“Charlotte? This is Matthew. Will you respond please? I’ve come to rescue you.”
She sat at the entrance to the mind shaft so the device could link with a comsat. Like thousands of similar devices, hers was a simple Call To/See Back device that used a coherent maser signal to contact one of the overhead comsats. There was no way someone could track her reply to her location. So far as she knew. She accepted the incoming call.
“Hello Matthew. It’s wonderful to see you!” Charlotte smiled, breathed deep again, then wondered why her brother was wearing the white armored combat suit that she had seen in the galactic tachnet news broadcast that declared him an outlaw to the Anarchate. “Where are you? And why are you wearing that combat suit with the animal heads on it?”
Her brother’s brown eyes blinked, but his expression stayed serious. Not happy smiling. Why not? “I’m in orbit about Thuringia, in stealth mode so the Anarchate’s moon base cannot detect my ship. Give me your location and I’ll come rescue you. Hurry! The Anarchate battleglobes may attack at any moment.”
Charlotte felt overjoyed at seeing her brother’s holo image. She wanted to reach out and hug him. But why was he so emotionless? And why had he not answered her question? Was this really her brother? “Matt, what happened to your pet back home? When Dad found your pet.”
The helmet of Matt’s combat suit bent forward. The two shoulder laser pulse-cannons pointed to either side. He frowned a bit. “Charlotte! Stop with the silly questions! I’m here! Ready to rescue you. Don’t you wish that?”
A second tachlink call vibrated her AllCall datapad. What the hey? Was the governor calling her to confirm Matt was in orbit? “Matthew, wait a minute. Got another call coming in.” She tapped the device, moving Matt’s holo image to one side. Accepting the incoming call, she gasped. It was her brother Matthew!
“Charlotte? Please answer me. Governor Metzenbaum gave me your comlink code. I’m in orbit in my ship Mata Hari.”
She stared at a second Matthew. Also wearing the white armored combat suit like the other image of her brother. Damn! For sure one of them was an Anarchate spy trying to capture her. She had heard from her owner Nak ho-mesk of expert software systems that could take a holo image, animate it and add in voice from a tachlink record of such audiovisual records. Her owner had used the false persona technique in his money transfer dealings as a means of camouflaging his species and appearance. Was some Anarchate person doing the same to her? Using public images and recent recordings of Matt? If so, time was short for her to either be rescued, or be captured.
“Matt!” she cried out. “You are the second holo of yourself that I’ve seen! Another Matt is waiting online. He’s trying to get me to signal my location to him.” She noticed the first Matthew image was waving one arm at her, trying to get her attention. She focused on this new Matt. “Tell me quickly. What happened to your silo pet? And what are the animals on your combat suit?”
Matt’s expression took on a look of worry. Taping his helmet with a gauntlet, the faceplate rose up and she could see the black beard stubble on his chin, and even the wetness in the corners of his eyes. “Charlotte! The other Matt is an Anarchate fraud! Don’t give away your location to him! Or it! My pet was killed by our Dad! And the animal images are the heads of wolves! I use them because me and my fleet are hunting the Anarchate starships like we’re a pack of wolves! Did the other Matt tell you this?”
“No.” Charlotte cut off the incoming signal from the first Matt. She bit her lip, then brushed back her newly red hair. Mother Olivia had helped her get rid of the zebra stripes and clean her hair at their home. Then she’d given Charlotte a wool blouse, khaki pants and a sheepskin coat with white fur interior. Earth’s sheep were the only herd animal able to survive the harsh winters of Thuringia. Their meat and their wool were used only by citizens of her world. “I shut off the link to whomever that was. I’m using an AllCall datapad to send maser signals to our system of comsats. Where are you?”
“Orbiting above the Nidar Peninsula. Where our home used to be. Governor Metzenbaum said he had hidden you at a mine shaft somewhere on the peninsula. Is that true?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling hope at last. Her location would have been told only to the real Matt. “Oh brother! I missed you so! Can you come get me?”
“Yes,” Matt said, blinking a lot. He then smiled big at her. The way she remembered he did when they were playing the ancient card game gin rummy. He usually beat her at that game. But she always beat him on the vidcast history tests. “Your Mom is here with me. On board my starship. You will be home with us very soon! I’m taking my ship Mata Hari down into atmosphere. To hell with using our shuttle. Put out something colorful near the mine shaft entrance. My ship’s AI has sensor eyesight better than any human or alien!”
“Will do, Matthew,” she sobbed, feeling her chest heave with the news her Mom was safe and her brother was coming for her. “But . . . but won’t your ship be spotted by the Anarchate Spy Eye sats?”
“Maybe,” Matt said as he reached to something outside his holo. “But there is a hurricane-like storm moving to cover the Nidar. My ship has an Alcubierre stealth shield. And our atmospheric wake will be hidden by the storm action. Love you, sister!”
Her brother’s holo vanished. She shut down the AllCall, turned and headed inside the mine shaft. Charlotte began gathering her possessions quickly using the shoulder bag given her by Mother Olivia. One thing she pulled out. The small laser pistol given her by Governor Metzenbaum for hunting and for protection. If the fake Matt came looking for her, she would defend herself. And if that did not work, if she faced the chance of belonging to an Alien once more, she would use the laser to end her life. She wanted to be with her Mom. And with Matthew. But she had seen her brother Matthew, after fifteen long years of not seeing another human. She knew she could pass on into the Great Beyond if necessary, now that two of her family were safe.
Matt stood in Suit on the gravplates of his Bridge, while to his left his Mom sat in an accel-couch, restrained by an inertial field. He looked to his right, seeing his love Eliana as she stood in her own combat suit, her mind linked with his by way of the tachlink node. She smiled at him through her clear faceplate.
“Matthew, we’ll save her!” Her green eyes pierced his heart. “You and me, we could take on a fleet! I can fly on Repulsor power to grab her while you and Mata Hari keep watch against any incoming Anarchate craft. They have armed Corvettes on that moon base of theirs.”
Matt tried hard for the emotionless self that had been the key to his space combat victories. It was very very hard to not think of going to Charlotte himself. She was the sister he should have taken to Elios Port on that last trip. She had spent fifteen years in harsh captivity thanks to his failure. She had—
“Matt!” cried Eliana in his mind. “Don’t think that way! Think of how we both can rescue her. And think ahead! Suzanne and I have picked up precog images of a space battle between our ship and some Anarchate warship. This fake Matt means Anarchate military and conglomerate officials know Charlotte is here. They are prepared to fight us for her!”
He blinked mentally. Around him in their mind communion floated the images of his fleet allies. Golden-curled Suzanne, who gave off a sense of happiness at the finding of Charlotte. George his Irish battlemate, whose stocky body was ready to fly to his aide. Toktaleen of the Brokeet, who was already planning tactics for attacking the Anarchate base on Pearl if needed as a distraction. Rafael of the black mustache and four kids who were safe on Morrigan, with his wife Rebecca. Blue-eyed Sarah, the IT manager who had found new romance with their newest pilot, young Benjamin Ayers. Ben stood on a red dust plain with his khaki hat shading the determination in his gaze. And his lifemate Eliana who stood next to him. They were all with him. They would all risk their lives to help him save his sister, just as they had risked their lives in the battle to rescue his mother. These seven were more than battlemates now. They had become part of his family. His family
that had once been enslaved and which now was free of that slavery. He nodded to Eliana.
“You’re right. As you were right to take command of matters when I passed out after the Antares B battle,” he said. “When Mata Hari pouches us out above the mine shaft, you fly to Charlotte. I will hover in Defense mode with Mata Hari and be ready to shield you two.”
“Thanks Matthew.” Eliana looked up as the Bridge ceiling began to pouch down to enclose them.
The Spy holo of his emotional AI waved at him from her stance beside the giant dragon form of BattleMind. “Go, Matthew. Rescue your sister. We’re at hover above the mind shaft. BattleMind and I, we will keep watch for any craft that may try to interfere.”
Matt nodded to the red mind cloud of Mata Hari. “Thank you, Mata Hari. And thank your partner Gatekeeper for the time he spent showing our Park to my mother. Her happiness is my joy.”
Eliana smiled in his mind. “Matt, we all know that. Now, to work.”
Charlotte looked up as the grey clouds of the hurricane’s gusting winds bent the few nearby trees sideways. Small rocks and broken branches flew past her view. She stood just inside the mine entrance. She had put down a red blanket on the ground ten meters out. The large rocks holding it rocked a bit in the wind. But the blanket did not whip up and fly away. Overhead, amidst the grey swirls of the hurricane, she saw a kilometers-long shape press aside clouds as it lowered down to her. Was this Matt’s ship?
Two small people shapes popped out from the invisible shape and headed downward. One person headed her way. The other person moved beyond the outline of the hovering ship and began a slow spin in place, clearly looking for something. The hovering person stopped suddenly, its focus to the south and upward. She looked that way.
The black spearhead of an Anarchate Corvette came whistling down through the grey of hurricane clouds, its passage making a shrill whistle loud enough to hurt her ears. No drive thrust showed behind the spear head, which meant it was coming in on Repulsor drive. Not the fastest way to get somewhere, but reliable. Was this the ship of the first Matthew? Come to grab her before Matt got to her? She pulled out her laser pistol, moved to shelter behind a large boulder and pointed the pistol at the oncoming black shape.
“Charlotte!” called a woman’s voice above her. “Get back inside the mine shaft! Matt and I will take care of this Anarchate ship. But you could be hurt by rockets and beams!”
She looked up to see a white combat suit just like Matt’s. The suit’s shoulder pulse-cannons were already aiming toward the oncoming Corvette. And the woman’s outthrust gauntlets sparkled with the glow of fingertip lasers.
“Going inside!” she yelled back.
Just as she reached the mine shaft entry, a giant explosion hit the ground behind her, blowing her the rest of the way inside. Landing with a thud against the rock wall, Charlotte winced from where her right shoulder had hit the wall. Outside, she heard a loud “whoosh” as something like a rocket left her vicinity and moved away. Was the flying woman shooting rockets at the Anarchate ship? And had the Anarchate ship tried to kill the woman with laser blasts? Or its own KKVs shot at the mine?
Thunder, artificial lightning and six loud “Booms” sounded from outside. Shattered rock pelted the front entrance of the shaft. Brown dust blew in with each “Boom.” She pointed her laser pistol at the entrance, determined to defend herself to the death.
Eliana felt the impact of shattered rock as it struck the pressor field of her combat suit. Its onboard Tactical CPU spoke to her.
“Enemy craft has launched KKVs at the mine entrance, while blasting nearby terrain and air space with proton beams,” the CPU said. “Ally Mata Hari transmits that use of an antimatter beam against the enemy Corvette would result in severe vaporization of nearby matter, including the mine entry. While you and Matthew could survive within the pressor zone of these suits, anyone outside could not. Combat options include retreat by Repulsor and Nullgrav, retreat to starship Mata Hari or mutual attack on enemy Corvette. Decision?”
Eliana’s mind felt expanded beyond normal thanks to the small version of ocean-time that she and Matt shared thanks to the tachlink node that linked both suits and their minds. Only a few seconds had passed since their arrival.
“Launch my nuke-tipped rocket at the oncoming Corvette, aiming for its belly Repulsor block,” she told the CPU. “Launch the napalm rocket with a burst aimed to explode before the Bridge of the craft. Send the anti-personnel rocket with dispersion of titanium penetrator darts against spine of the Corvette!” Her suit vibrated as her backpack launched three of the four rockets she carried. “Go to full Combat Mode! AutoDefense evasion and attack algorithms!”
Suit’s Tactical CPU moved her sideways, then up to avoid a hit by a thousand kilowatt proton beam. That would have burned through the adaptive optics sapphire crystals which coated her suit. The carbon-carbon ablative underlayer would have absorbed the laser’s coherent heat, but half her suit systems would burn out. In linkage with Matt’s own CPU, the two of them danced before the oncoming Corvette like mosquitoes before an angry crow. Their laser pulse-cannons fired at the Corvette, but its ablative armor absorbed their green beams.
“Mata Hari, can you help us?” she called over their joint mindlink.
“Assisting.”
Above them Matt’s ship shot red laser beams at the craft, hitting the spine of the black spear-head. That worked. The craft wobbled in flight, then stabilized with a jerkiness suggestive of damage to automatic systems. Jerking to the right and backward, her combat suit rotated her away from facing the Corvette.
Outside, hers and Matt’ three kiloton nuke warheads exploded against the Corvette’s own pressor fields.
Painful white light filtered into Eliana’s helmet despite the automatic darkening of the optical matter which made up the faceplate. Thermal heat bloomed to her rear as each nuke created a small sun measuring twenty meters wide, per her suit’s onboard status readouts on either side of her faceplate. Neutron and gamma radiation peaked well past human survival level to the 7,000 rem level, then began to drop off as the fireball diminished in size. Next came the impact of the blast wind, added to the screaming winds of the hurricane.
Eliana gave thanks for the multi-spectrum shielding of her suit, even as her mindlink with Matt said he too was being tossed kilometers away from the Corvette’s incoming mass. A mass that had lost its rear drive segment while her nuke blast under the belly of the craft had tossed its nose upward, toward the dense grey clouds of the thundering hurricane. The exposure of the Corvette’s belly gave her an idea.
“Launch my plasma rocket at the belly! The bottom pressor beam node is burned out by the EMP!” she cried to her Tactical CPU.
“Complying, mistress.”
Her backpack shuddered once more, then, in her 360 degree All Around vision of helmet, she saw a purple globe of plasma blossom against the belly of the Corvette. The plasma cloud ate upward into the occupied part of the Corvette. A blue-whiteness suddenly sparked into life deep within the collapsing shape of the Corvette.
“Fusion plant magfield loss!” cried the male voice of her Tactical CPU. “Estimated yield of ten megatons. This suit is retreating at speed!”
A large ball of yellow-white stellar plasma bloomed behind Eliana and Matt as the Corvette’s onboard power plant lost confinement and consumed all matter and gases within reach of the uncontained fusion reaction.
Eliana crossed her mental fingers as a thermonuclear fusion-fusion blast far larger than anything her suit could produce filled the sky above the mine entrance with white hot gases that exceeded the temperature of Sol’s corona. Suit told her she would survive. As would Matthew. And his ship Mata Hari had dropped down to be a buffer between them and the expanding globe of fusion-fed stellar plasma. But would there be anything left of the mine shaft within which his sister had fled?
Charlotte felt the ground under her shudder once, then a second time as outside the white light of a nuclear blast happened far
closer than any kind of violence she had ever experienced in her life on Thuringia or out in the Anarchate. At the entrance, boulders filled the dusty opening as the metal beams supporting it collapsed sideways. Overhead, parts of the mine shaft roof began falling down. She grabbed her shoulder bag, kicked the bedroll down into the depths of the shaft and ran after it, hoping she would not be buried alive.
She was a good hundred meters down the shaft when a terrible white light flared behind her, seeping past the fallen boulders. It made every nook, cranny, outcrop, piece of quartz and other crystalline rock appear to glow, as if they had become illuminators. Then a piece of the roof hit her left shoulder, knocking her down even as her feet snagged on smaller rocks. Throwing up her hands she kept her face from smashing into the shaft’s rocky floor. But another flying rock hit her head.
“Matthew!” she cried, even as awareness fled.
Matt’s mind expanded widely even as Suit spun through the hurricane sky over Nidar Peninsula, the air filled with tree fragments, rocks, tons of brown dirt, miniature tornadoes and a flare of intense gamma rays from the distant site of the mine shaft. Suit’s Eyes-Up display showed a millimeter wavelength radar image of the rocky cliff into which the lithium mine shaft had been excavated. That image showed a pile of boulders and soil had slid down from the cliff top to cover the mine entrance. But around the mine, every tree and piece of brush was gone, burned away by the 10 megaton thermonuke blast that had consumed the Corvette. He hoped those inside the Corvette included the alien who had sought to trap Charlotte with a fake holo. Pointing his bicep rocket guns toward the mine, Suit fired out several dozen Fire-and-Forget nanoshells with borer nodules that might penetrate the debris over the mine entrance. A few nanoBit computers sped after the shells in order to coordinate the penetration efforts of the tiny shells. Meanwhile, Suit’s pressor beams and ultrasonic vibers repelled the wind-blasted debris or broke it into sand grains. Overhead loomed the giant body of Mata Hari, its Alcubierre shields gone as the ship showed its true dragon shape.
Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Page 17
