleet of battleglobes. They all arrived within Toktaleen’s englobement field, just four thousand kilometers off the exact spot of Hexagon Prime’s emergence moments ago. His mind, already split into dozens of segments, now jumped to hundreds of segments as the newly arrived battleglobes fired black antimatter beams outward, a few of them hitting the invisible Alcubierre fields of his ships. How?
“Mata Hari, how did they know where to aim?”
His Lady of the Sword pointed toward the battleglobe that lay in the center of the Anarchate battleglobe swarm. “That is the ship of the Dolmat fleet commander! Your Eliana and Suzanne have confirmed it via their precog psychic senses. As for the AM aiming, perhaps the ship sensors looked for occultation of background stars by our Alcubierre shields.”
Matt thought quickly of how he’d seen his Dad at night, crossing between the light glow of their homestead and Matt, who was tending to his pet animal in the grain silo. The homestead light had blinked with his Dad’s passage. Damn!
“All ships, fire on that cluster of battleglobes! Three AM beams per ship. Mata Hari, coordinate our 48 beams so we do not waste any on overkill!”
“Firing!” cried Mata Hari, BattleMind and the AIs of the seven other ships in his fleet.
Running Leader felt intense mind shock as incoming antimatter beams destroyed eight of his ships in less than a second. The beams came from all around them. Only his prior orders to each globeship to move off vector as soon as they exited Alcubierre space-time had prevented more losses. As it was, three ships had been wounded by glancing antimatter beams. And the beams had struck at the spots where ships were actually moving to! That meant this space was filled with tachRemotes and sensorBots seeded by this Human!
“ Herd, move sideways in Translation! Now!”
Matt blinked as the surviving thirty battleglobes blinked out of sight even as his fleet’s incoming antimatter beams spread across their englobement field. Shit!
“Everyone, this new captain is copying our Stepwise Translation maneuver! Be ready to do the same when the Anarchate ships reappear.”
Starship Mata Hari shuddered as dozens of gravity wave pulses penetrated his ship’s Alcubierre fields. Incoherent gravity waves did them no harm. But they told him that this Dolmat Sector Captain knew every inch of Yorkel’s combat playbook.
“Stepwise now!”
Running Leader blinked as he perceived normal space-time. Remaining in neurolink as a ship enters, then exits Alcubierre stardrive is not an approved Anarchate fleet maneuver. But with this slippery Human, it had become apparent he as Sector Captain must be as unpredictable as the Human if he were to preserve the last remnant of Sector 14’s fleet of battleglobes.
“Fire at the occultation of stars we recorded on arrival!” Running Leader told his crew and his fleet via tachlink. “Chief Lark, fire our gravity surprise at the nearest confirmed occultation target. Ships Stupendous, Indomitable, Unexpected and Dominant, do the same at your confirmed target points!”
Running Leader watched local space-time closely, hoping to see the unshielded form of a T’Chak warship. If his surprise made contact with one of those incredible shields, the shield would die. Leaving the physical body of the enemy ship open to lightspeed attack. Shaking himself mentally, he sought the studied patience of a great herd leader.
# # #
Matt’s ocean-time mindsense detected Mata Hari’s warning just after they exited the Stepwise Translation that moved every ship away from where they had been waiting for the enemy fleet.
“Matthew! Five enemy battleglobes have emitted small gravitational concentrations toward our former positions. Two such concentrations are headed for Eliana’s new position! They are moving too fast for her to move away on deut-li thrust!”
“Translate and put us between her ship and those gravity things!”
Matt’s mind reeled from the multiple entries and exits from Alcubierre space-time. Exhaustion slapped him in the face. Fatigue clawed at him. But determination is stronger than a person’s body. He focused on the incoming gravity things.
“Mata Hari, what are those things!”
“Tiny black holes Matthew,” she said, slashing her sword at them to no effect. “They absorb all matter and energy and—”
Pain slashed against Matt’s left side ship skin as the left Alcubierre node burned out upon the touch of the invisible black hole that was detectable only due to its gravity wave emissions, thanks to a black hole’s great mass.
“Move upward on Repulsor! Get us off the vector of that incoming black hole!” Mind spinning, his left hip feeling deep pain from the burn out of the Alcubierre node, he realized other things like this might be heading for his fellow pilots. “Fleet! Translate to Antares A now! We will follow when possible.”
Running Herd saw something he had longed for as the new herd leader for Sector 14’s battleglobe fleet. Through neurolink vision he saw a black reptile wing with three antimatter cannons affixed to it, while just behind them smoked a node dome on the two nipad-long body of the flying reptile ship.
“Fire AM beams! Fire lasers! Fire everything we have at that enemy ship!”
It would take less than a half second for his lightspeed beams to reach this wounded starship. Would it be there when they struck? Would the enemy ship go into Translation before strike time? Would it—
“Strike!” cried Chief Lark.
Matt winced, then mentally cried out as two proton beams and several carbon dioxide lasers hit the belly of his ship, just before the spinal Alcubierre shield extended downward to cover up that exposure of his ship’s flexhull to normal space-time. And to weaponry carried by a Nova-class battleglobe. Elsewhere, the nuke-armed KKVs exploded, pushing out dozens of EMP pulses that should disturb battleglobe targeting.
“Matt!” cried Eliana across time and space as her mind touched his both telepathically and via his implanted tachlink node. “We’re safe! We’re all safe. Come to us!”
Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux fell downward into the fiery pain that made him feel half incinerated. It was too much. Ocean-time exhaustion took him into unconsciousness even as he heard Mata Hari yell out to Eliana and the rest of the fleet.
“Translating now! We will be with you shortly!”
Running Leader sighed as the exposed hull of the enemy ship moved upward, away from the incoming antimatter beams. But a few proton and carbon dioxide beams burned into the black flexskin of the ship’s hull. He watched as, in real-time view, the alien ship skin writhed away from the laser impact, th
en moved inward to enclose the wound spot. The new skin sparkled with some kind of light reflective coating. Then the T’Chak ship hull vanished from sight as it entered Alcubierre space-time, presumably translating to somewhere else. As had the seven other T’Chak starships.
“ We beat them!” cried Chief Lark.
“Hardly,” grunted Running Leader. “We lost eight battleglobes. They suffered one ship wounded. And now they are aware of our second surprise weapon. I expect them to have a tactic to deal with it the next time we encounter them.”
Malel hooted an encouraging tone. “They departed this battlefield, Sector Captain. We did not. That is better than any prior fleet engagement with this Human biped. Even my former leader, Sector Captain Yorkel, did not accomplish what we did today.”
All around the Bridge the Brokeets on duty watch rasped agreement, while Chief Lark slapped the deck’s gravplates with his tail. He suspected the pheromones circulating among his Brokeet crew members were infested with the scent of success.
“Malel, you speak accurately. But premature celebration invites new danger. And a wounded predator is always more dangerous to the herd than a dead predator.”
Yanakutt the elder Brokeet waved an upper arm his way. “Sector Captain, where do we go now?”
That was an easy decision. “Back to our naval base at Orion Nebula. We have three ships to repair. And I would hope to increase our black hole launcher ships to more than the five presently outfitted with this weapon.”
Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Page 14
